Day: 11/08/2016

There’s super-hype for this month’s Super Moon.

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The Full Moon on November 13/14 will be bigger and brighter than normal, but it won’t be easy to tell from a casual glance.

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Less than a week after what some people are calling the biggest presidential election of our lifetimes, the biggest Full Moon of this young century will blaze across the night sky. From the time the Moon rises near sunset on the evening of November 13 until it sets at dawn the next morning, the glowing orb will loom over the landscape as it hasn’t since the Cleveland Indians last won the World Series.

This so-called Super Moon arises because the Moon reaches its Full phase just 2.5 hours after its closest approach to Earth of 2016. Full Moon arrives precisely at 8:52 a.m. EST on November 14. Perigee — the point in our satellite’s monthly orbit when it comes closest to Earth — comes at 6:21 a.m. EST. The Moon then lies 221,524 miles (356,509 kilometers) from our planet as measured between the centers of the two objects. Take the sizes of the two into account and the distance between their surfaces shrinks by a bit more than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers).

As if this isn’t impressive enough, the Moon hasn’t come this close to Earth since January 26, 1948, when it was 30 miles (48 kilometers) nearer. And it won’t be this close again until November 25, 2034. So, this Super Moon truly is a rare and special event.

Despite these impressive numbers, however, this month’s Full Moon won’t look all that different from a typical one. Its apparent diameter will be 0.56° (33.5 arcminutes), which is 7 percent larger than normal. And it will appear nearly 15 percent brighter than a typical Full Moon. Yet these differences are barely noticeable to the naked eye under the best conditions, and even harder to discern when you try to compare the Moon’s appearance across several months.

Another complicating factor is that a Full Moon always looks bigger when it lies near the horizon and your mind compares it with familiar objects nearby — even though it is a few thousand miles closer and thus slightly larger when it passes overhead. For this reason, people in North America will perceive the Moon looking biggest as it gets ready to set before dawn on the morning of the 14th.

You can watch live coverage from Slooh.com here. You can also send in photos, talk to other viewers, and control Slooh’s telescopes.

 

How plumbing (not vaccines) eradicated disease.

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Vaccines get all the glory, but most plumbers will tell you that it was water infrastructure – sewage systems and clean water – that eradicated disease, and they’re right.

Polio thrives in fecal matter and is easily transmitted through human waste. Plumbing and water sanitation in India is way behind the rest of the industrialized world. In areas where sanitation and hygiene are good, polio is rare. In areas where sanitation and hygiene are poor, the disease can spread rapidly.

Immunization efforts have received a lot of publicity and have garnered most of the credit for India being declared “polio free” by the World Health Organization. As recently as 2009, India reported 762 cases of polio, and at that time, these numbers made India the polio capital of the world. In 2014, there are currently no “official” documented cases of polio, but without proper sanitation there is no way this can last.

A Polio Breeding Ground

India is the second most populous nation in the world, with an estimated population of 1.2 billion. Currently, 780 million Indians do not have a toilet; 96 million Indians do not have access to clean drinking water. In rural areas, open defecation is still more common than attempting to dispose of human waste in a more sanitary fashion, such as burying it.

There have been some efforts to improve sanitation, but they pale in comparison to the extensive efforts to vaccinate Indians. Over 9 billion has been spent in this vaccination public health campaign. In some parts of India, children have received as many as 30 doses of the oral polio vaccine before their fifth birthday. Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, and GAVI have ardently been pushing vaccines on people who still don’t have access to clean drinking water or the sanitary means to dispose of human waste.

They Say Tomato, I say Tomatoe

The current polio vaccine campaign in India highly controversial due to the high rate of vaccine injury and death. There were 53,000 cases of NPAFP, a non-polio acute flaccid paralysis, among those vaccinated. NPAFP is a disease that is clinically indistinguishable from polio and twice as deadly that is caused by the live, weakened, polio viruses in the vaccine. Incidences of the disease rose and fell with the number of doses of the vaccine administered. To call this disease anything other than polio is semantic subterfuge, a whitewash for Big Pharma’s image.

“In the past 13 months, India has reported 53,563 cases of NPAFP at a national rate of 12 per 100,000 children – way above the global benchmark set by WHO of 2 per 100,000.” Quote from LiveMint Newpaper, the second largest business newspaper in India. Jan, 13 2014

It would be less expensive in human cost and far more effective to improve India’s water infrastructure, improving India’s sanitation and hygiene.

Conclusion

When most of us think of a conscientious objector, we think of someone who refused military service for moral or religious reasons. In the 1800s, the term came into use for someone who refused vaccinations for their children. There was a great deal of resistance to the smallpox vaccine. Some statistics placed fatalities from the vaccine as high as 1 in 200. Refusing to vaccinate is as controversial today as it was when the first vaccines were forced on British citizens two centuries ago. Vaccines often contain toxins like aluminum and mercury, and many vaccines contain aborted fetal tissues. The reality of vaccine injury and death is making the news, though the propaganda and out and out lies from pharmaceutical companies cause a polarized division between those who are pro vaccine and those who are against.

If you are reading this, you probably have access to running water and a working toilet. If you choose to forego vaccines for yourself or your children, bear in mind that you will need additional protection to avoid contracting illnesses. Exercise, sleep, stress management, and a truly healthy diet are all essential for an immune system to work at optimal efficiency.

While the medical professionals and the pharmaceutical companies are quick to take credit for our increased life expectancy, in truth, they are not the heroes. Have you thanked a plumber lately?