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A recent article in Scientific American outlined results from a study showing that girls completing a linguistic abilities task showed greater activity in brain areas implicated specifically in language encoding. Boys, on the other hand, showed a lot of activity in regions tied to visual and auditory functions.

The implications are numerous. It appears that boys need to be taught language both visually (with a textbook) and orally (through a lecture) to get a full grasp of the subject, whereas a girl may be able to pick up the concepts by either method.

From our experience, we’ve observed over the years that there are consistently more girls (OK, women) than boys in our classes. On average, women make up about 60%-70% of the client base, and it’s not surprising to see all-female classes at times. There may be a number of reasons why this is the case. Perhaps language learning is simply more appealing to women. Others would say that girls like the romance associated with learning a second language. It seems like now we have some more compelling biological reasons behind this phenomenon.

However, it has also been interesting to observe the guys who come along for language classes. Maybe it’s not politically correct to say so, but it also appears that the guys who tend to want to learn a second language (in spite of being supposedly biologically inferior in this respect) are more sophisticated, confident, urbane and adventurous. If guys are indeed behind the proverbial eight-ball, perhaps those who choose to learn a language need these qualities in order to succeed. Either that or simply because they wish to be in the presence of beautiful, intelligent women. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that!

Kenneth Leong is Director of Euroasia Language Academy in Auckland, New Zealand. They offer European and Asian language courses to native English speakers. Visit their site at: http://www.euroasia.co.nz/

A recent article spurred my reoccurring thoughts about the growth of what I think of as environmental diseases. As a Green Consultant trainer, I have often spoken of the rise of immune related illnesses that parallel our country’s increased use and fondness for chemical laced and petroleum derivative products. This report only added to my belief that we are cleaner and more sanitized, but we are also weakened by the products we use in our homes and offices. An AP medical report says,

“In 2007, approximately 3 million children under the age of 18 were reported to have had a food or digestive allergy in the previous 12 months, compared to slightly more than 2.3 million children (3.3 percent) in 1997, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

This same report says food allergies are up by 18%, but similar trends are being seen in asthma. Asthma cases have more than doubled since 1980, and that is more than a population issue. Some report that we are “too clean” and “too sanitized” to allow fetal and early childhood immunities to develop. Realize that the non-affected people are eating the same food, breathing the same air, and living in similar situations. So, why them and not me? Most of us are IMMUNE to these irritants and can tolerate repeated exposure without much more than minor discomfort. Others are not, and it seems that this is not just a sanitation or medical issue. I feel that we are continually wearing away our immune system, and it is not merely a dietary replacement or vitamin issue.

Every American, and even third-world citizens, live in a ” Toxic Soup ” when it comes down to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). This invisible contamination may be like a fish tank that has gone too long between changes. The water is still wet, but it is filled with build ups of toxic substances that will eventually sicken and kill the fish. Every person knows that a healthy aquarium is a careful balance of ingredients and removal of toxins. Our atmosphere is air, and it too can be filled with some pretty incredible stuff. Did you know that formaldehyde is common in many construction material and furniture, and that it outgasses for months into the air we breath? The smell of bleach, fresh paint, new carpet, and new furniture are nasty fumes called volatile organic compounds (VOC) that have proven acute and chronic health affects?

Into this same Toxic Soup, you must add the air fresheners, cleaning products, window cleaners, toilet sprays, detergents, sanitizers, and polishes that are frankly filled with multi-syllabic named chemicals that are potential health hazards. You will also find cigarette ash, arsenic, lead, dust mite feces and scales, pollen, pet dander, and dust particles of all types. We also anoint ourselves with cologne, perfumes, deodorant, cosmetics, hair spray, and body lotions that leave a trail of pleasant scents. We use bleach and ammonia products that are frankly dangerous products, and we sprinkle carpet deodorizer throughout house.

Bioaccumlation refers to the compounding affect of all these ingredients that are like layers of paint on an old house. It doesn’t make the house better, it just covers up the obvious flaws. Biomagnification means that some ingredients actually heighten the impact of other ingredients already floating around. In the end, we are like the fish trapped in a toxic tank of bad water. Breathing is one of the first indicators that something is wrong, headaches will follow, and then comes a failing of health with illness and lethargy. These are symptoms that there is something wrong. Years ago when bowling alleys allowed smoking, I would get a splitting headache after thirty minutes in these places. After I left, so did the headache. Could it have been the air? Have you ever driven behind a diesel bus blowing black smoke at you as your travel behind it? Many people get that same kind of acute headache that passes when they get back into fresh air.

Therefore, I have a theory that is supported by a good body of science which I cannot quote but clearly says that food allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivity, ADD, ADHD, and other diseases like cancer and auto immune disease are hitting us more often because we have weakened immune systems. Our immune system is not weak from fighting the normal stuff out there, but the artificial stuff that hits it 24/7 and all year long. Though a theory, I feel strongly convinced that we are using chemical and petroleum-based products to such an extreme that it is killing us … or at least setting us up for the kill.

This may sound very “retro,” but there is a need to return to our grandmother’s way of cleaning. It may not have been as sanitary or beautifully-scented as your store-bought products, but it produced a healthier and more robust generation than now. Don’t be enticed by the commercial that brag about being “New and Improved.” These products have been improved by adding yet another chemical that will likely further harm your family. Take some lesson from Naturally Green Clean author, and discover that anyone can clean their home using just a few commonly available ingredients. Better yet, you will save a ton of money while your family enjoys a respite from the toxic soup for a while.

Giving your family the gift of health is not a call to a higher level of cleaning, but a lower level of toxins that we all purchase at exorbitant prices. Does it amaze you that people pay huge prices to buy cigarettes that are sure to kill them? In yet another fool’s errand, isn’t it strange that we that we are such addicts to cleaning products that smell pleasant but are poisoning us too. If what you are using promises to blind, scar, sicken, or kill you if your ingest it; why on earth are you bringing it home to be spread throughout your home? Cleaning is not a technically difficult task. It does not require scrubbing bubbles, foaming action, or a 99.9% germ killing action. Natural and organic products are just as effective at cleaning, killing germs, and dissolving grease. Pick up a books and learn how to give your family the fundamental gift of life by making the air they breathe safe. Your reward will be in the hardship and suffer that you will never see in life of the people you love.

Michael Richmond is the director of the Green Clean Institute, and highly recommends the book Naturally Green Clean that explains how to clean your home naturally.

In sports, there will always be different levels of competition. There are times that teams name their worthy opponents while others just do not want to give others a chance to win over them. This is what we call rivalries. In College teams, it is very prominent. This is a good thing because even though teams are not playing on a championship match, it gives the same feeling that kind of game gives to its audience. The game becomes heated making this as one of the factors why a football match becomes exciting and memorable.

However, there are times when rivalries create chaos. Sometimes, the big guys on the field get on each others nerves and can start a fight. It is inevitable to loose your cool at times, especially when the trash talking in the field gets personal. The force gets very mighty in trying to tackling the opponent. This is a physical sport so it is expected that venting out the anger be easily channeled on natural flow of the game. One of the worst-case scenarios happened during the 2004 NCAA Match. One of the greatest rivals in football started a brawl at the Memorial Stadium. South Carolina Gamecocks and Clemson Tigers players had to be stopped by law enforcements.

Definitely, every team should know how to manage their anger, especially when they get pissed. We cannot avoid the conflicting personalities from different teams. The best thing that these players can do is to maintain sportsmanship. Every athlete is disciplined enough to know how they should act in games. It is no doubt that football is a tough game, and it should be placed in mind that toughness in this game is not all that is needed to win. Proper Decorum should be observed. It does not mean that the nature of the game is violent, then every player should take advantage of it to get ahead of the other team.

Not every player should be eaten up with the history. Every team should ensure that the rivalry is friendly wherein after the game, players get to shake their hands and wish everyone well. In the middle of the match, every player should take the tackle as it is just part of the game. There should also be no extra bumps after the fall. Moreover, when the player is down, the best is to help him up. This can give an impression that you know you hit him to hard and that you did not mean it. It may sound like a practice for the babies, but definitely when the game is heated, it can cool the flames a bit knowing that you one player is not after injuring the other. Rather this is all about business and playing the game the way it should be.

At the end of the game, always try to reach out with the other players. The memory of the game will live but you as a player should put all behind the rough experience after the game. On the next fight, you can start by welcoming your opponents. Not like the way the Clemson Tigers greeted the South Carolina Gamecocks.

Freddie Brister is a huge fan of the SEC and the South Carolina Gamecocks. His love for the game of football started with an older brother passing the pigskin around in the backyard with cousins and neighborhood friends. He later played in high school, college and coached high school football for 25 years, before retiring to write for Sports Fan Treasures. Check out his South Carolina Gamecocks Merchandise.

You who read this, may be an engineer, a mechanic, an inventor, a student, or even someone without an engineering background. My observation is that the general public has little knowledge of basic science and even engineers and other professionals often lack in basic insights, in spite of being advanced in their specific fields. This often leads to unfeasible projects and wrong choices, based on wrong assumptions, that no computer can correct.

I myself am a graduated engineer on B.Sc level in both mechanics and electrics. Nevertheless, most of what I know worth knowing as an engineer today, I learned from practical experience and backing it up with own theoretical studies afterwards. It forced me to focus on basics. When you have the basics right, the rest is just methodology, where the computer can be very helpful, but don’t let it “think” for you!

If you have no engineering background, why would you need to have some basic knowledge of all this, you may ask? Well, we live in a technological society and so we are confronted with technological matters and products, that we need to understand the basics of to make proper choices. Ever bought expensive “energy-saving” lamps, while in the same time needing to heat your home? Do you think hydrogen and/or fuel cells are energy sources? Do you think energy can be produced and consumed? Would you invest money in solar panels, or other renewable energy technology for your home? The more these kinds of things apply on you, the more you need to read this article.

The Laws of Newton

The metric, or SI system of units is based on the laws of Newton and so is most of modern mechanics and dynamics. They are essential for basic understanding:

• 1. A mass object persists in its momentary motion to speed and direction, unless it is forced to change it by external forces working on it.
• 2. The acceleration of an object is proportional with the force F working on it and inverse proportional with its mass m. Hence, the acting force is given by: F = m.a
• 3. A force acting on an object, will yield a counter force of the same strength in the opposite direction: action = reaction.

Although these laws sound simple, they are often wrongly applied, or overlooked. Especially the third law appears to be the most fundamental one, still not fully understood by Science and subject for discussions on the highest levels (how can you move a table for example, as it pushes back with the same force?).

Power and Energy.

Power and energy are very often mixed up. For example a lightning, causing a tree to split into half, is very powerful, but it has very little energy, because it lasted only a fraction of a second. Energy is the range of power and time. Power is expressed in Watt and energy in Joule - 1 Watt thus is 1 Joule per second, inversely 1 J = 1 Ws (Watt second). If you during one hour would apply a power of 1000 Watt (1 kW = 1 kJ/s), which approximately is what a flat iron takes, the energy involved is 1 kWh and this is thus equal to 3600 kJ. If you instead would develop that energy in one second, the power becomes 3600 kW, or 3.6 MW - a small power plant! If thus a lightning would have a power of say 10 GW and lasted 1 millisecond (it looks much longer, because of the glowing air around it), it contained an amount of energy of just 10 MJ = 10,000 kJ, not more than 2.8 kWh, or to power a flat iron for around three hours! If you in brochures would read dimensions like kilowatt per hour, or horsepower per hour, you can know that the author has no idea what he/she is talking about.

Energy is also the range of force and traveled way. If you lift up a mass of 1 kg to a height of 1 meter, the force needed for that is the range of mass and gravity acceleration, as per Newton’s second law. On Earth, gravity acceleration is 9.8 meter per second square, which we can round to 10. The lifting force then becomes 10 kilogram meter per second square, which is called the Newton (N) and the work done is then 10 Nm (Newton meter), which is 10 Joule: 1 J = 1 Nm.

The same confusing exists around temperature and energy. What would you rather have in your hand, a 1 inch red glowing sewing needle, or a 4 inch red glowing bolt? Though both have the same temperature, the needle will just cause you a blister, whereas with the bolt, you won’t have a hand any more. The bolt contains much more energy (more mass) than the needle and that makes the difference, not the temperature.

If you would be interested in a solar panel to heat water in your home, the temperature it can yield is therefore not that important. You pay for energy instead and that is what you want to save on. Ideally, a solar water heater should work on a low temperature, so it doesn’t loose too much heat through its insulation and produce a larger water flow instead. You then save more energy = money, because of the higher efficiency on which your solar panel works. To reach your desired water temperature in the kitchen and bathroom, you can heat additionally with say an electrical heater. Combination with a heat pump, also taking up heat from your warm waste water, would give the absolute best results (but high installation costs). Read more about that at the end of this article.

However, manufacturers of solar panels optimize on temperature, which is a good selling argument for the energy-unaware public. At higher temperatures, the size and thus the costs of the whole installation, including storage tank, become lower, which also sells better. They don’t talk very much, or at all about efficiency, being the relationship between how much solar energy hits the solar panel and how much of that you can use in the end. They talk about capacity instead - solar energy is “free”!

Next to consider is Pressure. Usually it is that of a fluid, like a gas. It is expressed in Pascal (Pa) which is force (N) per unit of area and thus 1 Pa = 1 N/sqm (Newton per square meter). Atmospheric pressure at sea level is roughly 100 kPa, thus 100,000 N/sqm. In technical descriptions it is also often called the bar - 1 bar is thus atmospheric pressure. Pressure can also be seen as stress in materials, tension. In the SI system of units, pressure and tension are thus both expressed in Pascal.

Then there is contact-pressure. This is what makes a knife work. The sharper a knife, the smaller its edge area (A) is and for a given force (F), the contact-pressure (F/A) becomes larger, also expressed in Pascal. With this, all units in the SI-system are given. It has only three basic units, the kg for mass, the meter for length/distance and the second for time. No conversions are needed

Circular Motions.

From Newton’s third law follows the perception that on an object in mechanical rotation, two forces are working, a centripetal one, pulling the objects towards the center of rotation, and a centrifugal one, tending to push it out radially away from that center. If the mechanical contact with the center of rotation suddenly is broken, in that very moment no forces are working on the object any longer and thus it will move as per Newton’s first law, meaning it keeps its speed in the direction it had in the moment just before losing contact. That speed was directed tangentially and thus the object will “fly out” in the tangential direction, not radially. In fact, centrifugal forces do not exist, because then there would be no resulting force to keep an object in its circular path - only the centripetal force exists. This is a hot discussion point in Science - Newton’s third law.

Hence, when you are in a car that makes a sharp curve, your body does not push against the inside of the car (centrifugal), but the inside of the car pushes your body into the curve (centripetal). As per Newton’s first law, your body wants to keep its direction of motion, straight ahead, just before entering the curve - it’s called inertia. There is only one force, the centripetal one (free motions in gravitational fields, such as orbits of planets and satellites, are described in General Relativity, which we won’t discuss here).

From this follows the notion of “inertial” systems, which are frames of reference in which Newton’s laws are valid. An accelerated system is thus not an inertial system, because motions described in it, would not follow Newtonian laws. This causes a severe point of confusion, as follows:

If you are an inventor of “fantastic” mechanical machines, your really should understand the implements of impulse. Impulse (p) is the amount of motion, being the range of speed (v) and mass (m), which is equal to the range of working force (F) and the working time (t): F.t = m.v = p. An impulse has a direction, which (kinetic) energy has not and therefore impulses can have a positive or a negative sign between opposite directions of motion. Because impulse is a function of force (the time-derivative of it), Newton’s third law requires that the sum of all impulses of moving components within a system (machine) must be zero. However, many inventors, not being aware of this, “create” a resulting impulse, that accelerates the system.

What they do is mixing up reference systems and impulse with energy. If you consider a mechanical system (machine), that has a certain total mass, but also internally moving parts, the resulting impulse of those parts, the sum of all impulses, will be zero relative the system’s center of gravity, but not necessarily relative a resting frame of reference (an observer) in which the whole system (machine) may be moving (at constant speed). The sum of kinetic energy of all the internally moving parts, is of course a positive value (negative energy is less than nothing). This value is the system’s internal (kinetic) energy. Since this internal energy is needed to keep the internal parts moving, there cannot be any energy left to accelerate the system (machine) as a whole. On the contrary, energy must be applied all the time to overcome the friction that the internally moving parts are subjected to, otherwise they would come to a halt. This applied energy converts to heat.

Sadly, there are several patents on according designs, claiming to be “inertial drives” for space-ships or whatever. Their inventors, some of which may have ruined their private economies on this, were not confident with the basics of dynamics, as outlined above. See some of those unfortunate examples here: http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/IPEmain.htm

Mechanical Engineering Concepts

Now, imagine you had a ball that is perfectly spherical and a table that is perfectly smooth, so when the ball is placed on the table, the contact area becomes a dimensionless point - zero whatever. Then the contact-pressure F/0 becomes infinite, regardless how light the ball is - something must break. No material could withstand an infinite contact-pressure and from this follows that not even with the most fantastic materials, yet to be developed, a frictionless machine could ever be built (that would require ideal point and line contacts).

Some inventors have a problem with that, like a patent I once saw, where a 15 cm (6 inch) diameter cylinder was rotating at 1500 rpm in a somewhat larger cylinder, supported by a number of smaller rollers in the size of just a few millimeters - it looked like a ball-bearing in cross section. These rollers would rotate at roughly 50,000 rpm. You look in any bearing table what the admissible speeds are and you would see that this design exceeds the limits by far; self-destruct through friction!

Another problem that many inventors have is judging leakage potential. Leakage is a function of pressure ratio, not of pressure difference and it varies to the third power with the clearance gap between the boundaries. It means that the same sealing device, that would leak in an however deep submerged submarine, would leak more in a space craft, because there the pressure ratio to vacuum is infinite - many don’t seem to know that. In addition, even less known, is that the best sealing is obtained with a single, unbroken sealing line, ideally a circle.

Therefore, the reciprocating circular piston machine will always prevail over any rotational displacement concept, that contains several broken (discontinuous) sealing lines. These rotational concepts can be used and are used in low-duty applications, where they have their advantages, such as in air-driven hand tools, industrial compressors, etc, but not in heavy-duty combustion engines. This is why the Wankel never became commercial, except a few years in cars from German NSU, that went bankrupt on it in the 1970-ies.

One can see the most ‘horrible’ designs in various patents, the worst I saw being an engine, consisting of a torus shaped tube, with a slot over its inner length to let through a piston rod, attached to a circular piston moving in that torus, while flat plates were sliding radially in and out the torus to form alternate compression and expansion chambers - at best a good cream-wiper (but it got a gold medal in an inventors contest - its glorious funeral)!

Many inventors have tried to find a linear transmission, that can replace the pendulous crankshaft. It has various disadvantages, such as causing vibrations of higher order, but most of all causing side-forces on the pistons, resulting in excessive wear and leakage there. I once read a statement from a development manager at Volkswagen in Germany, that the crank mechanism alone stands for 20% of the fuel consumption. All alternative designs I have seen, indeed convert the linear piston motion into a rotating one on the shaft and without causing side forces on the piston, but instead they generate the same or higher side forces on sliding parts elsewhere in the design, causing excessive friction and wear there - definitely no fuel savings. I have found a design that does not contain any sliding parts, but consists of rotating components only (I got the idea, when I was with my kids in a merry-go-round). Had I only come up with this a good 100 years ago, I could have made it, but now the pendulous crankshaft is so well established in automated production lines, that it can’t be changed any more. I almost hade it made with Compair-Reavel in the UK, around 20 years ago, but also they found it in the end too costly too change their production line - my bad luck!

Thermodynamics

Another basic thing, often misunderstood, is that energy can’t be “used up”. Surely, the gasoline you put in your car is used up, but the energy it developed is still there, to stay around for all eternity. All the chemical energy that was stored in the original fuel, is converted to heat. Firstly at high temperatures in the car’s engine, but then decaying to heat at ambient temperature. The rest is also converted to heat by friction, the tires on the road, the transmission, air resistance, etc. All energy that we “use” with our technology, finally decays to heat at ambient temperature, even the light from your lamps at home does that.

So is there the term “waste heat”, as opposed to “useful heat”.What is useful? Take “energy-saving” lamps for example. If you live in a cold climate, where you have to heat your home, a normal cheap hot glowing light bulb actually delivers 100% useful energy, 5% of which is light, the rest is heat, that helps heating your home, but this is not what you are told. Only the 5% light is brought forward as “useful” and you are told that you are “wasting” 95% with a normal glow bulb. Only in warm climates, especially third-world countries with very expensive electricity, or in cooled rooms, the use of energy-saving lamps makes sense!

The misconception by the public is that useful energy is “consumed” and waste energy is not. The real situation is that the useful energy is just used, but not “consumed” and is wasted after usage just the same. That’s why your energy bill comes back every month - nothing of what you used, is left. Therefore you read everywhere about “energy production” and “energy consumption”, not in the least used by decision makers in energy politics! It indicates that there is no basic understanding in public society, what energy is about and so unfeasible projects are initiated, wasting time and (your tax) money.

The First Law of Thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created (produced), nor destroyed (consumed). We can only convert energy from one form to an other and the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that it all finally must decay to heat at ambient temperature and so it does. Even though many know this, that is end of story for them, as far as the First Law is concerned. However, the scientific definition of the First Law says that if you add energy to a system to bring it in an other condition, you must remove the same amount of energy to bring it back in the original condition. Naturally, because if we could remove more, energy would be created from nothing and if less, energy would disappear into nothing. This formulation has great consequences, as follows:

Let’s consider an ideal hydrogen (water) engine, by which we pour water in it on one side and the same water AND useful mechanical energy comes out on the other side. Because the engine returns the same water as was applied (firstly as steam, but than condensing to water at ambient temperature), there cannot be a net output from the engine - it would have been created from nothing. If there is an output anyway, this means that the according energy had to be applied as well, not only the water. Indeed, we must apply energy to split the water in hydrogen and oxygen. If that could be done at an efficiency of 100% (electrolysis has only 60%), then that energy could appear as mechanical work on the shaft. This then means that the hydrogen only was an energy converter, definitely not an energy source!

Hydrogen does not occur in free form on Earth, like fossil fuels do and therefore hydrogen can never be an energy source. Give me a dollar for every article that says different and I will be well off!If there would be a method to obtain free hydrogen at considerably less energy input than what combustion with oxygen gives in output, yes, then it would become an energy source, but such a method has not yet been found.

Instead of splitting water, hydrogen can be obtained from natural gases, such as methane. It shows however that the overall efficiency of such a hydrogen loop in a combustion engine would have a somewhat lower overall efficiency than using the natural gas (or bio-gas) directly in a combustion engine. Moreover, hydrogen is a very tricky gas to store and to handle. Not only is it very explosive, but it tends to exude through most metals as well. It is very voluminous, around ten times more than air and thus needs to be brought on high pressures to keep the volume down and that takes a lot of compression energy. Liquefying it would even take more energy, plus a temperature problem for storage as well. There are materials that can absorb hydrogen gas at a lower temperature and give it off again at a higher temperature, surely the better way, but also not very cheap and practical in a distribution system. All together, there is no economy in hydrogen engines, but it may have an environmental advantage - the only viable argument for using it, provided the consumer wants to pay the higher costs, do you?

The same can be said from fuel cells, working on hydrogen - they produce water (steam) and need a steady supply offresh hydrogen and oxygen to work continuously- whereto get how? Yes, the energy that fuel cells are supposed to “produce”, originally came from fossil fuels to manufacture the input hydrogen. Can we call that “non-pollutant” energy? A fuel cell is NOT an energy source, just an energy converter.

The importance of using spontaneity in physical processes is largely unknown, because it has to do with entropy, something not explained very well in schools. So I had to learn in practice, by trial and error, that if you want to separate fluids from each other, you must try to find a design by which this happens as spontaneously as possible, for example with “smart” piping, rather than using filters. The more you try to force it about with various design details, the more you will lose in efficiency - you “produce” entropy as it wrongly is called. The more you force about a process (introduce “irreversibilities”, as it is called correctly), the greater the change of entropy is, the lower the efficiency becomes. Entropy is an essential part of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, not to say the whole of it, but yet there is no general agreement among scientists, what entropy actually is - very confusing.

The Second Law is actually not a “real” law, because it is based on observations only, not on any physical principle. This means that if the observations would change, the Second Law would have to change too, but this hasn’t happened yet, which makes it a law. In everyday life we experience that most things don’t happen spontaneously, only accidents, or coincidences in general, do (”Murphy’s Law”). If we want things to happen, we usually have to do work for it. Hence we could formulate the Second Law as: “for free only the Sun goes up”. On the internet, this formulation of the Second Law is widely violated by millions of web sites, trying to let you believe that for a small investment, you can become rich very soon. But that is not engineering (rather “religion”), so I leave you with that.

In engineering, especially when it comes to renewable energy sources, the Second Law is also widely violated, or rather ignored. Oh yes, solar energy is free, but you can’t use it for free, why not? Because it is widely spread in Nature and thus the effort to collect it into one point of usage and to present it in a usable form, is very large and you have to pay for that effort. Using fossil fuels is cheaper and easier and that’s what we do instead. The same would be valid for nuclear power, but there the “environmentalists” have been successful to obstruct it - with thanks from the Arab oil sheiks.

Renewable energy is something the Second Law is very much against, because it wants to spread it out in the environment, not to collect it for our use. Therefore these renewable energy sources are high-entropy ones, meaning you must do a lot of work to make use of them (low efficiency). There is one exception though and that is hydro-electric power. The forces of nature actually do all the work for us, by collecting rain water in high situated reservoirs, ready for us to use; they are low-entropy sources. But also here the “environmentalists” choose to favor the oil sheikhs instead.

Next would be heat pumps, which are inverted refrigerators. A heat pump absorbs heat from the environment, usually from the ambient air, by generating a cold surface there. This surface is small, but it actually collects heat from large, remote areas, brought by the wind. Also here, the forces of nature do the collecting work for us, a second exception on the rule (compare with a storm blowing aside of your wind propeller, without affecting it, or the Sun burning a hole in the ground next to your solar panel, also without affecting it).

The heat pump, as the name says, pumps up the ambient heat to a higher temperature that we can use, for example to heat water. Also its drive power is given off as heat at usage temperature, is thus no loss (where it is in a refrigerator) and so a heat pump can give off between 3 and 4 times more energy than what it takes to run it. If all the billions of dollars that to date and ongoing are wasted on wind propellers and solar collectors of various kinds, would have been used to provide all households with heat pumps, many power plants could have been shut down by now and no more oil would be burned in homes for heating. This however is a truth with modification. A huge polluting industry, likely using fossil fuels, would be behind all those heat pumps, but that would be the same also for wind propellers, solar panels and the production of hydrogen and fuel cells, all having to be financed by the consumers and making profit as well - the Second Law all right:”For free, only the Sun goes up”

Rudolph N. J. Draaisma
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The Russians do quite well in Olympic swimming, and if one notices, it is apparent that while some others are huffing and puffing through their mouths, many Russian athletes appear to practice exercises similar to Buteyko exercises before sports performances. Just as eating a bowl of spaghetti 15 minutes before an event would be detrimental, so is increasing the breathing. The Russian Natalia Molchanova has broken almost all categories of freediving records, and it is interesting to watch her breathing before a dive, as well as after a dive. Static Apnea training also includes minimizing breath.

To put it simply, Buteyko exercises are a set of tools, which allow asthmatics and others who are prone to hypocapnia (deficiency of carbon dioxide in the blood resulting from hyperventilation) caused by overbreathing, to return to stasis without (or with fewer) drugs, under medical supervision. Buteyko breathing exercises recalibrate the baroreceptors and parasympathetic nervous system, allowing for a lower breathing rate, and more normalized CO2, carbonate and pH levels in the blood, allowing the tissues to utilize oxygen better. Remember doctors using paper bags to stabilize asthmatics? (Do not breathe into a bag without medical supervision!)

Years ago I took a confined space training class, and we took turns blowing into an O2 detector after holding our breaths. Most trainees yielded 16-18% O2. I blew a 14% since I held my breath much longer. Assuming that the office had ~19% O2, this taught me that normal breathing is not very efficient, and perhaps has to be inefficient to allow for sufficient tensile strength of lung and vascular tissue, and delicate balance of blood chemicals. It occurred to me that more volume of air passing through the lungs does not necessarily mean that more oxygen is being passed to the bloodstream.

Two days after diving in the Pacific ocean, I was hiking in the snow up Cotopaxi at about 16,000′ (+4800m) above sea level. My extremely fit, but asthma-prone girlfriend began having shortness of breath. I also became light headed, and began experimenting with my breath as I trekked up the volcano. Several such times I inhaled deeply and compressed my chest with my intercostal (rib) muscles for a long moment. This seemed to help increase my consciousness even after I released the breath, and I realized that I had the power to change my physiologic state quite simply. It became clear to me how the mechanics of overbreathing/ heavy breathing and the partial pressure dynamics (elaborated by Buteyko doctors and scientists) may have much to do with the asthmatic response.

Many doctors now agree that overconsumption of nutrients (overeating) does not guarantee more nutrients to the tissues, but not many seem to consider respiration rate in the respiration equation, that overbreathing may play a key role in respiratory “disease.” In fact, some doctors no longer check respiration rate during an exam. It is commonly known that increased obesity results in metabolism dysfunction, large meals cause blood sugar spikes and metabolism accelerators (dieting drugs and supplements) due not increase stasis in tissues, making loss of fat more difficult in the long term. Similarly, overbreathing causes a spiraling of processes which decrease alvioli efficiency, disrupting breathing rate “calibration” and oxygenation of other tissues, decreasing health and oxygenation. Despite more oxygen entering the lungs, because of the low CO2 level, less oxygen actually makes it to the cells that need it. This overbreathing could be triggered by stress, anxiety, nasal congestion, allergies and other triggers and factors which cause people to breathe more frequently and deeply than their body would otherwise. One problem of low CO2 levels is a scientific hypothesis proposed by Artour Rakhimov, PhD, that chronic hyperventilation promotes disease and cancer. Previous research has suggested that chronic hyperventilation washes out CO2 from each cell of the human organism. Since CO2 is a dilator of small blood vessels, low CO2 concentrations lead to the constrictions of arterioles causing problems with blood and oxygen delivery.

In addition, low CO2 values cause inability of red blood cells to efficiently release whatever little oxygen they bring (the suppressed Bohr effect). The final outcome is hypoxia in the tissues, including the vital organs.

Some argue that “We are under constant stress because we don’t breathe enough,” without really measuring the actual volume of gases inhaled. Typically respiratory rate and volume increase when stress increases. Even the Johnson & Johnson Company sponsored research by University of Miami School of Medicine (Director Tiffany Field, Ph.D.) shows that massage increased pulmonary function in asthma patients. Once I was at the doctor, and a nurse assistant checked my pulse, bp and respiratory rate: the assistant reported that I had 18 breaths per minute, however I measured 6-7 breaths. I asked how she measured it, and she stated simply that “everyone has 18-20 breaths.” Such inaccuracy may lead to wrong conclusions by medical staff.

In 2005, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine reported that “Hypocapnic but Not Metabolic Alkalosis Impairs Alveolar Fluid Reabsorption.” What this means is that a low CO2 level causes blood pH to change, and more fluid build up in the lungs. Thus the more a person breathes, the more CO2escapes, and more fluid may build up in the lungs. Buteyko theory includes the facts of the body’s attempts to regulate carbonates and alkalinity.

Although Buteyko Therapy originated in the Ukraine Forty years ago, and has gained medical acceptance in Russia, Australia, Asia and England, it remains a seldom used “alternative” treatment in the USA. My mentor, John Harris, brought the first Buteyko Therapy Practitioner to the USA in the 1980’s: Rosalba Courtney, ND, DO, DipAc, CA, an Australian osteopath, naturopath, California-certified acupuncturist, and chairperson of the Australasian Buteyko Association. The practice has been taught to many practitioners and countless patients who, under medical supervision, have overcome much or all of their dependence on asthma medications. John is said to breathe 3/min at rest, and 1/min during meditation.

Most meditation practices promote slowed breathing, and can accomplish these effects, when breathing is slowed more in ratio to the metabolic rate. Vocalizing the typical “oum” slowly while breathing through the nose only, will slow the breathing, and CO2 levels can stabilize toward a normal level. It is the respiratory rate and partial pressures that mainly control how much O2 in the lungs will pass into the blood. Proper singing and playing wind instruments may have similar effects, partly due to the increased partial pressure inside the lungs.

Most Pilates trainers, Yoga instructors and even physicians speak of shallow and deep breathing, but frequently don’t specify breathing rate, or encourage increased rate. Some yoga classes sound like an aerospace wind tunnel. However experienced yogis are rarely seen panting, and even with Ujjayi Pranayama, they breathe s-l-o-w-l-y, which along with the resistance of Ujjayi, causes partial pressure inside the lungs to absorb more of the oxygen while keeping enough carbon dioxide to maintain balance. Have you ever seen a Buddhist monk panting? Have you noticed that healthy older people do not breathe noticeably?

By slowing breathing to more fully utilize O2 efficiency and not depleting CO2 levels necessary for proper muscle and lung physiology, Buteyko breathing is said to enhance performance. Traditional Pilates and certain specific yoga practices that encourage faster breathing rates thus may cause an opposite effect. After I began to master these techniques, my breathing slowed during my workouts, and my efficiency increased. I learned that if my mouth would open during a run, it was time to back off, slow the exhale, until my efficiency increased again. Once you open the mouth, the breathing efficiency goes down the toilet. Now if a sprint is required, forget the rules, and when activity slows, then immediately slow the breath. Watch a video of Natalia Molchanova, world record freediver, and see how slowly she breathes after swimming under water for several minutes. I have also found that “catching” the breath only throws the balance off.

Since this also affects blood pressure, a US Patent has been issued for use to control hypertension. The American Lung Association has informed me that since most research has been in Russia and Australia, they are waiting for more USA trials on Buteyko before they comment or promote it for asthma.

One day I was examining the lungs of a cadaver and noticed that significantly diseased lungs with a fraction of their original available surface area still kept the person alive. Later that day as I was swimming (controlled breathing exercise, right?) I experimented with different breathing depths and rates, and thought of Buteyko’s theory, and that wide ranges of breathing patterns may have strong effects on what the lungs pass to and from the bloodstream, and resultant physiological responses. Apparently humans are overdesigned in many ways, thus improper function may occur for long periods before symptoms become apparent, and finally nudge a person to submit to crisis-control allopathy.

About ten months after NPR, and eight months after Oprah Winfrey started a neti bowl craze, I noticed that neti bowls were more popular on the net, but at a drugstore I asked two pharmacists for “nasal irrigation such as neti bowl or neti pot” and they did not know what it was. I was promptly shown the medications section, and then I found and showed the pharmacist a plastic irrigation bottle which the store carried.

One day I was swimming in the ocean with a tight wetsuit for about 45 minutes, I then swam to the beach and all of a sudden, I noticed that my breathing was still rapid although my effort was decreasing as I rode some waves in. I began to overventilate, and experienced my first taste of pre-asthmatic behavior.

I was in a yoga class, and the instructor was discussing Pranic Breathing. He said that he would demonstrate, but that it may cause him to start coughing. I wondered why anyone would practice a breathing type that would cause coughing?

At the 2007 IDEA Conference, I began a test for O2/ CO2 output, but the test was suspended because the machine kept turning off due to my breathing rate of 6-7 breaths per minute. The tester stated that I had to breathe at least 10 breaths per minute to keep the machine on! I decided to abandon the test.

Manual Bodywork can also help stabilize body systems by assisting the parasympathetic system to resume control. Nevertheless, always consult a medical doctor before beginning or changing an exercise or treatment program, or when you have new symptoms.

Paul Svacina, BS, PE, LMT, has a BS in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M University and learned bodywork and health sciences in Europe and the United States, most recently at the Santa Barbara Body Therapy Institute, and with John Harris, Olympic therapist and coauthor of Fix Pain - Bodywork Protocols for Myofascial Pain Syndromes, explaining treatments for trigger points and sports injuries. Paul specializes in trigger point therapy, barefoot deep tissue massage, and myofascial release. For more information and resources about trigger point therapy, visit Paul Svacina’s websites at http://trisoma.com or http://santabarbarabodytherapy.com where you can buy the new book “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health”.

Our spiritual mind is the garden in our backyard with acres of diamond.

There are unlimited riches to be discovered within us, if our spiritual mind is fully centered and aligned.

In “Recovering The Soul”, Larry Dossey. M.D. said that the human mind exists somewhere in time and space in concert with the physical body, which opens it up to boundless opportunities:

“Suppose for the moment that we could show that the human mind is nonlocal; that it is ultimately independent of the physical brain and body, and that as a correlate it transcends time and space.This I believe would rank in importance far beyond anything ever discovered, past or present, about the human organism.

This discovery would strike a chord of hope about our inner nature that has been silenced in an age of science; it would stir a new vision of the human as triumphant over fresh and blood.

It would anchor the human spirit once again on the side of God instead of randomness, chance and decay. It would spur the human will to greatness instead of expediency and self service … And once again we might recover something that has been notably absent in our experience of late; the human soul.”

Despite its importance in our personal growth, our spiritual mind is often relegated to second fiddle when we are hopelessly conditioned by years of formal training in quantitative and analytical skill; all of which are left-brain dominant skills.

Our spiritual mind opens up a new paradigm for personal growth. It can potentially move us to a new dimension of possibilities that we otherwise would never encounter.

Think about many highly successful corporate executives, who are prompted by their spiritual mind to change course by doing communities services, pursuing spirituality, committing to nature preservation, etc. Success takes a different meaning for these executives who have all “been there, done that”.

The human spirit is our ultimate home.

All the tools that we acquired with our mind power will not make us a complete human being, if the human spirit is lacking. Our spiritual mind is the finest part of our mental faculty. It brings freedom from fear and pain, and gives purpose and meaning to our life.

We often start our career defining what we have known to be success, and work for it passionately years after years. Many of us reached varying degree of success in career and life, only to start rethinking what it all means. Many find that the success they have achieved does not satisfy the deeper yearning in their spiritual mind. Despite the financial and social success, we find ourselves insecure and unhappy. We realized that, without spiritual fulfillment, all our achievements become meaningless. If we are not successful as human beings, all the material success looks painfully shallow.

Too often, underlying the glamorous and successful life that we see in our society is personal misery that stems from an unfulfilled spiritual mind. And so, more and more people embarked on a journey of spiritual awareness, to develop the three powerful spiritual skills: A sense of wholeness and community, humility, and love.

Sense of Wholeness and Community

Our sense of wholeness and community empowers us with the recognition that we are part of something greater than ourselves - a relationship, a family, and a community. Our ability to act for a greater good of others enriches our spiritual mind and frees us from self-centeredness.

It is commonly observed that breakdown of cooperation occurs quickly in organizations where superiors are ‘only out for themselves’, and corporate policies don’t respect individual needs and concerns. Such environment only fosters disloyalty, apathy, and self-serving behaviors.

Humility

With humility, we realize that we are a small but integral part of something greater than our own small self. That is the key value that builds the belonging of people.

Humility seems to run contrary to a world where everyone is trained and encouraged to be the best. The word “humility” conjures the impression of weakness, meekness, lack of drive, and easily taken advantage of. It is hard to associate humility with personal power.

Humility is one of the most powerful qualities that arise from inner strength and health. We experience humility through a deep sense of awe when we participate in the birth of a child, gaze at the stars, experience the power of thunderstorm, or experience the awe and beauty of nature. These experiences strike a chord deeply with our spiritual mind.

I remember the younger days when I participated in school brass band performance, Chinese orchestra concert, and public choir performance, those are truly humbling experiences. The performers, crews, and the audience are all integral part of the whole experience that is transcendental. At the end of the performance, everyone leave the hall with a feeling of kinship with everyone there. There was no longer any need to feel more important than the next person. Everyone was part of the unique awe-inspiring experience.

Our sense of awe opens up our spirit of humility and nourishes our spiritual mind, making us a better human being.

Love

Love is shown in selfless giving, be it money, time, care, concerns, and attention. The more you love, the less fearful you become. The more you give, the more abundance you gain. Love and selfless giving release us from the limitation of our ego.

It is interesting to know how the nature of pain is related to love. Whenever we experience pain, whether physical or psychological, we experience a boundary or limit. Many people who suffer chronic pain, which medication or surgery can no longer help, learn to eliminate pain by visualizing and eliminating the boundary lines around the pain. Once the boundary is removed, the pain no longer exists. This is usually done by relaxation, concentration and imagery.

If we take this to a broader scale, our life suffers pain whenever there are limitations and boundary that we could not overcome, be it physically, emotionally or psychologically. These limitations are mostly created by our ego. And love is the powerful force that could break and dissolve all the limitations.

The more we empowered our spiritual mind, the more we are able to work on our ego to break these limitations, which is the essence of inner healing. This is the path to boundless and abundant living. This is what success is all about.

Jordan Cheng is the author of mind-power-for-success.com. Learn how to develop Success Skills to live a life of success, wealth and abundance.

The strategy is a carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal. Day Trading Forex Strategy is a thoroughly concocted system that can either make or break your money in the market.

With the daily transactions of almost $2 trillion daily, the market of Foreign Exchange is proved to bee the fastest opportunity to earn big money.

However, in spite of the scale size of the transactions daily, traders need to strategize carefully to be profitable. Else, the money your money will be thrown away.

Hitherto, there are three major Forex trading strategies that are being used by traders all over the world. If a trader comprehends the magnitude of these strategies and relates them to their decision-making and conviction then there’s a very big possibility that in a short period of time the trader will transform from a novice to a pro.

1. The Trader’s Trading System

Most Forex trends initiate from buying breakouts. Traders should trade longer terms. At the very least, you need to make three tests to make the breakout well founded.

Traders should also remember that good breakouts don’t swing by daily. But with patience you can be sure that chances will be in your side. It doesn’t really matter how often you trade, what matter is your trade is rational and effective.

2. The Trading Signal Confirmation

Trading signals are prominent indicators that assess price momentum and strengths. As a trader you would want for the momentum of the price to support breaks earlier before you make your trading decision.

3. Money Management

Even in everyday life, money management is important. As a trader one of the most important character you should possess it to be able to know when to stop and when to break away from the trend.

These are just three of the proven Forex trading strategy. There are a lot more and at the end of every transaction traders should acknowledge that the three main strategies in everything are to be disciplined, to have a level of understanding and to be confident. For more information and techniques you can visit sites of Forex Brotherhood and Forex Tracers.

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Nowadays, arranging money to buy a property until the existing property is sold is no more an issue. A commercial bridging loan is meant for a provision like this. Actually it is a kind of short term loan which one takes wisely to coordinate the sale of one property and the purchase of another property.

A commercial bridging loan is also termed as commercial bridging finance, as it plays its role between two transactions. This loan can be used either for commercial or for personal concern. In case of this commercial bridging loan, the borrower does not have to bear the burden of two mortgages at the same time.

The process of applying for a commercial bridging loan is hassle free and is just like that of a standard loan. What is greatly advisable is to work with an experienced lender who is already familiar with this type of loan. Sometimes it is too late to take a right move, so there must be an approval for this loan in advance which can put the purchaser of a property in a comfortable zone.

The most potential feature of this Commercial Bridging Loan is that the borrower has to pay only the interest on monthly basis. As far as the principal amount is concerned, its repayment is made when the property for sale is finally disposed off. These proceeds are used as a single payment to pay off the principal amount.

For the lender it is no way a risky affair, as the loan is given only against the collateral the borrower puts up as security. The security is generally in some property. All the same, the lender wants to be assured at all quarters, so the credit report of the borrower is analyzed along with a close review of his/her business or job whatever be. It is done for self-satisfaction in spite of the fact that even poor credit is no issue when something is mortgaged.

As far as the rate of interest on a commercial Bridging Loan is concerned, due to the fact that it is short- term, not more than two years, scope of the profit for the lender depends on the interest rate. The interest rate counts on various things like the existing interest rate, the level of risk and a premium whatsoever be. So there is a chance of considerably high rate of interest. However, if for any reason the property does not sell before the maturity period, make sure it will take the form of a conventional loan and no penalty will be charged.

Netloans Ltd, a leading Secured Loans Broker for UK Homeowners offering a debt consolidation loans service, bridging loans and homeowner loans for any purpose, ensuring that their customers get the best loan deal.

Despite the widespread agreement, some participants in the debate remained skeptical. Indeed, prescient commentators of that era ocProzac Market ocasionally expressed the fear that the interrelationships of stockprice changes are so complex that standard tools like these cannot reveal them. That fear led to efforts to dispute the model by designing trading rules that could achieve above-normal returns by uncovering and exploiting these greater complexities.

Among the most primitive though most illustrative trading rules was Sidney Alexander’s “filter technique.” This is a strategy designed to discern and exploit assumed trends in stockprices that, in Alexander’s piquant phrase, may be “masked by the jiggling of the market.”

For instance, a “5% filter rule” for a stockwould say to buy it when the price goes up 5% (and watch it rise to a higher peak); then sell it when the price goes down 5% from that peak(and watch it fall to a lower trough); then short the stock(i.e., borrow it and sell it at the prevailing price, promising to repay with the same stock, to be purchased for the price prevailing at the time of repayment); then, when the price rises 5% from that trough, cover the short position. If this works, you get a gain on the initial sale plus a gain on the short position. More important, if it works, prices are following a peak-trough pattern. That means they are not random and the random walkmodel is contradicted.

Alexander’s initial results indicated that such a technique could produce above-normal returns. Subsequent refinements of Alexander’s workby himself and others, including Fama, however, demonstrated that relaxing or changing certain assumptions eliminated the abnormal returns, particularly the original filter technique’s failure to note that dividends are a cost rather than a benefit when stocks are sold short.

Alexander’s filter technique epitomizes the chartist or technical approach to stockanalysis and trading, under which a study of past prices (or other data) is used as a basis for predicting future prices. Indeed, Alexander’s filter technique is a conceptual cousin of limit orders and similar techniques prevalent in securities trading today. These techniques include conventional technical methods that rely on anomaly effects (the insider, month, weekend, and analyst effects) as well as the more unconventional methods (the hemline indicator, the Super Bowl indicator, and so on).

These and related philosophies such as “momentum investing” and “sector rotation” remain staples of Wall Street futurology. They are widely and increasingly used by traders and recommended by investment advisers and brokers. They are nonsense, as many students of the random walkmodel (and EMT) recognize based on the foregoing analysis.

They are nonsense not because of EMT but because they fly in the face of business analysis. “We shall dismiss these with the observation that their workdoes not concern ‘investors’, the trouble with all these tests of the random walk is that they are linear. They do not investigate the presence of nonlinear price dependence, something that in the early 1960s researchers simply lacked the computer horsepower to do.

The trading rule test, for example, is linear in that it operates in chronological time (or real time). Neither it nor the other old tests consider the possibility that market time may be better understood from a perspective that is nonlinear. Einstein demonstrated that time is not absolute but works in dozens of different ways depending on the context, including forward (or linear), backward, circular, slow, and erratic (nonlinear), and can even stand still.

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So far we’ve briefly had a look at the core arguments put forward by the Alarmists - whose who support the theory of man-made global warming - and the Realists - those who, at the moment, don’t. However in Australia much of the support for the Alarmists’ point of view is based on distorted information, untruths and naked lies.

Australia at the mercy of Mother Nature

Of all the countries in the western world, Australia is the one that suffers most from the vagaries of the weather. Somewhere, at some time, part of the country is experiencing drought. Never, though, is the whole of country so affected at any one time. At the moment large parts of inland Australia on the Pacific side of the country are experiencing this problem whilst other areas are enjoying more favorable conditions.

Some people believe the present drought is the worst ever - it may be the worst in living memory, but it’s not the worst since European civilization started in 1788. The drought of 1895 to 1903 is considered to be the one that caused the most damage to the economy and life in general.

The Australian farming community accept drought as a fact of life. Since the 1860s when accurate statistics were first started to be used there has been 9 periods of major drought, excluding the current situation. In addition there has been 6 droughts of lesser intensity during this period.

During the periods of pre-European settlement, that is pre-1788, droughts were just as common. Examination of rings on trees and coral support this view. In fact evidence from coral taken off the Barrier Reef in north Queensland indicate a 20 year drought in that area from 1660 to 1680.

Drought is a constant part of Australian life

However, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that droughts are a regular feature of Australian life, the media still insists that the present drought is caused by global warming. Even the saner and more responsible parts of the press push the issue that Australia’s current predicament is being exacerbated by the government’s late signing of the Kyoto agreement.

Again more unsubstantiated nonsense from the people who are happiest when they’re dispelling doom and gloom.

Droughts in Australia are caused by the activity of the El Nino Southern Oscillation - ELSO - a complex weather pattern that influences climatic conditions throughout the Pacific region. This phenomenon only became apparent in the late 70s and although much more work needs to be done to understand its complexity, weather scientist are now able to determine the coming of droughts to Australia fairly accurately.

The average person is being duped

However, the average man in the street attributes changes in climatic conditions in Australia to the theory of global warming, rather than the more likely affect of the ELSO. Aided by the media who attribute every unusual circumstance to world-wide global warming, from the increase in bush-fires to the desalination problems of the River Murray to the decline in coral growth on the Great Barrier Reef, the public blindly follow what they’ve been told.

So successful are the Alarmists in Australia that 2 out of 3 people writing letters to the press and web sites support the concept of man-made global warming. In actual fact, Australia’s last Federal election, in November 2007, was won by the party most vigorous in supporting this theory. A gullible public were frightened into voting for a party that claimed to be able to play God.

As an indication of the untruths and down right lies coming from the Australian Alarmist camp, consider this gem - possibly taken from the Joseph Goebbels propaganda manual ‘How to Deceive the Public and get away with it’:

…but in 2007 our Prime Minister still finds it hard to accept the possible existence of a human driven climate change. - taken from home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html

So what this web site is saying is that the drought of 1895 to 1903 was caused by man’s industrial activity.

Quite plain and simple, it’s a gross lie. Unfortunately many believe it.

This is the fifth part of an attempt to put some balance into the ongoing international controversy that is the theory of man-made climate change.

Like most people, the author takes a keen interest in the world-wide controversy of climate change and global warming, and the alleged effect this will have on life on earth. He also takes an interest in more mundane issues such as how to lose weight and the increasing popularity of satellite TV.