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Zeitgeist
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New Age Healing Is Mainstream

from CBS NEWS --
At one of the nation's top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient's bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive. They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields.

The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it "mystical mumbo jumbo." Still, he's a fan. "It's self-hypnosis" that can help patients relax, he said. "If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain."

Alternative medicine has become mainstream finding wider acceptance by doctors, insurers and hospitals like the University of Maryland Medical Center. People turn to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease. They crave more "care" in their health care. They distrust drug companies and the government. They want natural, safer remedies. Associated Press interviews with more than 100 sources found an underground medical system operating in plain sight, with a different standard than the rest of medical care, and millions of people using it.

Giant Solar Aircraft

from Reuters--
Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard unveiled yesterday the prototype of a solar powered plane he plans to fly around the world to highlight the potential of alternative energy sources. The prototype, HB-SIA, has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs only that of an average family car. It is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving surplus energy from its 24,000 solar cells in high-performance batteries.

"Yesterday it was a dream. Today it is a plane. Tomorrow it will be an ambassador of renewable energy," Piccard told a news conference at Duebendorf airfield near Zürich. "If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled solely by solar energy, let no one come and claim that is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems and computers," Piccard said.

 

Honeybee Help

from Goodnewsdaily.com --
Official Washington is all abuzz over honeybees. At the White House, two types of parasite-resistant honeybees developed by U.S. scientists will be delivered to the first family's new garden next month.

On Capitol Hill, California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer wants Congress to spend $20 million to research colony collapse disorder, which has caused big losses for the nation's beekeepers in recent years.

Both developments are welcome news for honeybee backers, who have found themselves getting slapped around this year. When an early version of an economic stimulus bill contained $150 million in subsidies for honeybees and other farm products, many Republicans howled in protest. "This is nonsense," huffed Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate's minority leader. And when Congress passed a $1.7 million earmark for Texas honeybees as part of a broader appropriations bill, critics cited it as a prime example of pork-barrel spending. Beekeepers find themselves on the defensive and say they must educate members of Congress about the importance of their industry. They're doing it with the help of lobbyists. Yes, bee lobbyists.

And Remember To Eat Your Broccoli RAW!

and more from Goodnewsdaily.com --
It's been described as a "super-food," having a host of health benefits. Now scientists are warning that boiling broccoli in water for just ten minutes reduces its disease-defense compounds by 40 per cent or more. They are urging the nation to give up its love of boiling vegetables in favor of steaming or stir-frying.

A study by England's Warwick University set out to measure the impact of different ways of cooking brassica vegetables, which also include Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and green cabbage. Studies have shown that consumption of these greens can reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke. This is thought to be because of their high concentration of substances known as glucosinolates, which are broken down by the body into cancer-preventing compounds called isothiocyanates. Until now, it's not been known how these substances were affected by cooking.

The researchers, led by Professor Paul Thornalley of the Warwick Medical School, bought vegetables from a local shop and took them to the lab for cooking within 30 minutes of purchase. The scientists experimented by steaming, stir-frying and boiling the vegetables for different amounts of time. They found that in all the vegetables, boiling significantly reduced the glucosinolate content. In the case of broccoli, boiling for just five minutes cut glucosinolate by 15 per cent, while ten minutes of cooking reduced content by over 40 per cent

Death of a Legend

from Deepak Chopra's Blog --
Michael Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That's not who I will remember, however. His mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me. For twenty years I observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael -- and to want to protect him -- his sudden death Thursday seemed almost fated. Two days previously he had called me in an upbeat, excited mood. The voice message said, "I've got some really good news to share with you." He was writing a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help informally with the lyrics, as we had done several times before.

When we first met, around 1988, I was struck by the combination of charisma and woundedness that surrounded Michael. He would be swarmed by crowds at an airport, perform an exhausting show for three hours, and then sit backstage afterward, as we did one night in Bucharest, drinking bottled water, glancing over some Sufi poetry as I walked into the room, and wanting to meditate.

That person, whom I considered very pure, still survived -- he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked the last time, two weeks ago.

Michael's reluctance to grow up was another part of the paradox. My children adored him, and in return he responded in a childlike way. He declared often, as former child stars do, that he was robbed of his childhood.

The closest we ever became, perhaps, was when Michael was writing a book of short fables. I sat with him for hours while he dreamily wove Aesop-like tales about animals, mixed with words about music and his love of all things musical. This project, Dancing the Dream convinced me of the modus vivendi Michael had devised to counter the stress that accompanies mega-stardom, he built a private retreat in a fantasy world where pink clouds veiled inner anguish and Peter Pan was a hero, not a pathology.

This compromise with reality gradually became unsustainable. He went to strange lengths to preserve it. Unbounded privilege became another toxic force in his undoing. What began as idiosyncrasy, shyness, and vulnerability was ravaged by obsessions over health, paranoia over security, and an isolation that grew more and more unhealthy.

My memory of Michael Jackson will be as complex and confused as anyone's. My son Gotham traveled with Michael as a roadie on tour when Gotham was seventeen. Will it matter that Michael behaved with discipline and impeccable manners around my son?

When the shock subsides and a thousand public voices recount Michael's brilliant, joyous, embattled, enigmatic, bizarre trajectory, I hope the word "joyous" is the one that will rise from the ashes and shine as he once did.

If you read or hear of some interesting news for us, let us know. Call 828-254-6620, or go to our website, viratolive.com and contact us.