Dim Lighting Sparks Creativity

New German research finds a darkened room encourages freedom of thought and inspires innovation. There are certain times when you want the lights turned way down low. One such time, according to recent research, is when you need to think creatively.

“Darkness increases freedom from constraints, which in turn promotes creativity,” report  Anna Steidle of the University of Stuttgard and Lioba Werth of the University of Hohenheim. A dimly lit environment, they explain in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, “elicits a feeling of freedom, self-determination, and reduced inhibition,” all of which encourage innovative thinking.

Steidle and Werth describe six experiments which provide evidence for their thesis. The key one featured 114 German undergraduates, who were seated in groups of two or three in a small room designed to simulate an office.

The room was lit by a fixture hanging from the ceiling directly above the desk. The amount of illumination varied, with some groups receiving only 150 lux (dim light), others 500 lux (the recommended lighting level for an office), and still others 1,500 lux (bright light).

After acclimating themselves for approximately 15 minutes, participants went to work on what the researchers describe as “four creative insight problems typically used in creativity research. These tasks require that individuals change their perceptions of a given problem in order to find the optimal solution.” Read more >>

Canadian study finds seasonal flu shot doubles risk of swine flu

Latest flu vaccine curveball comes from Canada
JO CIAVAGLIA

Bucks County Courier TimesLocal doctors are taking a wait-and-see attitude regarding an unpublished - but already controversial - Canadian study that reportedly finds a seasonal flu shot may make people two times more likely to contract the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus.

But some also worry such medical studies could only confuse the public more, resulting in panic and distrust in vaccine programs, thereby risking lives.

"It's a concern because we don't want to send mixed messages. We need to be unified in our approach to protect people's health," said Dr. Rob Danoff, head of family practice residency programs at Aria Health Systems, which has a Bucks County campus in Falls.

"It's very confusing. We need to await the official statement of the CDC."

The Canadian study is under peer review, a process also used in the United States to ensure that data is unbiased and properly interpreted before publication in a scientific journal. ut its early findings prompted most Canadian provincial governments to suspend or limit their annual winter vaccine programs, according to Canadian news reports.

The study is co-authored by researchers from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion and Laval University in Quebec, according to reports.

Few people have seen the data, and some health experts are skeptical.

The World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren't recommending that annual flu vaccinations be postponed. Public health officials in the United States, Australia and other European countries say their data doesn't show such a link between the two flu vaccines.

Canadian government officials say the new study was only one factor in their decision to suspend seasonal flu shots for people under age 65; another reason is the belief H1N1 will be the dominate flu strain in the country this winter as it was in most Southern hemisphere during their winter.

Both Canada and the United States launched seasonal flu vaccine programs earlier than usual this year to prevent overwhelming health care providers with simultaneous demands for both H1N1 and annual flu vaccines.

For every study that finds a medical intervention works, there is likely one that will contradict it, said Dr. David Damsker, director of the Bucks County Health Department.

Damsker pointed to another study recently published in the British Medical Journal that found the seasonal flu vaccine may offer some protection against H1N1 flu, though it shouldn't replace the new vaccine.

"This is why general medicine is difficult at times," he added. "You read one day that coffee causes Parkinson's disease and the next day a study says it prevents Parkinson's disease."

People should not make decisions based on a single study without thoroughly investigating other available research and speaking with medical professionals, Damsker warned.

"In Bucks County we've been preaching the same thing for the last five months. We're not trying to be led astray by one study here and there," he added. "It concerns me that every time a story comes out, people don't get all the information and make a quick decision based on the CNN ticker."

Aria's Danoff also says he will continue to recommend patients get the seasonal flu vaccine for now.

People who have already gotten their annual flu shot shouldn't worry about swine flu, he added. "For most it's a mild virus," he added. "I would not be alarmed."

The 2009 H1N1 virus is circulating and experts anticipate that 40 percent to 50 percent of the U.S. population will be infected, he noted.

What Danoff does worry about, though, is that conflicting data involving the flu vaccines could result in falling public confidence in the medical community.

"They're going to say, who can we believe?"

Ex-AIG Advisor Practiced Witchcraft

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Ex-AIG Adviser Casts Evil Spells on Victims

This is an example of the psychotic idiots AIG hired to manage money. Bruce Kelly with Investment News reports that Barry R. Stokes, formerly affiliated with AIG Financial Advisors Inc., spent time making voodoo dolls of his victims to ward off their damaging testimony.

Kelly writes:

Stokes plead guilty to multiple counts of embezzlement, as well as mail and wire fraud, and money laundering for stealing $19 million from some 35,000 victims nationwide, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nashville, Tenn., from their 401(k), health savings, and dependent care accounts. On Friday Stokes was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Nashville to 12 years in prison after a hearing that presented evidence of his bizarre practices, according to reports in The Tennessean newspaper.

At a pre-sentencing hearing last week, prosecutors also said that Mr. Stokes paid a psychic with a credit card to give him readings while in jail, according to The Tennessean. He also wrote a letter to the psychic saying that he was lighting candles and throwing salt over his shoulder to keep critics and creditors at bay, according to the report. Stokes was registered with AIG Financial Advisors from October 2005 to September 2006, at which point his fraud was discovered and he was fired, according to brokerage records on file with the states where he was licensed to do business.

Some people may claim men like Stokes and Madoff are anomalies in the esoteric and once venerated world of high finance. Now we know better. Many of them are nothing but two-bit thugs, crooks and sociopaths with no conscience, high rollers spending money from the "little" people who are losing their jobs and homes. It wasn't long ago that AIG executives were partying down on taxpayer bailout money. It's clear to everyone that AIG and Wall Street executives consider American taxpayers nothing but a pathetic laughingstock.

But these people aren't just corrupt, many of them are sick and morally depraved. R. Allen Stanford may be associated with satanic cults. He became blood brothers with the chief regulator of his Antigua bank. They cut their wrists and mixed their blood in a “brotherhood ceremony” that Stanford’s chief financial officer said promoted an elaborate scheme to hide a multibillion-dollar fraud from American and other regulators. The FBI and other agencies have been conducting an ongoing investigation of Stanford since 2008 for possible involvement in money laundering for Mexico's "Gulf Cartel", a ruthless drug gang in Mexico closely associated with the satanic cult known as "Saint Death" or in Spanish "La Santa Muerte".

The cast of characters in the financial world is like something right out of Kubric's film The Shining. Not only is the corruption at the highest levels of the government, multiple government agencies are involved. The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday that "Thomas Raffanello, a federal law enforcement agent for three decades and former global director of security at a Florida office of Stanford Financial Group, was indicted Thursday on charges of conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation into the company.

"Raffanello, 61, of Coral Gables, is the second Florida-based Stanford employee to be accused of destroying records to obstruct the investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into the Houston-based financial firm. He was the special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami for about four years before joining the financial firm founded by native Texan R. Allen Stanford."

The fact is, Wall Street has been laundering drug money for years as this 1994 Seattle Times News article suggests.

Feds Probe Wall Street Firms For Laundered Drug Money 1994 - Seattle Times Staff: Seattle Times News Services

NEW YORK - Federal investigators are probing several brokerage firms on suspicion of laundering illegal drug profits, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

People close to the investigation told the paper and court documents show that $10 million has been seized from accounts at Merrill Lynch, Dean Witter, Prudential Securities and PaineWebber for alleged violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law.

Federal agents from the Treasury Department's U.S. Customs Service and the Internal Revenue service are also investigating transactions at Bear Stearns, the paper said.

Federal agents told the paper that brokerage firms are becoming the choice for drug dealers to make their profits look like they were made legally, because of the globalization of the securities business and a loophole in how cash is defined in the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act.

Banks have fallen out of favor for drug profits because all transactions that exceed $10,000 have to be reported to the IRS under the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, the paper said.

Our country is controlled by corrupt psychopaths wearing business suits calling the shots from banks and investment firms; they not only control the government, they are the government. To anyone but the walking dead, this realization can no longer be attributed to tinfoil conspiracy theorists. These people are the enemy. This is who we're all up against. It's a class war from here on out until it's over.