Monday, October 8, 2012

EINSTEIN OR GOD?


Does God exist?
Einstein's 'God letter' does, and it's up for sale
By Jeanna Bryner  Managing editor Life Science 10/5/2012 2012-10-05T21:02:50

 Famed physicist's handwritten note, to be auctioned on eBay, calls religion 'pretty childish'
Albert Einstein in prayer
In a 1954 handwritten letter, Albert Einstein revealed his thoughts on God and religion. The original letter is going up for sale at auction on Monday.
From studying slices of his brilliant brain to probing profound physics theories, scientists and enthusiasts alike have long been spellbound by Albert Einstein. Now, an auction is offering the world a peek at Einstein's thoughts on what may be humanity's most profound question: the existence of God.

The private letter written by Einstein expressing his views on God and religion will go up for auction Monday on eBay. In the letter, he calls belief in religion and God "pretty childish" and ridicules the idea that the Jews are a chosen people.
"This is the most historic and significant piece we have listed on eBay," Eric Gazin, president of Auction Cause, the agency managing the sale, told LiveScience in an email. "We are excited to offer a person or organization an opportunity to own perhaps one of the most intriguing 20th-century documents in existence. This personal letter from Einstein represents the nexus of science, theology, reason and culture."

Einstein's 1954 God letter
Einstein handwrote the letter in German to Jewish philosopher Eric B. Gutkind on Jan. 3, 1954, a year before Einstein's death. The letter was a response to Gutkind's book "Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt" (1952, H. Schuman; 1st edition).

In part of his letter, Einstein writes, "For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them," as translated from German by Joan Stambaugh. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]
In his book, Gutkind suggested that unlike the mass hypnosis spoiling mankind at the time, "The soul of the Jewish people was never a mass-soul. Israel's soul could not be hypnotized; it never succumbed to hypnotic assaults. … The soul of Israel is incorruptible."

And as for whether Einstein believed in God? Yes and no, it seems.

In a March 24, 1954 letter, he is quoted as writing, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

However, in the letter to Gutkind, Einstein wrote the word God was "nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Einstein in 1921

This isn't the first time this "God" letter has been up for auction: In 2008, an unidentified buyer who had "a passion for theoretical physics" bought the letter at a Bloomsbury Auctions sale in London for $404,000, 25 times its presale estimate, according to an article in the New York Times.

The letter to Gutkind has been stored in a temperature-, humidity- and light-controlled environment at an academic institution specializing in the care of cultural heritage collections, according to an eBay description. Since the letter has been known among scientists for more than 50 years, the description reads, its authenticity has never been questioned. The letter is in its original envelope, holding a stamp and postmark from Princeton, N.J., where Einstein lived toward the end of his life.

The last few years have seen an outpouring of projects that bring the famous genius down to Earth: For instance, in March, a large collection of Einstein's documents — everything from personal letters to scientific manuscripts — went online as part of an endeavor by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology.

The archive reveals both the academic side of Einstein — with one of only three existing manuscripts containing the famous E=mc^2 equation written in Einstein's handwriting — and his personal life — with a postcard to his mother Pauline. Pieces of his brain went on display for the first time at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library.

And just last month an iPad app was released that allows the public to get up-close and personal with Einstein's gray matter.

The "God" letter goes on sale Monday, with an opening bid of $3 million. Anyone interested (with the money to spare) can make an eBay bid here.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Peter’s Piece

Albert Einstein was right about many things and he could well have been right about God too. He certainly left the world a lot to think about.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

AERODYNAMIC TRUCKS


At 13.4 mpg, the future
is in aerodynamic trucking
Max Heine|October 03, 2012 Overdrive Magazine
Bob Sliwa's latest Airflow truck

Aerodynamics is getting more attention these days now that diesel has risen fairly steadily for about four months to top $4. You can read a lot more about it in the November Overdrive, where columnist Kevin Rutherford will examine the aero trailer benefits for owner-operators. Also in that issue, our fuel-saving tips list will devote a big section to aero features.
Those who attended the Mid-America Trucking Show this year got a glimpse of aero’s possible future if they stopped by the AirFlow Truck Co. exhibit. The company’s website also has plenty of info on what they’ve done and are trying to do.


 
Most impressive is the results from a test run from Connecticut to California in June. AirFlow says its BulletTruck prototype averaged 13.4 miles per gallon. The website documents the effort and has good shots of the truck, which was originally a 2003 Kenworth T2000. It’s powered by a Cummins 15-liter ISX, with 450 hp and 1,450 ft.-lb. of torque, writes AirFlow President Bob Sliwa. Gross vehicle weight for the test run, which included actual deliveries, was 65,000 pounds and below.

“If we get the investors, we intend to build AirFlow Trucks from scratch and sell them in the (hopefully) near future,” Sliwa says. He points to the 2015, which will be similar to the cross-country test model.

More in Overdriveonline

Peter’s Piece

Airflow’s Bob Sliva is a genius with a long background in trucking, car racing and flying.
As a long time professional driver and one-time pilot, I have often wondered why large trucks and buses have not had aerodynamic designs to save fuel, and make them easier to handle in windy conditions.

Airflow owner Bob Sliwa
Long ago I concluded that while the designers care about styling, they know very little about aerodynamics, and care even less.

Any pilot will tell you about the basics of form drag (the drag caused by the shape of an object as it passes through the air) and he will tell you that with a square solid object, about 70% of the drag is created by the back end, and about 15% by the front and the remainder by the sides, provided they are reasonably smooth and free of obstructions.

It follows that streamlining the back of a truck or bus is vitally important if the drag and fuel consumption is going to be reduced.

But there is another vital area too and that is the underneath of the vehicle.

The underside of aircraft are always closed in and streamlined, and that’s not just to make it look good from the ground. The aircraft designer knows that an open side will create considerable unwanted drag so the underside becomes part of the wrap-around skin.

With vehicles there would be other advantages to be had also from a closed underside.

There is another curious fact about air resistance that is not well known among drivers and fleet operators and that is that for every 1% increase in speed there will be a 4% increase in drag and a corresponding 4% increase in anti-drag fuel consumption.

Bob Sliwa and Airflow Trucks appear to be right on the ball with drag reduction.






Wednesday, October 3, 2012

THE TEAMSTER BOSS


New dig fails to find
body of Jimmy Hoffa
10:09 AM Wednesday Oct 3, 2012 NZ Herald
Jimmy Hoffa


Like many others that came before it, the latest search for former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa has come up empty.
Tests on soil samples gathered last week from a backyard in suburban Detroit showed no traces that Hoffa or anyone else was buried there, Roseville police announced.
"Our department just received the soil sample report from Michigan State University, after a battery of tests; the samples submitted for examination showed no signs of human decomposition," the police statement read. "As a result of these tests the Roseville Police Department will be concluding their investigation into the possible interment of a human body upon the property."
Thus ended the latest in a long string of tips and rumors about one of America's great mysteries.
Over the years, authorities have dug up a Michigan horse farm, looked under a swimming pool and pulled up floorboards in their quest for the former union leader. Other theories were that his remains were ground up and tossed into a Florida swamp, entombed beneath Giants Stadium in New Jersey or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.
Hoffa last was seen July 30, 1975, outside a restaurant in Oakland County, more than 50 kilometers to the west.
The day he disappeared, Hoffa was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit mafia captain.
The latest search led police, reporters and curious onlookers to Patricia Szpunar's brick ranch-style home in Roseville. Police in the mostly working- and middle-class community north of Detroit recently received a tip from a man who claimed he saw someone buried there about 35 years ago and that the body possibly belonged to Hoffa.
"The police have left and the yellow tape has come down," Szpunar told The Associated Press on Tuesday afternoon. "I'm thrilled because it's over with. No more people staring at my house, driving by, walking by, pausing to stare. I can go on with my life."
The soil samples were removed Friday after officials drilled through the floor of a shed on Szpunar's property. Roseville police Chief James Berlin has said the ground would be excavated if decomposition were found in the samples.
Szpunar said she's happy to have her shed back.
"My son can put the motorcycle back in there," she said.
Police had put a new, more secure lock on the shed. They gave Szpunar the key Tuesday.

Peter’s Piece

James Riddle Hoffa (1913-1975?) led a controversial life right from his earliest years when he organized a union in a grocery chain that he worked for. His actions led to his dismissal.

Later he joined the Teamsters in Detroit and started rising through the ranks and became national president in 1957. By that time the Teamsters (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) had well over 1 million members.

His greatest achievement was the establishment of a national master freight agreement for over-the-road drivers in 1964.

Hoffa spent most of the 1960s in prison having been convicted of jury tampering, bribery and fraud. He was pardoned by President Nixon in 1971 in return for the Teamsters support for Nixon’s re-election in 1972. But his release was subject to Hoffa being banned from union activities until 1980. The Teamsters gave him a one-off retirement payment of $1.7 million.

Jimmy Hoffa was campaigning to re-enter union life when he disappeared from a Michigan restaurant in 1975.

Riddle was his second name and he left behind a riddle that has kept police and gossipers busy for 37 years. But one thing must now be almost certain; Jimmy Hoffa is most unlikely to be still alive. If he was he would now be aged 99.

Monday, October 1, 2012

LIFE IS CHEAP IN NEPAL


Nepal air crash probe begins
5:30 AM Sunday Sep 30, 2012

The Sita Air crash scene near Kathmandu. Photo / AP

Police have handed over to accident investigators the black box data recorder of a plane that crashed on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital, killing all 19 people on board.
The twin-propeller Sita Air plane had just taken off from Kathmandu and was headed to Lukla, gateway to Mt Everest, when it plunged into the banks of a river near the city's airport around daybreak.
Among the dead were seven Britons, five Chinese and seven local passengers and crew.
National police spokesman Binod Singh said it had been difficult to identify the bodies and DNA tests may be carried out before they are returned to relatives.
The British group, the youngest of whom was 27 and the oldest 60, had been due to go on a 16-day trek to three high passes and the Everest Base Camp.
Although the exact cause of the crash is still unclear, the manager of Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu said the pilot had reported hitting a bird of prey, thought to be a vulture or kite, moments before the crash . . . .
More in the NZ Herald

Peter’s Piece

Nepal has an abysmal air safety record with six crashes that killed 96 people in the last two years.

Whatever your mode of transport in Nepal, it will be dangerous.
Meanwhile, road safety in Nepal is no better and terrorism is also a major threat.

Tourism in Nepal has declined sharply due to safety concerns and the inability of the Nepalese government and people to turn the situation around.

Only backpackers and adventurers come away from Nepal pleased with their experience. Opinions were not obtained from those who died during the experience.

According to David Millward, Transport Editor for the Telegraph, poor training and weak regulation has added to the danger faced by air passengers in a country whose mountainous environment would be challenging for the most skilled pilots.

On the roads many bus and truck drivers are unlicensed and vehicles are frequently overloaded.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

FACTS ABOUT FINGERPRINTS


Who What Why:
How durable is a fingerprint?

28 September 2012 BBC News
The three main fingerprint types - the loop,
the whorl and the arch

American Hans Galassi lost several fingers in a wakeboarding accident several months ago. Now one of them has been found in a trout - and identified as Galassi's from its fingerprints. So how long do fingerprints last?
The vast majority of people are born with a unique set of fingerprints which remain the same for life.
These patterns, known as friction ridges by experts, are found not only on our finger-tips but also on the flanges of our fingers, on our palms, our toes and on the soles of our feet.
The patterns are permanent, but can wear down. Builders who lay bricks and people who frequently wash dishes by hand lose some of the detail. Once they stop these activities, the ridges will grow back.
As fans of crime movies will know, from time to time people have tried to change their fingerprints patterns artificially.
A deep cut through the outer layer of the skin, the epidermis, and down to the dermis leaves a scar that will change a fingerprint, but not make it any less unique.
People have also sought to erase their fingerprints by burning the finger-tips with fire and acid, as the notorious 1930s American gangster John Dillinger did. It works for a while but the skin grows back.
Another criminal, Robert Phillips, famously grafted skin from his chest on to his fingers to erase his fingerprints - but he was identified from the prints of his palms. Others have tried smoothing their finger-tips with glue and nail varnish. Again they were caught from palm prints.
Friction ridges are remarkably long lasting even after death, says fingerprint expert Allen Bayle, author of the UK's standard police manual on dead hands.
"If a hand is found in water you will see that the epidermis starts to come away from the dermis like a glove. This sounds gruesome but if a hand has been badly damaged, I cut the epidermis off and put my own hand inside that glove and try to fingerprint it like that," says Bayle.
"Some boys we get out of the water, the fish have been at them already and the fish will have pecked at the epidermis. But you can still get ridge detail from the underside of the epidermis. And if that has gone, then you can do the dermis. For every ridge you have on the epidermis, you have two on the dermis - we call it a tramline effect."
The speed at which a hand disintegrates in water depends on many things, not least the temperature of the water itself.
"If the water is very cold, it could stay for a long time," says Bayle. And the body of a trout, the fish that swallowed Galassi's finger, is just as cold as the water it swims in.
Galassi's finger was found in the trout's digestive tract - why hadn't it been digested? We shall never know how long after the accident the fish ate the finger, but Bayle thinks even if the thick layer of epidermis had been digested, Galassi's finger could still have been identified from its dermis.
"We can cast [the finger], for example in latex, and then we can ink the cast. Or we can ink the dermis and roll it on a fingerprint form. When we have got some ridge detail then we can put it on the computer."
In the case of Galassi, Idaho police took a day searching case files and reports to narrow down where the finger could have come from. They then fingerprinted the stray digit and sent it to the state police forensic lab where technicians were able to identify its owner.
"One of the last things to disappear when you die are your fingerprints," says Bayle. "They're very durable."
More: BBC News
Peter’s Piece

The best way to avoid arrest is to stay out of crime, and even that is no guarantee. So the best, best, best way is to stay home with a good book. But be really careful because books can contain ideas for the perfect crime.





DR STEPHEN MAK A FRAUD?

Eating Fruit - this opened my eyes
Another circulating email:

True or false?

Nothing beats a balanced diet that includes lots
of fruit and vegetables for healthy living.
But is Dr Stephen Mak really genuine?
Dr Stephen Mak treats terminal ill cancer patients by un-orthodox way and many patients recovered. Before he used solar energy to clear the illnesses of his patients. He believes on natural healing in the body against illnesses. See his article below.
Thanks for the email on fruits and juices. It is one of the strategies to heal cancer. As of late, my success rate in curing cancer is about 80%. Cancer patients shouldn't die. The cure for cancer is already found. It is whether you believe it or not. I am sorry for the hundreds of cancer patients who die under the conventional treatments.
Thanks and God bless.
- Dr Stephen Mak

EATING FRUIT...
We all think eating fruits means just buying fruits, cutting it and just popping it into our mouths. It's not as easy as you think. It's important to know how and when to eat.
What is the correct way of eating fruits?
IT MEANS NOT EATING FRUITS AFTER YOUR MEALS! * FRUITS SHOULD BE EATEN ON AN EMPTY STOMACH.
If you eat fruit like that, it will play a major role to detoxify your system, supplying you with a great deal of energy for weight loss and other life activities.
FRUIT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FOOD. Let's say you eat two slices of bread and then a slice of fruit. The slice of fruit is ready to go straight through the stomach into the intestines, but it is prevented from doing so.
Continued below . . . . .




In the meantime the whole meal rots and ferments and turns to acid. The minute the fruit comes into contact with the food in the stomach and digestive juices, the entire mass of food begins to spoil....
So please eat your fruits on an empty stomach or before your meals! You have heard people complaining - every time I eat watermelon I burp, when I eat durian my stomach bloats up, when I eat a banana I feel like running to the toilet, etc - actually all this will not arise if you eat the fruit on an empty stomach. The fruit mixes with the putrefying other food and produces gas and hence you will bloat!
Greying hair, balding, nervous outburst and dark circles under the eyesall these will NOT happen if you take fruits on an empty stomach.

YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ:
Over-Population of the World
Media Bias & Fake News
The Robots Are Coming
The Truth About the Clinton Foundation
The Truth About Natural Remedies

There is no such thing as some fruits, like orange and lemon are acidic, because all fruits become alkaline in our body, according to Dr. Herbert Shelton who did research on this matter. If you have mastered the correct way of eating fruits, you have the Secret of beauty, longevity, health, energy, happiness and normal weight.
When you need to drink fruit juice - drink onlyfresh fruit juice, NOT from the cans. Don't even drink juice that has been heated up. Don't eat cooked fruits because you don't get the nutrients at all. You only get to taste. Cooking destroys all the vitamins.
But eating a whole fruit is better than drinking the juice. If you should drink the juice, drink it mouthful by mouthful slowly, because you must let it mix with your saliva before swallowing it. You can go on a 3-day fruit fast to cleanse your body. Just eat fruits and drink fruit juice throughout the 3 days and you will be surprised when your friends tell you how radiant you look!
KIWI: Tiny but mighty. This is a good source of potassium, magnesium, vitamin E & fiber. Its vitamin C content is twice that of an orange.
APPLE: An apple a day keeps the doctor away? Although an apple has a low vitamin C content, it has antioxidants & flavonoids which enhances the activity of vitamin C thereby helping to lower the risks of colon cancer, heart attack & stroke.
STRAWBERRY: Protective Fruit. Strawberries have the highest total antioxidant power among major fruits & protect the body from cancer-causing, blood vessel-clogging free radicals.
ORANGE : Sweetest medicine. Taking 2-4 oranges a day may help keep colds away, lower cholesterol, prevent & dissolve kidney stones as well as lessens the risk of colon cancer.
WATERMELON: Coolest thirst quencher. Composed of 92% water, it is also packed with a giant dose of glutathione, which helps boost our immune system. They are also a key source of lycopene - the cancer fighting oxidant. Other nutrients found in watermelon are vitamin C & Potassium.
GUAVA & PAPAYA: Top awards for vitamin C. They are the clear winners for their high vitamin C content.. Guava is also rich in fiber, which helps prevent constipation. Papaya is rich in carotene; this is good for your eyes.

Skeptimedia has this to say:
6 September 2010. One of the most common medical scams is the "natural" cures scam and it is particularly pernicious for cancer patients. Combine fear of death with fear of radiation treatments and chemotherapy, add hope for an effective therapy that is cheap, easy, and avoids the painful and boring treatments of science-based medicine, and you have a prescription for a powerful opiate for the vulnerable. Throw in a healthy dose of ignorance about human physiology and some mistrust of the "medical establishment" and the quackaloon's job of luring you into his fantasy world of fabricated bodily processes and natural cures is as easy as setting up an authoritative-looking website.
Currently making the rounds in a chain e-mail among the natural cures crowd is an alleged letter from an alleged "Dr. Stephen Mak." (There's even a Facebook page for this e-mail.) I can find nothing about this Mak fellow except the same alleged e-mail and article from him that appears on hundreds, maybe thousands, of websites. The e-mail is usually prefaced with a paragraph about Mak being a friend known through a BSF course [Bible Study Fellowship course?]. The preface is usually posted with an "article" that contains a number of absurd, false, and deceptive claims about the human body and cancer. (A Google search of the first line of the preface to the e-mail gives about 35,200 results. The BSF course must be held in a very large room.)
First, the preface and the e-mail:
Dr. Stephen Mak treats terminal [sic] ill cancer patients by "un-orthodox" way [sic] and many patients recovered. He explained to me before he is using solar energy to clear the illnesses of his patients. He believes on [sic] natural healing in the body against illnesses.*
[The carelessness of the people passing on this garbage is evident by the fact that none of them even bothers to clean up the grammar of this alleged friend of Dr. Mak.]
Thanks for the email on fruits and juices. It is one of the strategies to heal cancer. As of late, my success rate in curing cancer is about 80%. Cancer patients shouldn't die. The cure for cancer is already found. It is whether you believe it or not? [sic] I am sorry for the hundreds of cancer patients who die under the conventional treatments. Very few can live for 5 years under the conventional treatments and most live for only about 2 to 3 years. The conventional treatments do not make any difference because most cancer patients also live for about 2 to 3 years without undergoing any treatment. It is difficult to cure those cancer patients who have undergone chemo and radiotherapy as their cells are toxic and weak. When there is a relapse, the cancer will spread very fast as the resistance is poor.

Thanks and God bless.
Dr Stephen Mak
I'm not an expert on cancer treatment, but I do know that there are different kinds of cancers and that some cancers are much more amenable to treatment than others. Some have high success rates and some don't. A competent writer on this subject would not make a blanket statement about cancer patients' survival rates. Furthermore, even I know that treating cancer with toxic chemicals doesn't make the cells toxic, as this person claims. The claim about relapses and rapid spreading because "resistance is poor" is something I'd like to see the evidence for.
The top result of my Google search for "Dr Stephen Mak" was a site called Morning Liberty run by a fellow named Robert "RJ" A. Hender Jr. Google says it found about 2,450,000 results for "Dr Stephen Mak." I narrowed it down to under 100,000 by adding "cancer cure" to the search. Now the number one hit was a site called Panacea-BOCAF (BOCAF stands for building our children a future). RJ posts the phony cancer cure material without comment. Panacea-BOCAF lists many phony cancer cures. The type of person who might be attracted to this site is revealed by the first message one sees:
History and contiuned [sic] recent cases have shown that there have been many alternative cancer cure treatments in existence which have shown successful results. These results remain virtually un known [sic] by consensus reality and go un reported [sic] to the mainstream medical establishment. This is due to (as case files here illustrate) suppression!
Completely oblivious to the contradiction, the next paragraph asserts that the mainstream press continues to report on the success of these suppressed alternatives. I've written about a couple of these cures and their promoters, e.g., Royal Rife and radionics and Hulda Clark. Panacea-BOCAF lists Dr. Stephen Mak as a "research link" that takes you to Chris Walker's blog where, under the heading of "Eating Fruit", Walker posts the alleged article by the alleged Dr. Mak with the prefatory remark "I got this article by email and it sounds perfect from a Tibetan Medicine angle."
I looked at about a dozen of the pages that reproduced the Mak stuff. None offer any critical comments except those offered by readers, some of whom recognize nonsense when they read it. One blog (YellowStarEssentials) posts Mak's stuff with the heading "Eat Fruit to Cure Cancer, Get Healthy and Lose Weight." Mak does claim to cure cancer in his alleged e-mail, but his article doesn't claim that fruit cures cancer. Rather the article puts forth a false claim that has been circulating on the Internet since 1998, according to Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com. A chef living in Singapore, Devagi Sanmugam, claimed that fruit should be eaten on an empty stomach because that will help you "detoxify," get energy, and lose weight. This claim was also made by Dr. Herbert Shelton (1895-1985), a naturopath who is cited in the Mak article and who was arrested and jailed many times for practicing medicine without a license.
Over the years, Sanmugam's advice about eating fruit on an empty stomach has made the rounds in various e-mails with additional claims. One added bit of misinformation is the notion that as soon as fruit comes into contact with food in the stomach and digestive juices "the entire mass of food begins to spoil." That bit of nonsense about food rotting in your gut if you eat fruit after other food may have originated with Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, according to Mikkelson. The Diamonds authored Fit for Life, a collection of false, misleading, and unproven claims about food and health.
Another anonymous e-mail added a list of several fruits with some accurate information about their vitamin and mineral contents joined with unsubstantiated claims about dissolving kidney stones by eating oranges, lowering your risk of colon cancer by eating apples, relieving constipation by eating guavas, "boosting your immune system," and preventing cancer with antioxidants. These e-mails seem to be a variation on the Chinese whispering game. Eventually, a version emerged that includes the claim that eating fruits prevents cancer. In any case, the Mak article making the rounds today seems to be a cut and paste job from several e-mails going back more than a decade. Along the way, a few juicy tidbits of misinformation have been added, besides the notions about fruits already mentioned:
You can prevent gray hair, balding, nervous outbursts, and dark circles under the eyes by eating fruit on an empty stomach.
Eating fruits on an empty stomach leads to a longer and happier life.
If you drink canned or bottled fruit juice, drink it mouthful by mouthful slowly because you must let it mix with your saliva before swallowing it.
This last bit of nonsense about cold water causing cancer is defended by the following piece of "reasoning":
.... the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this ‘sludge’ reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.
The idea that fruits cure cancer is being promoted by Raj and Suzanne who run a website called A Way of Life. They publish articles online by such characters as Jasmuheen and Deepak Chopra. They list Dr. Stephen Mak as one of their authors. His only article is the one we've been talking about. A Google search for "Eating Fruit - This Opened My Eyes" yields more than 20,000 potential sources for a set of unsubstantiated medical claims that have been exposed as fraudulent many times during the past decade. There's nothing wrong with eating fresh fruit and veggies, but almost every claim these fruitarians make has no scientific merit whatsoever. That would be evil enough, but the thousands who pass on this misinformation as if it were unquestionably true are guilty of a greater evil: they don't question either the source or the claims being made. They're paving the road to hell with their uncritical devotion to anyone claiming to have a natural cure that "they" have suppressed. No wonder Kevin Trudeau has so many groveling suppliants.
Sites to check for the truth: Skepdic.com  Snopes.com and Hoax-slayer.com
Peter’s Piece

Who, and where, is Dr Stephen Mak?

In my search for the elusive Dr Stephen Mak, the nearest I was able to get to him was a Dr Stephen Mark, a psychiatrist in Waco, Texas who has a clean record with his patients and the authorities. He probably wastes a good part of his day explaining to people that he is a Mark rather than a Mak.

Mak only Googles in connection with the above so-called cures and advice. It would be safe to conclude that if he exists at all (and he possibly does under another name) he is probably making a lot of money from gullible people before they die.

If anyone has any positive proof that Dr Stephen Mak is a real person, please post your evidence in the comment space below.






BEYOND THE SEAS

This is my latest historical novel  Beyond the Seas When twelve-year-old orphan Nathaniel Asker is shipped from the back alleys of London to...