by Ian Punnett

In the space that I have here it would be impossible to go into all of the ridiculous science of the movie “2012” but here’s the good news about this apocalyptic vision of the near future starring John Cusack.

1. According to “2012,” you’ll be amazed how long into the complete breakdown of planet you’ll still have cell phone service!
2. According to “2012,” even while the magnetic poles of the Earth are flipping, satellite TV reports will still be coming in showing cool international landmarks crumbling!
3. You can fly right over massive, active volcanoes after all!
4. Even as every other continent is crumbling, people in ****an might still not having gotten the news.
5. And if it hadn’t been for radio, a lot fewer people would have survived.

I say that because there is an “Art Bell-ish” character that is central to the plot development.  I would say “George Noory-ish” but I can’t ever imagine George broadcasting from some trashed out Winnebago but I can almost see Art doing that at some point in his life.  That may be unfair to George--he might be driving around in some beat-up motor home monitoring a government installation somewhere but I kind of doubt that.

Either way, “2012” is yet another movie to give a nod to late night “conspiracy radio” as being the truth-tellers of the world!

Now, do the scientific inconsistencies of “2012” mean we should ignore the warnings that The End of the World is Nigh.

We would be foolish to ignore the signs that indeed humanity is almost at an end:

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by Ian Punnett

In the basements and research labs of universities all over the country, government-funded “mad” scientists are experimenting with our future.

I use “mad” in the same way that mainstream academia would have used it a hundred years ago--scientists that are doing work against the will or nature of God.

A loose definition, perhaps, but a handy one for critics who thought there were many things that we take for granted today that just should be done, for example, surgeries where doctors “play God” by undoing genetic mutations or other “acts of God” that will change our “fate”:

For example:

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Purdue University have discovered a new approach for repairing damaged nerve fibers in spinal cord injuries using nano-spheres that could be injected into the blood shortly after an accident.

The synthetic "copolymer micelles" are drug-delivery spheres about 60 nanometers in diameter, or roughly 100 times smaller than the diameter of a red blood cell.

Purdue researchers have now shown that the micelles themselves repair damaged axons, fibers that transmit electrical impulses in the spinal cord.

"That was a very surprising discovery," said Ji-Xin Cheng, an associate professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry. "Micelles have been used for 30 years as drug-delivery vehicles in research, but no one has ever used them directly as a medicine."

Today, we still have our “science can but does that mean science should” debates and medical ethics should never just “green light” everything.  But as the good work of DARPA funded researchers progresses, we are wise to judge the work done by “fringe” scientists not by how something sounds to us at first but how it changes the lives of the people it benefits.

And we would be wise to avoid the same kind of “torch rally response” against mosques or Islamic centers across the country as a result of the shootings at Fort Hood, TX last Thursday but that doesn’t mean we  shouldn’t be concerned.

Saturday night I interviewed the co-author of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” and we talked about where Maj. Nidal Hasan worshiped and whether or not it was part of this terrorist underground.  Today, as if on cue, this piece appears on the The Daily Beast:

The alleged Fort Hood gunman had revealed a hard-line Islamist streak to acquaintances in the Muslim Community Center that he made his mosque. The Daily Beast's Asra Q. Nomani reports.

Not long ago, inside the quiet library of the Muslim Community Center here in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., Golam Akhter, a local Bangladeshi-American civil engineer, 67, got into a fierce debate with a young Muslim doctor over how to interpret the concept of “jihad” within Islam. Akhter argued, “Jihad means an inner struggle, fighting against corruption and injustice.”

The young doctor responded. “That’s not a correct interpretation. Jihad means holy war. When your religion isn’t safe, you have to fight for it. If someone attacks you, you must fight them. That is jihad. You can kill someone who is harming you.”

The conversation would be just another theological debate, interesting but irrelevant, except that the doctor was Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, the gunman in the tragic Fort Hood rampage. After being posted to Walter Reed Hospital as a psychiatrist, Hasan called the Muslim Community Center his local mosque. It’s just a short drive away from Walter Reed.

So who else was worshiping there and what are they responsible for?  Coincidence?  Here’s the rest of the piece:

www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/...

Let’s keep our caps on but the blinders off. 

by Ian Punnett

While peace has more or less settled over Ft. Hood, Tx., there are still many unanswered questions concerning the shooter and how much of a threat exists from inside U.S. military bases because of suicide/terror attacks such as the one on Thursday.

Was Maj. Hasan’s murderous actions part of some kind of coordinated effort to destabilize moral and increase tension through random acts of violence or was it just the lone actions of a demoralized, destabilized man suffering from depression or some other form of mental illness?

Does this video help us understand?

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CNN first aired the video of Maj. Hasan wearing his traditional thobe to the 7-11 for his morning cup of coffee, a practice I was told later that he did every morning.  

Is that really all that informative?  What does that really tell us yet?

We know he appeared to be preparing to commit suicide by giving away all his possessions and having final words with some friends and acquaintances, or was that just typical behavior for anybody who is fatalistic and just about to ship out to a theater of war?

Was Maj. Hasan intending to be the next Mohammed Atta or the next Eric Harris?

We are still trying to figure out the villain(s), let’s focus on the heroes, both the ones that lived and died.

And let’s not forget the people that the U.S. military is going broke trying to help either, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan especially this winter:

(Nov. 6) -- Death by violence has become tragically commonplace in Afghanistan -- for Afghans, foreign troops and aid organizations alike. But a far more efficient killer stalks the Afghan people: hunger. 

An estimated 25 times as many Afghan citizens die every year as a result of hunger and poverty than from violence, according to a United Nations Security Council report. And as winter descends on the country, experts say, the death rate is bound to shoot up even further. 

Currently, 7.4 million Afghans, about one third of the population, are "food insecure," according the United Nations World Food Program; another third of the population is on the borderline to that status. An estimated 1.2 million children younger than 5 and 550,000 pregnant or lactating mothers are at risk of falling into severe malnutrition. The country has the third highest child mortality rate in the world: More than 300,000 children 5 and younger die each year.

We can agonize over our “smart bombs” and “surgical attacks” but millions of Afghanis will die this winter due to lack of food, wouldn’t we be better off and more popular if we stopped spending all this money on weapons and instead shipped over enough food for people to eat?

Has it gotten so bad that even cows have to feed themselves?

Did you see this weird video this week?  A cow caught nursing herself?  Every person I spoke to this week who grew up on a farm said they’d never seen anything like it!

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I enjoyed hearing about ghost cats last night on the radio.  After seeing this photo, I am more worried about “cat pirates”:

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Cat pirates taking over ships, cows nursing themselves, a world seemingly gone mad--is there any hope?

I’d like to think so.  With every election comes new voters who begin to take responsibility for the country and the messes that the generations who have come before them have made of things.  This past Tuesday, my older son, “Scratchy,” voted for the first time. Home from school, sick with some kind sinus thing, he wanted to make sure he would not miss his first election.  So, once the doctor told him he wasn’t contagious, he registered and voted.

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 The Fourth Turning cannot come fast enough for me. 

by Ian Punnett

Here’s that ghost photo from Matt Allen’s show on C2C affiliate WPRO-AM.

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While I am at it, here’s the scariest chew toy that they’re selling at my favorite pet food store:

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And--not for the faint of heart--this is the scariest thing that can happen to any homeowner:  Three inches of raw sewage backed up in your basement.

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And the scariest Christmas gift in the Vermont Country Store Catalogue, of all places:

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Finally, for some people these might look like Halloween costumes but for those of us who lived through these times, we remember them as fashion faves:

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by Ian Punnett

Happy Halloween!

If you were listening last night to the radio and you heard how monstrously bad my voice sounded you might have thought that I wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance of being on the air tonight!

But in keeping with all Hallow’s Eve, the dead live.

The problem started with the H1N1 virus that my wife had which turned her into “The Creature from the Black Loogie.”  

Then just as I was done taking care of her, I got a cold that turned into a sinus infection which turned into bronchitis which was turning into something on the X-ray machine that looked like it had already grown an exoskeleton and was working on a tail.

Anyway, with a little help from vitamin “Z” (azithromycin), the alien was exiled--or at least exhaled.

Meanwhile, remember how my dog keeps biting the throats out of any stuffed animal that wanders away from the stuffed herd?

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Well, Jack’s true identity can now be revealed!

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Have a great time tonight listening to Ghost to Ghost radio--and drive carefully!