Doom-saying newsprint headlines dematerialized while pessimistic leads went oddly volatile from news caches.

Events faded from human memory horizons – indeed, too, from Gaia’s.

All creatures paused an atomic heartbeat in vague unease, then, as if startled from a dream, resumed in tedium their virtual toil.

The surreal dreamscape of an unreal world persists – to allow this transient report – till dreams ascend, end, presents desist, and awareness leaches to void.

At 9.28am GMT, September 10, 2008, in a former reality – as two streams of protesting protons tore, deflected 27Km circular by the most powerful of supercooled magnets – an oscilloscopic double-trace brought unalloyed exultation to the virtual faces of dozens of science doyens pressed into an evanescent control center.

Euphoria, as do wave-fronts, spread, echoing elation to the ghost-like countenances of thousands of former beings on a non-existent globe, center of a distorting blane merely 8 minutes from an unconcerned star named Sol.

Prescient exchange

Forgotten in this throng of self-congratulation a prophetic exchange 25 years earlier between scientists from NYC’s Columbia University:

Dr. Egon Spengler: There’s something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

The blackhole tree tightly refutes risk from any renegade, matter-munching, mini black holes (pacman holes).

Should one not instantly evaporate, the algorithm asserts, or shoot from Earth’s proximity like its wild high-energy cousins, a duration much greater than the Universe’s age must transpire before it might expropriate the earthly mass from beneath our unwitting feet.

In unison, scientific intelligentsia piffled suggestions that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider risked human existence, as did predecessors that the first atomic detonation might ignite planetary atmosphere, or strangelets might transmute this earthly realm into another.

This eminent consensus ultimately rested on indisputable proofs supplied by a working universe, that such events go on endlessly without cataclysm on and within Earth, the moon, the sun, red giants, white dwarfs – and of course, in, on and around relatively static and indisputably real and rather larger black holes.

Only Here

Other, however, than on Earth would unlikely be found teams of human engineers, directed by postulating boffins, misdirecting the forces of nature … as they had ever since opposing thumbs dammed rivers, burned forests, combusted fossil fuels, or harnessed horses, if not nuclei.

Nowhere else in the universe had bridges, dams and burning World Trade Centers collapsed, or cryogenic inner-triplet focusing-quadrapole magnet supports broken during pressure testing in oversight of "very simple balance of forces" despite four engineering reviews.

Not to mention, so I do, had (from engineering oversight) planes, trains, cranes or cars collided or crashed on a scale elsewhere unseen, except upon this brownish little bluish planet.

Nature’s impersonal perverseness might smite civilizations or cruelly terminate lineages of creatures, yet only humans could both ensure and accelerate such chaos.

Nature supplied the raw ingredients for TNT yet man brought these together to blow himself up. Nature danced more protons within the smallest sun than humankind could ever imagine – yet only this arrogant ape chose to concentrate them in pipes to leap in glee at the collisions.

A naked ape that chose to spend 6 billion Euros over 2 decades on a project to selfishly preoccupy the most valuable intellects on Earth – while nations cried in misery and the planet wilted from environmental assault.

It chose to ignore a trillion dollars thrown at a war to nowhere in Iraq.

It plundered neighbors and their lands while breeding a human plague – staggering blind stupidity from which we shall never recover.

Whether it was yesterday, September 10, 2008, or some time further into the future, that we chanced in flukish fumbling a billionth-billionth possibility and managed to demolish it – or dully, slowly cook it – I will never know.

Dreams fade in memories volatile and something went wrong, that’s all I know.

How could we not have noticed?

It should take them only a decade to create the most prosperous and smart nation on the planet .. and leave us in their dust. How can it be that the smartest among us haven’t done it yet? Or have they?

She’s right. What is wrong with these people?

My ex-boss’ IQ well-exceeded 150 and I marveled at his tolerance, neither hiring more like-genii to take some load off,  nor treating me like the lap dog I was. Perhaps those practiced knowing looks and dry sarcasm kept him in check. I had cunning to fall back on, after all.

And precocious kids. No matter how brilliant the student, they aim no higher than military-industrial foot soldier and “hope to be a scientist.” Sigh. Even beauty pageant wannabes set the bar at world peace!

Science fiction authors have long toyed with scenarios of scientists forming communes of intellect.

Howard Fast’s “The First Men” painted an unlikely but ultimate outcome: his advanced society began as a military experiment that isolated itself just in time to survive the predictable reaction of a feeble-minded society – so often portrayed in film and novel – to destroy the advanced or mutated species as a survival threat to resident room-temperature plodders.

Fred Hoyle based Ossian’s Ride on off-planet interlopers sealing off some of Ireland, with much detail on security and organization. Herbie Wells smote us all with a comet to clear the planet of woe, while John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos – though alien and malevolently implanted – showed what a bunch of really smart kids (with supernatural abilities) might do.

But what if the smarties have done it already? Where the heck are they?

Have they created utopia but cunningly present as a failed state, like the rest of us. If so, can someone kindly blow the whistle?

Is it Iceland, New Zealand, Tasmania, Sweden, Monaco, Anguilla, Maui, Liechtenstein? The United States of America?

On that trail, why haven’t the world’s wealthy – who also are typically smarter – purchased, or simply invaded, a big fat tropical island and set up their own bank and government – eliminating taxes and controlling security?

While they like to hole-up in luxurious ghettos in quieter precincts of certain cities, that isn’t a plan, it’s a reflex.

My reader and I again plead:

Life is inevitably pain, sickness, death and decay.

Everything is touched by the shadow of dissatisfaction, imperfection, disillusion.

No one escapes.

Sound familiar? Not just my pathetic publisher on a good day. Not just any of us on our 50th birthday.

Simply the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, philosophy 101, lesson numero oono for every child when a parent dies –

You grow old. You die. Life Sucks

If you’re lucky, you don’t reach old age.

SheepOverboard is obsessed with life, the universe, and everything. Especially (and increasingly with age) the moment our bodies fail, launching a dismembering of mind, spirit and matter.

Left alive in this flickering moment we ponder dying or rotting flesh, shell of a person who was, such corpora delicti of life’s offence against itself that draws our bewildered incomprehension toward that dimly perceived and feared Transition, the doorway where time stops, where life’s experience is said to replay, where light claims the pure, burning darkness the fallen, where big bang merges with Omega – beyond the paradox of eternity.

Images of death circulate freely now on the net. We who don’t work with recently and violently deceased, who have not experienced the vileness of war, tend to be morbidly curious when confronted with starkly destroyed bodies.

Belief – suspended for carnage in horror flicks – returns with vengeance when the victim is real, playing a tortuous kaleidoscope of emotions on an area of mind normally tightly shut.

More sickening, however, our impunity to a vast community of less fortunate fellow beings who live close to death, in abject misery.

You feel strongly too, but don’t know what to do, right?

Well, that at least is the first step. Let the feeling grow inside and an opportunity to effectively help will present itself. The saint-like are out there helping, so don’t panic. The more you learn and think, the more effective your help will be when the moment arrives, and how you might help becomes suddenly obvious.

Reflect a little more here with this essay on our Gluttony.

At first it seems rather amazing – but then, maybe not. After all, you’ve seen enough movies to know something like r50rd exists .. surely!

Take one dotty old English engineering genius, Dr. Colin Mayhew, who built an awesome robot called "r50rd" as a sort of ‘skunk works’ in some back-blocks research facility of BMW’s Mini motor vehicle facility in England.

Then then witness an astonishing video of his robot in action.

His **cobbly old web site [see ** at bottom of this article] is exactly how one expects it to look, with some staggering videos of testing the robot, one of which evokes "oh come on, they can’t do that .. can they?"

Apart from the size and appearance of the thing – and the marvelous revving internal combustion engine powering it, roaring in anticipation of each robot IQ challenge – there is little you wouldn’t expect from eccentric Pommy genius. Nice touch, too, using that quaint British Land Rover, an icon that only Colin would be likely to drive. Probably needs it to negotiate the mud and cow shit surrounding the shed that lies detached, no doubt, near a picturesque manor in some estate not too far at all from a postcard English village.

My God! Robots can do that, already?? Searching eight-billion (decidedly) odd web pages for the words "r50rd" and "hoax" eventually leads you to someone who seems to know. Or do they?

That, you see, is the problem – finding truth on the Internet. You only need gather sufficient contra-evidentiary views on any web-based issue to decide if you are being had – but you never really can ever know. Life’s like that. Perhaps a web site, featuring graphics designer Jose Perez and a recent project of his, is ‘evidence’ enough?

But wait, there’s more. This next link might be part of the joke, part of a "viral marketing" hoax, leading you on to intended destinations of unknown machinations. Regulars of Michael Walls’ webzine probably consider this the final word, the ultimate assessment and not just another convoluted carrot. Are all these people in on the hoax? Let’s face it. It’s a grand publicist’s marketing scheme, working a treat.

Yet you must admit the Internet would be a little duller with out such mischief. Like April 1 without a prank.

We veteran denizens at SheepOverboard find research on these issues uproariously uplifting, a jolly good time being had by all. Rarely, in all the smoky, dingy, poorly-lit chat rooms and forums awash with kiboshing and kibosh, have we found ourselves genuinely delighted, cackling aloud, at the button-pressing and mischief on this Museum of Hoaxes banter debating r50rd’s viability, or verity.

"The Land rover was actually the fake" or "I disconnect my Chevy’s battery every night just to be sure it doesn’t try anything FUNNY while I sleep!" And more: "12 years of Sunday school and 6 years of boarding school turned me into a bipedal robot concerned only with the endless consumption of (low octane) beer and crap electronics, I can’t deny the possibility of this godly mini-me."

All interspersed with genuinely indignant disbelief that the leg-pullers are that gullible.

** Sadly, all of the links in this article are subject to "link rot" as this delightful little chapter in the Internet’s history fades away. Fortunately, you may still view vestiges of the hoax at: The ghost of Colin’s ‘cobbly old website’ at the blessed www.archive.org

Which only makes us wonder why the originators of this deliciously clever hoax would ever kill the original www. r50rd.co.uk website.

Dr. Larc Nagas, Special Director of SETI’s Forward-planning Committee, today proposed a radical agenda to modify the search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

He proposed Earth be included in the search for intelligent life.

There seems to be bugger all up there in space” he snarled, inverting the hook of Idle’s Galaxy Song.

However, amongst the plague-like, inbred, hedonist gluttony smothering this once pristine globe there might be the odd bipedal upright who places beauty and sanctity of life before compulsive acquisitiveness or incessant primal ingratiation.”

The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit organization. Its mission: “explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe”

Dr. Nagas is concerned SETI’s reputation suffers from both the ongoing debate about ‘hard science’ and lack of results.

We downgrade expectations from millions – to how many? – advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.”

We counter SETI lacks Popperian criteria for falsifiability, or even if the Drake equation was ever testable.

Finally, the laughable claims against active SETI of a Borg encounter or Independence Day scenario – I can assure you Earth is at far greater risk from the return of that mutated Voyager than any science-fiction concoction.

Active SETI is criticized for revealing Earth’s location to alien civilizations.

SETI proponents sarcastically explain Earth is easily found by any civilization with telescopes and cosmologists.

And should they decide to check it out, they will find it pretty-well written off by 6 billion fuckwits.”

While scientists seem wary of Dr. Nagas’ claims, governments are anxious to be seen supporting the campaign.

FORT JACKSON ~ Brigadier General Bradley "Hummer" Abrams, one of the nation’s leading military trainers, believes not.

The U.S. armed forces don’t need any ‘dumbing down’, as you call it. Our fine American educational system is proving its worth. We have no trouble recruiting capable intelligent young people who we train to a level that leaves no room for downward moves.

Image: Virtual reality-trained field specialists exhibit flocking behavior under full reality.

The depth of training hasn’t changed, only the equipment. Fifty years ago a soldier had less technology so was trained exhaustively on maintaining and assembling what today is taken care of by vendor just-in-time logistics" the General explained.

Today’s military personnel have a wider range of equipment but simply don’t need to know the workings in depth – similar to the civilian workplace. The learning curve is largely eliminated by weaponry’s advanced design, battle-hardening, and refined combat handling – facilitated by the manufacturer.

With specialist contractors supplying primed weaponry almost literally into the serviceman’s hands, maintenance and complexity are basically outsourced. Our fighting people just get on with the job!"

Image: "Disembarkment deaths" blamed on excessive simulator training. Combatants inadvertently alight from moving vehicles or aircraft for coffee or a bathroom visit.

Professor Tonsur E.G. Glabrate of the Center for Army Lessons Lost (CALL) strongly disagrees.

His study of technological impact upon basic training in the armed forces indicates a learning curve too steep for traditional recruiter demographics.

We have an unbalanced armed forces. The flood of technology and rapid swing to new training regimes has introduced organizational stresses that are not fully understood.

A gap has opened in ranks between GI’s and specialists, who are now seen as geeks and not real soldiers. Traditionally "us and them" attitudes were between grunts and officers, with some leakage towards supply or admin" Professor Glabrate said.

How quickly we forget the lessons of the past! For example, during the Vietnam war Project 100,000 degraded the once-fine American army to a state not unlike that depicted by the films Apocalypse Now and Casualties of War – epidemic insubordination, indiscipline, drugs, racism, and ‘fragging,’ the murder of officers.

[In 1966 Secretary of Deafens Robert McNamara allowed the army to lower its recruitment test pass mark to ten percent and allow applicants entry with Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of sixty two or higher (IQ=100 is the defined average smarts). An IQ of "room temperature" is typically afforded jugs and toasters~ Ed]

This technology rush and classroom-learning emphasis is being pushed by vendors to make sales, yet flies clean over the heads of low-echelon musterings.

Image: Commanders may find themselves leading one-man charges if under-accessorized grunts fear enemy ridicule and fashion taunts.

Professor Glabrate offered SheepOverboard.com evidence of dangerous or flawed training methodologies from his research, the findings summarized in captions accompanying photographs in this article.

Veteran military trainers have derided Professor Glabrate as provocative and discriminatory, saying the his language implies academic isolation and cultural bias, while others consider him blatantly ignorant of training procedures and methodology.

Image:
Excessive and intense cyber training on computer-controlled armaments induces the very rare Group Asperger’s Syndrome.

They point to centuries-honed techniques, demonstrated abilities and proven skills at instilling discipline and etiquette in trained killers.

In a final broadside, Professor Glabrate produced psychological assessments revealing an alarming range of syndromes, many till now mere psychiatric hypotheses.

We observed the emergence of truly bizarre symptoms, like hybrids of paranoia, autism, sociopathic, and schizoid, behavior.

Such predilections are quite startling," Prof. Glabrate continued. "If researchers seek subjects for sociopathic or genocidal behavior studies, they choose either military training camps or penitentiaries. But these emergent syndromes are the stuff of criminal insanity at best and science fiction horror at worst."

Image: PackBot might provide tactical gains to modern fast-moving armies, but battles are being lost while soldiers attend field classes on PackBot operation and maintenance.

Now, with intensive virtual reality (VR) simulations, and heavy bias toward academia and technology, we find recruits exhibiting severe disorders previously found only amongst infants with congenital or developmental behavioral disease or elementary school-age children with learning and social disorders induced by chronic television and computer gaming overdose.

This is a frightening new development in military training outcomes!"

These are simple boys who just want to shoot guns."

             ——————–

SheepOverboard.com was privileged to look in on one of the army’s new learning schema based on methodologies developed at the respected think tank RTI International.

Reproduced below is an outline of the approach now taken by the armed forces that gives new meaning to what some describe as "unorthodox activities" undertaken in the nation’s military boot camps.

Strategies for Lifelong Learning

The U.S. Army has transformed its focused schoolhouse training to a lifelong learning approach, supporting this change by developing training technologies and modules to complement lifelong learning.

Based on a plan developed with the help of RTI, the U.S. Army Signal Center is focusing its institutional training on basic principles and initial assignment training.

Image: Combatants risk defeat when, in the heat of battle, munitions vehicles are found laden with folding seats, whiteboards and markers. Mass tutorials and tactical briefings ensue as the enemy approaches.

This means that soldiers get to their first assignment much more quickly and they have focused and intensive training on the tasks at hand. The Signal Center is using distributed simulations to provide additional just-in-time training for soldiers changing assignments.

Helping the Army justify the investment in this change is identifying the long-term cost savings that are now being realized.

This lifelong learning approach, which was adopted by the Army Senior Leaders Conference at the Association of the United States Army in January 2002, emphasizes four enablers:

• Web-delivered simulations — a form of immersive learning by doing that allows soldiers to acquire and practice skills in interactive 3D simulations that can run stand-alone on standard personal computers. Units in the field in Iraq, Korea, and Europe are also using these simulations for sustainment training and new personnel training

• Resource centers — provide support to distant learners from help desk IT personnel and subject matter experts, which is essential for eliminating barriers to learning

• Assignment-oriented training — allows soldiers to focus on training for their first assignment and get into the field faster and with fresher skills

• Virtual campuses — provide front-line support to soldiers and instructors.

All changes to working systems draw fire from seasoned veterans. The new school of thought to run the US Military on a modern business footing has attracted scrutiny from some of the sharpest minds in the system.

Illustrating this delightfully was a brough-ha in 2002 during a war game termed "Millennium Challenge 02" whereby Blue’s fleet had to be refloated after Red team outsmarted it – ‘it’ being USA’s entire virtual effort in this scenario.

The issue was covered nicely by Army Times article which began:

The most elaborate war game the U.S. military has ever held was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing, according to the retired Marine lieutenant general who commanded the game’s Opposing Force.

That general, Paul Van Riper, said he worries the United States will send troops into combat using doctrine and weapons systems based on false conclusions from the recently concluded Millennium Challenge 02. He was so frustrated with the rigged exercise that he said he quit midway through the game.

Van Riper .. was highly critical of the command’s concepts, such as “effects-based operations” and “rapid, decisive operations,” which he derided as little more than “slogans.”

Van Riper on Joint Forces Command:

There’s very little intellectual activity .. What happens is a number of people are put into a room, given some sort of a slogan and told to write to the slogan. That’s not the way to generate new ideas.”

There ought to be more open debate over the new concepts, Van Riper said. He had told command officials repeatedly that they should vet new concepts with a process similar to that used in academia, in which:

… people have to present papers and defend their papers.

In the process, good ideas stand the test of the cauldron they’re put in, and come forth, and the ones that aren’t so good get killed off.

I haven’t seen anything killed off down there [at Joint Forces Command]. They just keep generating.”

Needless to say, the grunts are puzzled.

Sure, it’s no laughing matter, especially at SheepOverboard press room where aging journos eye each other with increasing distress, if not incomprehension. Serious advice included below!

VIENNA July 13, 2005  ~   In a shock joint announcement scientists declared total populations of U.S. and Europe – and possibly all Western-style democracies (ie: societies based on takeaway food and videos) could be considered ‘Alzheimic’ (the spokesperson was not sure if that is a real word).

Devastated researchers conceded their approach was seriously compromised by an undergrad thesis which, to put it bluntly, stated the bleedin’ obvious.

It was a huge blind spot in our methodology! That student drove an eighteen-wheeler through our constructs" cried one.

I can’t believe it", confided another. " To miss something so obvious – like, it’s common sense and the procedures don’t cover that. I can’t see any explanation other than brain fade."

With the exception of a ‘greater than expected percentile’ of delegates not certain why the press conference was called, they agreed Alzheimer’s symptoms "presented" in pretty well the entire population of all non-Muslim countries.

Further research was needed to confirm that frontal lobe dementia, often mistaken for Alzheimer’s, was responsible for personality instability in significant other groups – typically politicians, actors and musicians.

Symptoms of Alzheimer’s as published by US NIH’s ADEAR web site (which disconcertingly repeats the points twice on the same page, at least according to some bilingual readers) are reproduced below, with this reporter’s distressing, personal verifications (in parneths.. err thingys).

Seven Warnings of Alzheimer’s

.. and the disturbing hints that we all have it.

1. Asking the same question over and over again.
(Television journalists do that – and spouses, children, bosses, police interviews, … yikes!)

2. Repeating the same story, word for word, again and again.
(Syndicated news services, regional newsrooms, ‘by-line’ columnists, 99% of web sites)

3. Forgetting how to cook, or how to make repairs, or how to play cards — activities that were previously done with ease and regularity.
(I found this hard to answer – then it struck me, I never could do any of these)

4. Losing one’s ability to pay bills or balance one’s checkbook.
(Suffered by at least ONE member of EVERY partnership, sometimes both inversely. Develops rapidly upon formalizing relationship. ie: "moving in")

5. Getting lost in familiar surroundings, or misplacing household objects.
(True also, yet no longer have a house due to #4 above)

6. Neglecting to bathe, or wearing the same clothes over and over again, while insisting that they have taken a bath or that their clothes are still clean.
(Entire male population under age 95 – Duh!)

7. Relying on someone else, such as a spouse, to make decisions or answer questions they previously would have handled themselves.
(See #4 above)

But seriously folks

It’s no fun tending a distressingly afflicted mum or dad. There is hope and simple effective advice about diet and activities shown to protect us from this sad (and 50% likely) fate.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports Dr. Joe Verghese and colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx studied "469 subjects older than 75 years of age who resided in the community and did not have dementia at base line."

They startlingly and delightfully concluded: "Participation in leisure activities is associated with a reduced risk of dementia (even after adjustment for base-line cognitive status and after the exclusion of subjects with possible preclinical dementia)."

More precisely, old-timers who played mind puzzles – writing, chess, reading, cards, etc., and especially playing a musical instrument – had a 63% lower risk of developing dementia compared with people who said they hardly ever played .."

And playing harder created better results, eg: "seniors who did crossword puzzles four days a week had a 47% lower risk of dementia than those who did the puzzles once a week," though "doing crossword puzzles showed a trend towards reduced risk but the association wasn’t significant according to our analysis" – which illustrates the traps of drawing conclusions based on assumptions.

The simple lesson summarized: " .. if you exercise your brain then you are also resistant to the effects of dementing illnesses such as Alzheimer’s."

Why? How?

The jury, as usual with research, is nearly always out. However, mulling over the theories could protect quiet a few doddering geriatrics from premature intellectual atrophy. So, Ma, Pa, put your brain into gear and your teeth back in and get ‘em stuck into this:

.. there’s .. two possible explanations, probably even more, .. for our finding.

One is to do with something called a cognitive reserve theory, which is that by engaging in these activities you’re building a buffer or a reserve in the brain by increasing the connections between the cells or promoting new cell growth ..

.. when you do get the disease, you’re resistant to the effects of the disease for a few more years. Then you only manifest the disease say three or four years later. (the study ran a median 5.1 years – presumably per person)

The other .. could be that the brain is plastic and if you challenge .. and stress the brain by these mental activities you lay down new connections and even .. promote growth of new cells in areas which are affected by Alzheimer’s disease.

What can YOU do right NOW?

Alzheimer’s is a serious condition nearing pandemic stages, and you cannot afford to waste time whatever age you are.
Though Alzheimer’s is a slow-growing disorder, by the time the sufferer or family admits the memory lapses are not ‘normal’ it’s usually late, and if it’s Alzheimer’s – EVEN if it is NOT, you don’t have a moment to spare.

Right now, before anymore research is in, go to your health food store and buy a bottle of DHA – and some alpha-lipoic acid capsules. ALA is the most powerful of antioxidants. a bonus. Why not consume DHA from its natural sources? You can, but …

The human brain absorbs DHA rapidly, hence a constant supply is critical for proper cognitive function, eye development and mental tasks. DHA helps keep the brain membrane fluid, moves proteins and helps to convert signals from other parts of the body into action.

Natural sources of DHA include cold water fish – salmon, halibut, mackerel, sardines and herring. They consume algae, which is high in DHA, but their " oiliness" makes them absorb more mercury, dioxin, PCP and other metals which are increasingly in abundance in their feeding grounds with the advance of industrial processes.
Therefore a less risky yet more costly strategy is to consume fish oil or purified DHA supplements made from algae, or perhaps DHA-rich eggs laid by chickens fed on DHA-supplemented feed.

• Research published in Neuron by neuroscientists at UCLA announced that DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), an omega-3 fatty acid, holds Alzheimer’s at bay in mice. They induced Alzheimer’s in several groups of lab mice to the point where they had brain lesions. Half those mice then got a DHA-deficient diet for 5 months. The other half got plenty of DHA. Then they put the mice into a tank of water and trained them to swim to a raised platform in it to rest on, then submerged the platform of sight so the mice had to remember its location. The DHA-fed mice usually located it with no trouble. But the DHA-deprived mice, more often than not, couldn’t find it at all! They swam in circles at the edge of the tank, says a co-author of the study.
• In collaborative studies at German universities in Hannover, Wurzburg, and Leipzig, researchers gave 600 mg a day of ALA (alpha-lipoic acid) to 9 human subjects (average age, 67) with Alzheimer’s. After 337 days none of the patients showed any decline using the standard MMSE and the cognitive subscale ADASCog (Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale).
• Normal youthful brains have ‘healthy’ quantities of neurotransmitter acetylcholine, but in Alzheimer’s that acetylcholine declines and gets broken down rapidly by an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase (AChE).  Almost TWENTY YEARS AGO a research team found that Huperzine-A, an extract of the ancient Chinese herb Huperzia serrata, easily goes through the blood-brain barrier and stops AChE from destroying your precious acetylcholine. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind study they discovered that 58% of Alzheimer’s-patient subjects had a ‘significant improvement in cognitive and memory function’ taking 0.2 mg of Huperzine a day.
• Some bulb flowers flowers contain galantamine that stops Alzheimer’s by boosting acetylcholine. A 5-part study in Belgium indicated Alzheimer’s patients taking galantamine lost none of their mental abilities, while the control subjects given placebos deteriorated. In another study, doctors at the Helsinki University Central Hospital in Finland started giving 24 mg of galantamine to 359 of 537 Alzheimer’s patients each day (the rest got placebos). After 6 months, the placebo group was allowed to switch to galantamine.

Ovine Rights protest PETA Mulesing mauling

MUDGEE ~ Australian branch of Ovine International expressed alarm at PETA’s campaign against sheep Mulesing.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have the Australian sheep industry on notice to eliminate Mulesing by 2010, a deadline the industry will find difficult due both to entrenched farm practices among the 70,000 graziers who lack easy alternatives and painfully slow progress in genetic research.

Sheep fear loss of livelihood or mass unemployment and resent the gross infringement of their ovine rights, denial of religious expression, and even fashion freedom.

PETA’s campaign has international retailers boycotting wool – Abercrombie and Fitch, J. Crew in London, and New Look in New York – driven by an international campaign against Australian wool with a series of enormous billboards in Manhattan showing graphic images of a Mulesed sheep with the words: “Did your sweater cause a bloody butt? Boycott Australian wool.”

Shearer explodes

SheepOverboard’s ovine correspondent Ewen Shearer was ropable:

It’s our bloodied crutches that got those slick Italian Woolmark suits into upmarket New York salons” exclaimed outspoken bellwether (and SheepOverboard Ovine correspondent) Ewen Shearer. “Like denying Jews or Muslims circumcision, or forcing human sex professionals to work with their breech unshaven, this is an outrageous assault against world’s most populous animal minority.”

Like scrapie, pain is in the eye of the beholder. Just as you never hear a man claim his life was ruined by the trauma of willy-snipping (‘circumcision,’ also done without anesthetic – Ed), neither are ovines hapless victims of animal cruelty in this department. Far from it, PETA!”

Temple Grantin (Animal Science, Colorado State U.) claims sheep as prey species hide injury and pain for survival. Anecdotal science, I would suggest. Of course we feel the pain, but it doesn’t cause distress – it’s in our breeding. Some humans have discovered pain management and many holy men demonstrate it – as have medical specialists, with self-hypnosis controlling pain during conscious surgery sans analgesic. ”

The only downside of Mulesing is the unfortunate accident of history in the originator’s name, with consequent stigma of a cherished sheep ritual seemingly linked in some arcane way with sterile horses.” Shearer said.

“It’s every hogget’s right, and desire, to be seen bare-breeched -swine are born that way! And those ridiculous PETA billboards of blood-soaked mutton butts. Most ewes in lambing consider it a badge of honor!”

(Shearer, I’m sad to report, degenerated into a frothing invective rarely seen in such a seasoned and veteran scribbler. Further outspokenness has been withheld to protect sensitivities of more gentile readers – Ed.)

Australian graziers are between a rock (Uluru) and a hard place (New York). Falling wool prices and a shortage of value-added processing capital threatens to collapse the fleece demand precipitously, reducing the Australian wool industry, which dominated the world market for nearly a century, to a mere boutique affair.

Professor Phil B. Hynde from Animal Science at South Australia’s Adelaide University is working on a solution that uses the sheep’s own enzymes to produce a permanent wool removal solution. “We know a protein that works (a sheep’s enzyme), it’s painless, it replicates Mulesing, it’s cheap, … and we’re working with Australian Wool Innovation and some engineering companies .. for a method to .. quickly, effectively, and safely, apply the product.”

Calkookara miracle

Hope arises from a little-known Ovine sect on Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. Practicing genetic selection through decades of carefully prearranged marriages, the sect claims natural Mulesing – to the envy of fashion studs world-wide.

“The Calcookara Sect has managed the equivalent of perfect ageless buttocks in humans. Imagine being a woman who never needing surgery because your breasts were perfect, while all others could only attain them through dangerous painful surgery, practiced by people with no medical or veterinary qualifications,” elucidated Ewen Shearer.

“Or, to ram the point home, imagine being born with the perfect, non-sagging buttocks – a natural genetically-acquired fashion accessory!”

The process of Mulesing came about because blowflies are attracted to the faeces and urine that accumulate in the folds of skin on a sheep’s backside – skin folds bred into sheep to increase wool-producing capacity. This mutation has not only removed the wool in the bunghole region but also the excess skin. In the Calcookara Stud all the skin under the tail is tight with no excess wrinkles or skin folds.

“They are perfect. We call them the ‘Bunghole Crutch sect,’ ” Ewen exclaimed.

Shearer hinted at Ovine Rights International countering PETA’s lambaste of Australian Wool, which was considered a a petulant and ill-informed swipe at Ovines in particular and ruminants in general.

Firstly, we will ask the the leading question: ‘Where are the animal rights people with 90% of the world’s humans living in poverty and more than half of these living an interminably miserable, hopeless, and many times fearful, existence?’ ”

Second, have PETA and ilk noticed 99% of farm animals, pets, circus creatures and laboratory volunteers enjoy lives of absolute luxury, the animal-equivalent of a human in a Hilton penthouse?? ”

Third, do they (animal liberationists) want centuries of animal sacrifice negated? It’s our (non-human) prime directive to lay our sad lives, limbs, fins and feathers on the line, and our sad little room-temperature intellects, so that human living standards might excel. Why? Obviously, as human health and well-being improves so does ours. Duh!”

“Haven’t the animal welfare protagonists missed the obvious? In societies with enhanced well-being and high living standards (based largely on animal research), huge benefits flow to sub-species. Farming, circus, research and companion taxonomies in such countries enjoy a comfort zone envied by 70% of humans – those living in deprived regions. ”

Our anti-PETA campaign, not to give too much away, will highlight humans abusing humans. “

“Our covert activists have amassed enough compelling images in this area to blow PETA out of the whale-infested water. ”

Merino Woman

“A truly ironic example, one tiny facet of humanity’s inhumanity, involved the Mulesing of a human female dubbed ‘Merino Lady’ that shocked the Ovine world. “

PETA’s hypocrisy is exposed in the harsh light of such disgraceful treatment of humans, so why are they on about sheep? ”

Pampered celebrity circus animals have long sniggered at the human freak shows dragging sorry asses (literally) around the country. Groomed and nutritiously-maintained pets are frequently nauseated by culinary and sexual appetites of their masters. Laboratory volunteers are sickened at research workplace harassment of junior technicians by domineering scientists or administrators .. the list is endless.”

We want PETA to explain to us – before destroying our livelihoods and that of our symbiotes, the graziers – that this ill-conceived and ill-informed campaign of spite has exactly WHAT to do about the ‘human’ problem? ”

What about human trafficking, asylum-seekers, refugees, child soldiers, police and army torture, child pornography, sex slavery, live organ theft, the death penalty, war criminals, state-sanctioned kidnapping and renditioning, overflowing human jails, the weapons trade, drug trade, illicit diamond trade, piracy upon the high seas, violence against women, children’s rights, human fetal abortion, prisoners of conscience, racial profiling, religious hatred and intolerance, state-supported terrorism and warlords, pollution, global warming, wars over territory, wars in general … I’m just getting started!”

Shearer fired a final salvo:

Ignoring the human condition suggests unresolved personal issues among animal liberationists who, it might seem, still suffer the trauma of fairy-tale childhoods shattered by adulthood. Repelled by the horrors of humanity out of control they take the easy way, attacking commerce instead of crime, ignoring the great human social issues of our time with this trivial diversion.”

Are they agent-provocateurs, perhaps of governments or vested interests, employed to distract the populace from inequities in the human world? Surely they can see animals comprising companion, entertainment and consumer support for human society enjoy protective benefits concomitant upon contractual symbiosis?”

If you must ignore human tragedy by dabbling with non-sentients, save endangered species – don’t dump on our parade!”

He favors a radical concept of ‘metabolic biomagnification’ to explain sudden lapses in judgment leading larger ocean mammals into harm’s way

The current fad suits whale researchers trying to make a name for themselves by taking a popular idea, like blaming high-powered naval sonars.

The evidence is anecdotal but numerous incidents involving navy ships and whales indicate whales of both sex are really attracted – not confused – by the sonar, some trying to mate with smaller ships.

Dr. Mobey was equally scathing of the hype surrounding whale, orca and dolphin deaths, likening it to "’animal alien mutilation theories."

During interview  for this SheepOverboard in-depth report, the good whale doctor took the opportunity to snipe at some members of International Whaling Commission.

It is just so much nonsense. To a hungry Japanese villager a beached whale is just a big fish to be eaten. Whales dying on the world’s beaches are an order of magnitude greater than the number killed for science by Japanese whalers.

Japanese communities traditionally enjoy communal feasts when whales beach. They deny having coaxed whales toward shore with artificial swarms of krill made with origami and karaokes modified to simulate the sounds of open sea.

Chemical connection

Dr. Mobey announced evidence that "chemical tides" of drug cocktails were responsible for the large number of bizarre and inexplicable deaths in recent years. Toxins and drugs take months to build up in the blubber, a process analogous to biomagnification in the food chain.

When cetaceans need to draw on their energy reserves a catastrophic release takes place and large amounts of toxins and drugs are released into the bloodstream causing confused and abberated behavior.

Hence the lack of obvious pattern in where and why they become stranded. Large distances might be covered before toxins release from blubber, eliciting an intoxication incident.

These extremely intelligent, highly-capable and seemingly invincible animals suddenly behave irrationally (from our viewpoint) and make gross errors of judgment. If rescue succeeds they frequently continue to exhibit illogical behavior.

The chemical tides originate in industrial estuaries and stretch for hundreds of kilometers along coastlines coinciding with whale migration routes. Collaborative research from fisheries departments in heavily industrialized countries support the whale-drug theory.

SheepOverboard’s investigation uncovered fisheries department staff with access to bizarre research findings. We were told, off the record:

Several prominent fisheries researchers in Australia, New Zealand and America are scrutinizing anomalous behavior in commercial coastal fish species near large cities.

Tagged and monitored fish exhibit peculiar motion and atypical life signs during periods coincident with but lagging by 4-6 hours the traditional office hours, the deviance indiscernible at night and weekends.

‘Coffee spike’

Dr. Mobey admitted knowledge of the research, adding a colleague in the NSW (Australia) Fisheries Department has tagged this "the coffee spike".

That coastline has three major metropolitan centers. The researcher “followed the chemicals” directly to, he says, the urinals of commerce. Highly caffeinated urine in massive quantities flows in recordable daily and weekly cycles and, unaffected by sewerage filtration, pours into the ocean in significant quantities.

Whale sleep function, the theory posits, is severely disrupted by pure caffeine ingestion in coastal areas of such high concentration.

Cetaceans, being conscious breathers, are believed to sleep half-brain at a time to avoid drowning.

The books are wide open on insomniac whales", Dick Mobey claimed, with a mischievous smile.

Sleep deprivation in mammals is, universally amongst species, conducive to hallucination, confusion and incapacitation".

Two component studies, to complete the theory, are being finalized: the ingestion mechanism and the long delay for whales beached in remote regions.

Whales’ benthic feeding habits satisfy the first while the second is accounted for by the metabolic magnification-release mechanism.

Our coastal seas are a chemical cocktail of unknown extent.

Many substances, such as Naringin, can extend the half-life of caffeine. Others might enhance its effect – all this on the brain of a creature unaccustomed to mind-altering substances and performance-enhancing drugs, Dick Mobey concluded.

CANBERRA, Australia – Not satisfied playing deputy sheriff to the US in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and entranced by sycophantic masochism of an endless string of luminary leaders, Australians fell over themselves for the privilege of mass screwing by US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) under a free trade agreement (FTA) with the Americans.

In obscenely undignified haste, like drought-stricken sheep wrestling bales of alfalfa from graziers, the national throng cheerfully dismissed advice from experts, advisors, study groups, and former nation-state victims, to fall smitten, nay, prone, before the US in an ingratiating begging and pleading for an FTA servicing, here and now!

Analysis and reason lost amid deafening braes of leading Statespersons in a political landscape barren as any red-soil sheep station four-years into a dry spell, common sense and intellectual rigor rare as rain, debate and discussion flat and featureless as the dry dusty landscape.

It is no coincidence Canberra was once a sheep station.

Despite Canadian warnings that the US would flout agreements then litigate Australians into submission, despite ominous sacrifice of the entire Australian sugar industry – in mere show of good faith to the Americans! – the Australian Government spun ephemeral and waxed nauseating on benefits. Not unlike a shed full of bereft wool weavers in a shearers’ strike.

Merit elusive yet loudly brandished – as might a swaggering shanty-town kid proudly bearing Coca Cola purchased with his last Peso – Australia’s small-minded, narrow-thinking, short-sighted, and heavily-and-successfully lobbied politicos aggrandized themselves as economic warriors bringing home the hog-tied United States mammoth. Oddly unaware it was dragging them to the dinner table.

To the resounding din of apathy – the entire Australian population distracted by a feeding frenzy of consumer electronics and reality TV, and the entire nation’s press asleep at the wheel by direction of corporate editorial policy – the country’s leaders wheeled in the US Trojan-trade Horse: aka notorious Chapter 17 Intellectual Property, copyright extension, Digital Management Rights (DRM) and, of course (well, kick me while I’m down, take my last dollar and throw me overboard) Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). [1]

One could be forgiven for lapsing into .. umm, sarcasm, poor judgment, swimming against the tide, seeing deceit where others see benefit, imagining not a Free Trade Agreement with America but a tiny foolish nation succumbing to covert economic imperialism, a bunch of tin pans trading nuggets for weevily flour, natives bartering their children’s heritage for peppercorns (“Amazing, Dubya, they still fall for that one!”). One might, in confusion, wonder how America manipulates or coerces vibrant independent states into domination by aggressive, litigious, pervasive and mortally overwhelming trade suicide.

Is that Admiral Perry’s gunboat anchored off Sydney’s Opera House? .. no, just Chapter 17, I believe.

The damage?

As mere prelude (the sugar industry no more than an appetizer), Australian copyright just yesterday was 50 years from an author’s death. Today, effectively, 100 years (70 plus..). New AND existing works, retrospectively (bugger your business planning). Dead authors’ benefit? Zilch. Existing copyright owners – a windfall. And the intellectual, cultural and innovative incentive is …?

Then, Digital Rights Management (DRM) potentially dwarfs the manufacturing, agricultural and mining profits already bleeding from American subsidiaries in Australia. While Chapter 17 of the AUS-FTA bites, an immense imbalance of trade looms as Australia wallows in its self-imposed, third-world, hole-in-the-ground (coal, ores, gas) economy in the face of an approaching cyber age.

In software, DVDs, Internet databases, MP3s, and digital television, Australians now lapse into vice-like control of information and media with ‘single-play’, ‘single-copy’ ‘broadcast flags,’ extending to rigid manufacturing restrictions on hardware (players, recorders, televisions) enforced by DMCA and US laws.

Australian autonomy, whereby lawmakers and their advisors had previously determined no case for strengthening anti-circumvention laws on digital technology, is now swept away – along with the major intellectual right of ‘fair dealing. Perhaps ‘Fair-use‘ is next?

Delighted American content producers now totally control another region of the world in a tactic of segmenting markets to eliminate competition.

Modify your DMCA-licensed Internet-visible equipment to usurp digital rights management (DRM) and the summons flashes to you inbox – say, because your nine year old daughter clicked vagrantly, if not unknowingly or unintentionally downloading,  from an RIAA honey-pot. No judge, no jury, no show cause. You’re guilty on the spot.

Australians delight in relinquishing power and control of their national treasures by fervently selling infrastructure to global corporations (after a mere whisper of the suggestion in the ears of some greedy, weak-minded politician), and relish losing ownership of every public asset that isn’t bolted down to assist enhancement of the fortunes of the already fortunate.

Over several years of dark comedy the nation’s flagship and publicly-owned telecommunications – key to future (common-)wealth – suffers a war of attrition from government verbal and legislative assassins, to reduce its value so that “the people” might have the pleasure of giving it away to the lowest global bidder. After a few years (it will only take a few) of the new commercial owners pandering to metro profits and gutting technical operations, I foresee the government forced to invest the people’s money in national telco infrastructure once more. No doubt in prelude to giving it all away, yet again.

The most electorally-popular government since Silver-tongue Menzies ( Pig-iron Bob, to others) has rolled to US lobbyists revealing its soft morally-feeble core, as the obsessive trade relaxations of the past decade undo hard-won struggle and progress of its 200-year history.

In one final, fell, mindless, inexplicable, swoop the cornerstones of Australia’s balanced regulatory systems – quarantine regulations, medicines, government procurement, and intellectual property rights (and the entirety of industries that flow from them) – have been thrust weaponless into the coliseum to face the trade equivalent of Jabba the Hut’s Rancor.

Australia’s prized Pharmaceutical Benefits, that with Medicare distinguishes it from those sad nations whose ambulances and hospitals demand moolah for medical attention, stands exposed raw, naked and helpless before the rapacious giants of global pharmaceutics. As if the Australian public hadn’t noticed – oh, yes, they haven’t – Medicare itself is an endless target of who? … yep, the Australian Government, as demonstrated in a recent campaign that saw its OWN advertising, in favor of private medical insurance, actively DENIGRATE its OWN public Medicare. Reaction from the great unwashed (and soon to be great untreated)? A mix of greed and zzzz.

The Howard government has single-handedly given away the farm, its arrogance and deceit surpassed only by the breath-taking stupidity of its charge, the Australian population.

In yet another tour de force of economic naiveté they (the Australian populace and its intellectually-bereft Government) imagine fair play from America, the good ole’ US of A, that immense unipolar crushing economic hegemony, a nation built upon an ultimate class weapon, a “reserve army of misery,” the permanent unemployed, an underclass that maintains an icily cynical threat to every non-professional worker of their destiny, should they fail to toe the line — in a world of rampant realist, “everyone-for-themselves and unfortunates-be-damned” domestic and foreign policy.

A nation whose distinguishing social feature (from the rest of the developed world) in the past 3 decades is a stalling in income of all but the top one percent of haves.