What’s Going On?

We all know about the trouble between the United States and Russia lately. Everything we read calls Russia our enemy as if to reinforce the fact we have to defend against them. That is why the suggestion by one Russia was even more surprising.Β  Vladimir Yakunin is the head of the Russian railway system. He has just proposed building a new road. So what you might say, but you have to hear the details before you say that. He wants to build the biggest road in the world, one that would link the eastern border of Russia with the state of Alaska. He made the proposal during a meeting of the Moscow based Russian Academy of Science. The road would follow the Trans-Siberian Railway and have a new train network along with oil and gas lines. He said, "This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project." He also said, "The project should be turned into a world 'future zone,' and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies." The road is projected to be 6,200 miles long and would run across Russia and link with roads in Western Europe and Asia. The Russian land mass is only about 55 miles off the coast of Alaska. I think this sounds like a great idea, but I would be surprised if the U.S. would go along with this, because it seems we might lose an enemy.

When World War II was ending the Nazis were busy trying to find places to hide from the allies. Archaeologists have announced they have found a former Nazi hideout and it is in the middle of an Argentinian jungle. The hideout was found in Teyu Cuare Park which is in the northern part of Argentina. It is very close to the border with Paraguay a country which was noted for the amount of Nazis who fled there. It is believed that the Nazis started a project when they knew they were going to lose the war. The project entailed building hideouts in hard to find places. When the Argentinian hideout was explored three buildings were found along with a stone quarry. There were various World War II German artifacts on the premises. A bunch of German coins were found which dated between 1937 and 1944 among other things such as German inscriptions on the walls and pieces of porcelain plates which were made in Germany.

Who would have thought that humans performing one of their most basic functions, that of emptying their stomachs would be creating a fortune? New research has found that each one of us excretes precious minerals. Human feces contain all sorts of precious metals including gold. The problem is how do we retrieve these metals? A new study has come out and it states that the waste from the bodies of about one million people could produce about 13 million dollars’ worth of rare metals. It has been estimated that this is in line with the minimum amount a mine produces to stay profitable and if we can retrieve these metals from the U.S. population we could close down some of our mining operations. An engineer stated, "If you can get rid of some of the nuisance metals that currently limit how much of these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time recover valuable metals and other elements, that's a win-win." Kathleen Smith of the U.S. Geological Survey said she wants a two pronged approach to this project. The first prong has to do with moving regulated metals from biosolids that limit their use and the second prong has to do with how to collect valuable metals which could be sold.

It has been kept off our radar and out of our papers and mostly out of our news reports, but there have been riots erupting in Germany. The riots are an attempt to shut down the European Central Bank. The new headquarters for the bank was due to begin operations. Protesters are upset with the 1.4 billion dollar price tag when a recession is hitting the working class very hard. The demonstrators were also angry that the banking class wants austerity measures on the people. These austerity measures are said to really be just a way of privatizing assets and resources funded by public money. It is said the demonstrators feel they are being robbed by the bank. It is the old story over again, the public is being told to foot the bill for the banks to be bailed out.

We know that some creatures have extremely hard shells, but nothing compares with the scaly-foot snail. This snail has a shell made out of iron. Besides having an iron shell, the foot which sticks out of the shell is covered with iron plates. It is sort of like a medieval knight. You may wonder how the snail gets this way. Our old friend bacteria creates the iron for the snail. The iron in the shell and around the foot is actually magnetic. The snail lives by hot ocean vents where the water can reach a temperature of 750 degrees F or more. The vents also produce many different toxins. Life must be very hard there. The snails aren’t rigid like a solid hunk of iron, but flexible like someone wearing chain mail. Even more strange is the fact there is another type of the same snail living near it and it doesn’t have any iron on it.

Most of us are pretty much alike when it comes to our brains and how they function, but this is not the case for Matthieu Ricard a Tibetan monk. 256 sensors were attached to the monk’s head. He was asked to meditate on compassion and what the researchers saw shocked them. His brain produced such a high level of Gamma waves it was off the chart. They also found his left cortex produced an excessive amount of activity. The researchers found that he had an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity toward negativity. The researchers then examined other monks using the same methods and found something surprising. Those monks who engaged in more than 50,000 rounds of meditation showed significant changes in brain function. They also found something else maybe even more surprising, those who performed only three weeks of 20 minutes of meditation per day also had changes to their brains.

The whistleblower from the CIA named John Kiriakou was the one who told the world about CIA uses of waterboarding. He said, “I am proud to have played a role in the outline of torture in the U.S.” He also went one to say no one went to jail over this except him. When the CIA torture report came out he was released from jail and says he feels vindicated and that he would do it again. He was convicted of leaking the name of a covert officer and was sentenced to 30 months in jail. Funny I seem to remember Dick Cheney doing the same thing and absolutely nothing happening to him. Kiriakou is the same man who received numerous commendation for his undercover work against terrorist groups. He says he was sent to prison not for revealing any names, but for punishment for revealing the torture being conducted. It certainly looks like he was right.