09.29.06
Posted in Anything goes, Uncategorized at 10:50 pm by Administrator
In honor of Matty’s 16th birthday, here’s a picture of me boys. . .
Andrew, Aaron, and Matthew 
I’m having one of my sentimental moments, so rummaged through some of our old pictures. Here’s one from an earlier birthday. . .
Matthew, Aaron, and Andrew
And another at Grandma’s
And with their daddy. . .
And finally, one more before I overdo it, heh. This is me with Andrew and Matthew on my lap before Aaron was born. . .
Well, that’s enough of memory lane for tonight. Sigh.
Marlakins
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09.28.06
Posted in Anything goes, Uncategorized at 10:09 pm by Administrator
My middle son’s birthday is tomorrow. He’ll be 16. Yikes! My oldest son just turned 18 last July. How fast time flies is mind boggling! It made me go down memory lane and reminded me of what I was doing at their age. . . The good memories always come up first, and about that age one of the best concerts I remember going to was at the Irvine Meadows Ampitheather–ZZ Top’s Eliminator Tour. Yee hee!
Do you remember this music video?
I do!
Marlakins
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09.27.06
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Hmmm Moments, Uncategorized at 4:17 pm by Administrator
The other day an inquiry was made on one of the forums I visit as to whether Kevin Trudeau’s book, Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About, was worth buying. I had heard about Trudeau as he seemed to be causing a stir, but I was not interested in a new health book, so never bought or read his book. But because of the recent inquiry of Trudeau’s book, I decided to check it out from the library. Upon reading the Introduction and the first few chapters, I thought, “Oh, boy, he’s stepping on a lot of toes! Lots of people are not going to be happy with this chappy.” Not because what he was saying was false, but because what he was revealing likely has some truth to it. I’m specifically talking about his expose on the “money trails.” I would be shocked if it didn’t cause those implicated to jump up and bark orders to stuff him back in some deep dark cave. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is some truth to the claims Trudeau makes regarding large companies like phamaceutical companies thriving on the profits made from sickenesses and diseases. The customers for companies that make drugs are sick people. If there were no sick people, that would result in no business, and no profits for big pharma. So to take it to the next logical step, for more business and more profits, big pharma needs more customers. For a drug company that means more “sick” people. Simply put, their interest is that there are more sick people to buy their drugs, not well people who will not buy their drugs. A very simple concept to understand, really. Yet the very sad fact remains that many people don’t like to face or admit to it. Patients want to feel and believe that the drug companies exist just to make us all well. And of course, those making their livelihoods from the sick and diseased don’t want to be exposed for their evil deeds and thus engage in helping to perpetuate sickeness and disease by disseminating ideas like, “no matter what you do, or how careful you are, sickness and disease with eventually bite you in the butt. There are no alternative treatments that work, and if you did get better without drugs, you were probably never sick in the first place. So don’t bother trying to stay healthy because it’s useless. Have your daily twinkie, AND DON’T WORRY, ‘We’re here to save the day with drugs and surgery.’” So, it only makes sense that those involved would be up in arms against Trudeau for blantantly connecting the dots for those who are “connect-the-dot-challenged.” There’s lots of money to be lost to big pharma and the supporting businesses if too many people decided to avoid drugs and improve their health naturally.
So today I thought, let’s take a quick Google search for Kevin Trudeau and see what shows up. And as predicted, I had to laugh. He has been smeared. LOL The beauty of it is he’s no goody-two-shoes. He has had a past. But what a fitting scenario it is for an insider to expose his fellow scoundrels for what they really are–greedy SOBs. Trudeau admits in his book that he, too, had been caught up in the greed and was convicted and sentenced to about two years in prison for his crime. He may still be a scoundrel for all I know, but I had have to give him credit for at least confirming from his experience what others have claimed has been going on in the health-care industry. The claims he has made is not unique to him. As an example there is another book out called Selling Sickness by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels copyrighted in 2005. This is what the inside leaf says:
“Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world’s largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s. It had long been his dream, he said, to make drugs for healthy people–so that Merck could ’sell to everyone.’
“Gadsden’s dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth.
“Using their dominating influence in the world of medical science, drug companies are systematically working to widen the very boundaries that define illness. Old conditions are expanded, new ones created, and the markets for medication grow ever larger. Mild problems are redifined as serious illness and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. When it comes to conditions like high cholesterol or low bone density, being ‘at risk’ is sold as a disease in its own right.”
Oye Vey. . .
Marlakins
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09.25.06
Posted in Anything goes, God, Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Uncategorized at 10:38 pm by Administrator
Some of the discussions in my other categories have deviated from what the original topic was about. So I’m opening up this category for any comments or discussions anyone wants to bring up that doesn’t quite fit in any of the other categories. This way we can talk about miscellaneous things and they won’t get lost in threads with completely unrelated topics. This will be the miscellaneous category for anything like general questions, sharing some news, prayer requests, etc. Anything goes here. . .
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09.24.06
Posted in History, Hmmm Moments, Uncategorized at 3:37 pm by Administrator
The stuff that has captivated me today may be old news to some people. I’ve found that no matter how much I like to read, I find that I’m usually still “behind” the times. 
Cripes. So, here in 2006, I just discovered something that had already hit the press in 1994 in Discover Magazine.
We’ve all heard about Eygptian mummies, right? But have you heard of Urumchi mummies? I hadn’t. Apparently, Urumchi mummies are contemporaries of Eygptian mummies. The mystery of these mummies are that they were found in Urumchi in Western China, and these mummies appear to be of Celtic origin.
These mummies were first seen in 1987 by Dr. Victor Mair in the area in Western China, known as Chinese Turkestan. He was leading a group of diehard travelers through the Urumchi Museum where, in a dimly lit room, he found a display of mummies. Upon closer inspection, Dr. Mair was stunned to find that these mummies appeared to be neither Chinese nor Mongoloid in facial type as would be expected from finding them in such a region. Instead, these mummies had distinct caucasian features with high-bridged noses, deep, round eye sockets, fair hair, and on the men, heavy beards. Archaeologists and linguists alike had assumed that the Mongol-type peoples had “always” inhabited this entire area. They also assumed central and northern Asia to be generally the Altaic linguistic group, which today includes Mongol and the various Turkic and Tungusic languages. So finding Caucasian mummies was a surprise.
Findings like these mummies greatly influence the current knowledge of history. I am reminded of the stories we have heard as children that Christopher Columbus was the first to discover America in 1492. Then subsequent evidence was discovered that revealed that there were other Europeans who visited America long before Christopher Columbus did such as Leif Erikson in 1001. For a little more reading on Leif Erikson click here. There is also a claim that Marc Polo had visited America in the 1200’s on a Chinese Junk “after” the Chinese had already visited America. Considering the sculptures of the Olmec heads and other sculptures styles similar to Chinese decor, it does seem very possible that the Chinese had visited America long before Columbus did. Athough, there is some debate whether the Olmec heads actually look African rather than Chinese. Hmmm.
In Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s book, “Arctic in Fact and Fable,” he wrote that there’s an old belief that the farther up north you go, the colder it gets. Stefansson, the last of the old-world explorers, claimed that that wasn’t so. One importance of that discovery would change the view of one of Pytheas’s claims. Pytheas, a Greek explorer around 350 B.C., was the first to connect the moon with the tides and was the first to locate a place on the surface of the earth by observations of the constellations to help him determine latitude on concepts similar to what we used today. He had written a book called, The Ocean, wherein he claimed that he sailed about 600 miles northward from Scotland and found an island called Thule. People did not believe him because they “thought” that the ice in the northern latitudes 600 miles northward of Scotland was all solid ice(from the concept of the farther up north, the colder it got). During Stefansson’s travel explorations through that area, he found that it was “not” solid ice during certain seasons of the year, thus he felt it may very well have been possible Phytheas’ claim was real, and that depending upon when he set sail, Phytheas may have in fact, really reached an island called Thule, which is likely what we know today as Iceland.
So back to our Urumchi mummies! The Eygptian mummies appear shriveled and blackened compared to these Urumchi mummies. The discovery of these mummies have raised many questions, not only of who they were, why they were there, but also what could we find out about their genetics with our current technology, how has their presence in the area affected culture and language, etc. Nearly a century before, scholars had discovered in this same area a variety of documents dating from the first millennium A.D. and written in a now-extinct language known as Tokahrian. It was later found that Tokharian was related to the Indo-European tongues spoken in most of Europe (including English, Latin, and Greek) and in parts of the near East (including Persian and Sanskrit). These Tokharian speakers therefore must have penetrated into Central Asia from the west.
Here’s a picture of one of the mummies.
They believe he’s a 55-year-old male, known as Cherchen Man, from Tomb 2 at Cherchen, ca 1000 B.C., in the southern Tarim Basin. He was 6′6″ (2m) tall, with light brown hair; he wore white deerskin boots and brightly colored woolen pants, shirt, and felt leggings.
(Photo Jeffery Newbury/copyright 1994.)
For more information click here.
One thing that struck me was the height of this particular mummy–6′6″. Hmm. Now they believe that these mummies were about 4,000 years old. I’ve heard people say things like people didn’t live very long or that people of the older days were shorter and that we’re still evolving. Six foot six hardly sounds like a short man. I don’t know what this man died of, so can’t address the age thing with this mummy. But this does remind me of some things I’ve read about giants. Maybe that’ll be something to write about on another post! A study on how long people lived in various civilization and eras would be another interesting study! From some of the things I’ve already read on those subjects, it appears that lots of “preconceived” or “common” beliefs have been wrong and could use some updating.
I did check out a book from the library called The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. It looks like she may have a lot of interesting tidbits that I’ll try to share regarding these mummies. Hope I don’t get side tracked too much so that I can get through this book! Until then, toodles!
Marlakins :”>
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09.19.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:27 pm by Administrator
While in Turkey we picked up a cute little book called, “Tales of Nasr-ed-din Khoja.” My youngest son loves this book, and I find the stories amusing, too. Khoja is a popular storyteller in Turkey. In some stories he appears very wise, yet in other stories he appears to be a dufus. Aside from their hospitality, from these stories, I gather the Turks have a good sense of humor. I’ll share one short Khoja tale below:
A Suit for Payment of “Nothing”
Two men came before the Judge and pleaded as follows:–
Plaintiff: “Your Honour, this man had a load of wood on his back, and as he was walking along, his foot slipped. He fell, and all the wood came down with him. He begged me to put it on his back again, and I asked him what he would pay me for doing it? He answered, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘All right, I agree to do it for nothing,’ and I put the wood on his back. I then asked him for payment of ‘nothing,’ and he will not give it me. Your Honour, I demand my rights. Let him pay me ‘nothing’ here and now!”
The Judge always handed over delicate questions like this to our friend the Khoja, who, having listened attentively said, “Your claim is just. He must keep his word. He shall pay.”
Then pointing to the rug on the divan, he said to the claimant, “Just lift that rug a bit and tell me what is under it.”
The man looked, and answered, “Nothing.”
“Why,” said he, “that is what you want. Take it and go!”
Hee hee!
Marlakins 
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09.18.06
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Uncategorized at 10:11 am by Administrator
Just found some pleasant news! It appears that Abraham may be making some good progress. . . Check it out. . .
“GREENWOOD, Miss. – A Virginia teenage cancer patient appears to be improving less than a month after he won a court fight to forgo chemotherapy and seek alternative treatments, his doctor said Friday.”
For full article click here.
So far, so good. I’m cautiously optimistic, but it’s likely still very early in the game to know for sure what’s really happening. I imagine being in the lime-light may be giving Starchild some added pressure to succeed. However, as far as I’m concerned, he has already won a major victory and has nothing else to prove to anyone. I hope he feels the same and can now focus fully on healing his body with humbleness. So while we can rejoice with him and be thankful that Starchild appears to be progressing in the right direction, this is no time for pride, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”
Marlakins
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Posted in God, History, Uncategorized at 12:03 am by Administrator
What’s the “right stuff” that makes a martyr? What’s it like to feel so passionately about something that you’re willing to die for it?
Not long ago I watched a documentary called, “Beyond the Gates of Splendor.” It was about five missionaries in the 1950’s who made contact with violent tribes people in the jungle of Ecuador. These missionaries “knew” that these tribes people were very violent, and their chances of getting speared to death was very high. Yet their desire to share the knowledge of Christ to these people was so great that they took that chance. Their first contact seemed to go well, but by the third day, these five missionaires were speared to death by those very people they were trying to help. These missionaries did have a gun and could have easily shot the tribes’ people in self-defense, but they chose not to. They literally laid down their lives for these people.
Then I saw another documentary called, “An Uncommon Kindness, the Father Damien Story.” Since his youth, Father Damien wanted to help people. As soon as he had the chance, he did just that. He went to Hawaii, and in 1872 when leprosy broke out among the Hawaiians, the infected people were forced to quarantine themselves on the island of Molokai. Father Damien went to them to help them. Many were sick and dying, so not only did Father Damien bury many of the dead, but he cared for the ones who were still suffering and started constructing shelter for them. He lived with the lepers for about 15 years when he finally contracted leprosy himself. Even while his health started to decline, he continued to help the leper community on Molokai, and finally died there of leprosy.
How can some people be so brave? I find it truly humbling that there are people who are so self-less. I’m blessed to live a relatively comfortable existence. Yet, sometimes the thought of how much others suffer makes me feel a bit guilty, even. I don’t want to be ungrateful for the good things I have, yet, I don’t want to be oblivious to others who are less fortunate. Thoughts like this makes me assess how I should be living my life. Then I realise that we aren’t all put under the same circumstances, and each person has different skills and ability. I am reminded of what the Bible says about the body of Christ, that is, the body of believers. A body has many different parts–eyes, nose, hands, ears, etc. And each part has it’s own function. The eye can’t do what the ears do, nor can the hands do what the nose does. Likewise, we can’t all be martyrs (not that I feel brave enough to be one anyway! That’s probably not my place in the body). And I recall what the Bible says about spiritual gifts:
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.”
And so I realise that I don’t have to be a martyr to help people or to be pleasing to God. I don’t have to be so brave or travel to distant lands to help others. There are people right here that can be helped.
Now I just need to figure out what my spiritual gift is, yikes! Right about now, I feel I’m a baby toe. Ha ha! But still part of the body. . .
Marlakins
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09.16.06
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Hmmm Moments, Uncategorized at 8:31 pm by Administrator
There are many different healing disciplines depending upon which country you research. For instance, in India, ayurveda is one of their popular healing disciplines. In China, acupuncture is well-known as is Chinese herbal medicine. Unani Tib is associated with ancient Greek-Arabic roots. The list goes on.
But why am I thinking about the various healing disciplines? Well, I was reading a cancer resource book called, “Choices, the Most Complete Sourcebook for Cancer Information.” I came across an interesting section regarding metastases (cancer that has spread to organs or tissue at some distant location from the original site). There was a little chart labeled, “Common Areas of Distant Spread.” The reason why I thought it was interesting was because in many foreign disciplines such as the different ones I mentioned above, they look at the whole body and find (link) “connections” to what affects what. For instance, in Traditional Chinese medicine they may look at patient’s tongue and nails to help them assess digestive distress. Change in vision may be linked to liver troubles. Or in ayurveda, the practitioner may look below the patient’s eyes to see if there is any kidney sluggishness. So this chart of common metastases spread makes me wonder what the link is to those original sites. Let me attach the list below so you can see what I mean:
Common Areas of Distant Spread
Original Cancer Site —->Where it Usually Spreads
Bladder —->Bone, lung, liver, brain
Breast —->Bone, lung, brain, liver, adrenal gland, ovary, other breast
Bone —->Lung
Colon/rectal —-> Lung, liver, ovary
Eye —->Liver
Head and Neck —->Lung, liver, brain, bones
Kidney —->Bone, lung, liver
Leukemia/lymphoma —->Liver, lung, membranes of brain and spine
Lung —->Brain, liver, bone, adrenal glands
Melanoma —->Brain, liver, bowel
Prostate —->Bone
Sarcomas —->Lung
Stomach —->Liver, lung
Testicle —->Liver, lung
Thyroid —->Bone
Uterus —->Lung, liver
~Choices, the Most Complete Sourcebook for Cancer Information, by Marion Morra and Eve Potts, 2003, pg 935.
**Apologies for the goofy table alignment. I confess I’m a bit computer challenged, and it’s showing! I can’t seem to figure out how to align my table properly. . . sigh***
The thing I find curious is why are there actually “common” sites where cancers spread? Why doesn’t it just spread to any “random” site? Is it then possible that those organs are some how connected in some way similar to what those other healing disciplines suggest? So that if I were suffering from cancer in my uterus, should I do things to help strengthen my lungs and liver? It seems to me that if cancers normally spread to these areas from their original sites, then there must be some sort of connection to them. I mean why isn’t it common for cancer in the uterus to spread to, say, the pancreas? Or to the kidneys? Instead it’s common for uterine cancer to spread to the lungs and liver. Or why does eye cancer commonly spread to the liver, and not to the brain, which is closer?
It may be a good idea to keep tabs on lists like this. Some things that at first blush may not seem related might actually be related.
Marlakins 
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09.12.06
Posted in History, Hmmm Moments, Uncategorized at 7:48 pm by Administrator
In 1977, after laboring seven years, Raymond Damadian, a physician and scientist, along with colleagues Dr. Larry Minkoff and Dr. Michael Goldsmith, completed their invention. It was a machine they called the “Indomitable.” With this machine, the first magnetic resonance imagining on a human was performed. This was July 3, 1977.
Today, the “Indomitable” is on display at the Smithsonian Institute. Most people probably have never heard of the indomitable, which is now commonly known as an MRI machine. The original indomitable took five hours to produce one image, while today’s MRI machines can produce images in a matter of seconds. There were only a few MRI machines in the early 80s, but today there are thousands of them, with their use being instrumental for cancer detection.
There is absolutely no doubt that the pioneering breakthroughs for the MRI were Raymond Damadian’s. In a 1971 paper in Science, Damadian wrote of how MRI’s could be used to distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue. In 1972 Dr Damadian filed the first patent for MRI scanning.
Then in 2003, a strange thing happened. Carl Weiland writes about it in his article titled, “The not-so-Nobel decision.”
“In 2003, the Nobel Prize for Medicine went to the breakthrough field of diagnostic MRI scanning. It was shared by two scientists. But, to the stunned disbelief of virtually all who worked in that field, these did not include Raymond Damadian, even though the terms allow for up to three people to share the award.”
Why didn’t Raymond Damadian, inventor of the MRI, receive the nobel prize? Weiland continues to explain:
“All of which makes the exclusion of Dr Damadian as the third co-recipient of the Nobel so pointed that even some of the secular media have talked of the possibility of a link between Dr Damadian’s exclusion and his creationism. The New York Times raised the issue in a recent report.1 In fact, as renowned an anticreationist as the agnostic/deist Canadian philosophy professor Michael Ruse has written of his own deep concern.2 Choosing his words carefully, he writes of the ‘likely hypothesis’ that the motive for rejecting Damadian was his open creationism. Damadian is a Christian, says Ruse, whose beliefs include the Genesis account of creation: ‘Adam and Eve the first humans, universal flood, and all the rest’.”
I find it deplorable that some people hate God so much that they will go to great lengths to hide and twist the truth. They are most to be pitied.
Modern MRI 
photo courtesy NASA
Other articles with more details on Raymond Damadian can be read here and here.
Marlakins
1 Chang, K., Denied Nobel for MRI, he wins another prize, New York Times, 23 March 2004. [The prize referred to was that in ref. 2.]
2 Ruse, M. The Nobel Prize in Medicine—Was there a religious factor in this year’s (non) selection? Metanexus Online Journal, 16 March 2004.
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