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FEED YOUR BRAIN- PART TWO

Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw March 6, 2025

[As you know, Durk and Sandy have passed on. Durk as “Skye” was beloved on TTP. We are preserving his and Sandy’s legacy through these “Live Long and Prosper” TTP columns. The following is an interview they gave to us that is abundantly informative. Greg and Michelle Pryor of Life Priority]

GREG: Moving over to the other two neurotransmitters …

DURK: Noradrenaline is nature’s natural speed. It is your “get up and go” juice. But unlike speed, it doesn’t cause free radical damage that burns out the neurons in your brain. Noradrenaline … if you have enough of it you’re full of energy, you’re excited, you’re self-confident. If you don’t have enough of it …

SANDY: You can be depressed, but you’re certainly going to be having less energy, less drive. You may just lose interest in doing most things.

DURK: If you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning and maybe even feel like you’d like to go jump out a window, except it’s too much trouble…. chances are you’re suffering from an inadequate supply of noradrenaline.

But in the case of people who, getting older, don’t have the spring to their mental step they did when

they were teenagers, it’s because their noradrenaline levels drop off with age. So we designed a nutritional formulation to correct that!

THE SHTARKER AND THE SHTOONKS

Thomas Lifson March 6, 2025

Watching President Trump speak to both Houses of Congress, two colorful Yiddish words kept floating into my mind.

I believe that each captures an aspect of the reality of that unprecedented gathering that the English language fails to convey with the same level of nuance.

As President Trump spoke, I kept thinking that he’s a real shtarker, which is often translated as “tough guy,” but which carries considerable historical context.

At Quora, Wolf Krakowski explains:

“In Europe, studious, myopic Jews who spent their days warming a yeshivah bench were easy pickins for their loutish, violent anti-Semitic neighbors and were often attacked and beaten. Every community had their tough guy (shtarker = strong one) who could be summoned to prevent or mitigate a beating, by showing up….”

TRUMP’S VIBRANT RETURN

Mark Alexander March 5, 2025

In case you have not heard, according to every mainstream media outlet, Donald Trump did NOT give a State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. Once a year, some Leftmedia scribe does a Google search on "state of the union" and then copies and pastes Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 from our Constitution, which defines the information the president is to give Congress. Then, all the other outlets reprint that post.

But according to the American Presidency Project, the fact that it was technically not a State of the Union address makes little difference because the "impact of such a speech on public, media, and congressional perceptions of presidential leadership and power should be the same."

Gosh, I am so glad the MSM spent the 48 hours ahead of Trump's address clearing that up....

The last time Trump did deliver a State of the Union speech was February 4, 2020. It was a remarkable testament to his previous three years, despite being plagued with attacks by deep state conspirators endeavoring to undermine his administration in collaboration with impeachment charades.

Trump began that address by declaring, "I say to the people of our great country and to the members of Congress: The state of our Union is stronger than ever before."

That was all about to change — dramatically.

WHO REALLY POLITICIZED THE PENTAGON?

Victor Davis Hanson March 4, 2025

Is the era of rounding up government or academic “experts” to declare their support or opposition to ongoing controversies over? Public declarations by Anthony Fauci and his associates to follow their “expertise” or “science” did not work out well and persuaded few.

Recall the 1,200 partisan healthcare “professionals” of June 2020 who flipped to assure us that it was mysteriously now medically OK to break quarantines—but only if to publicly protest during the post-George Floyd unrest.

Most recently, five former Secretaries of Defense—William Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, and Lloyd Austin—co-authored a public letter to Congress. They blasted the Trump administration’s dismissals from command of several generals—including the current chairman of the joint chiefs, General C. Q. Brown Jr.

This will not work out well.

GRATITUDE: THE ANTIDOTE TO THE HEDONIC TREADMILL

Dr. Joel Wade March 5, 2025

“Hedonic adaptation” is the term that researchers use to describe this capacity to adapt to different circumstances while staying within a range of overall happiness. This gift of adaptability is a wonderful advantage in a continually changing world, full of endless creativity, unanticipated events, and unpredictable possibilities, good or bad.

It also means that we adapt to good things relatively quickly, so the happiness we experience from them is often fleeting.

…then we need another good thing.

…and another.

And when we become used to the availability of good things, when we come to expect them as a regular experience of a good life, we enter what’s called the “Hedonic Treadmill.”

Needing more and more good things in order to feel what we’ve come to expect as a baseline of happiness can be exhausting. It can undermine the sense of happiness we enjoy with each positive experience.

And in that way we can undermine our sense of being happy about our life.

But there is an antidote; something we can deliberately practice and gets easier over time, and that can significantly affect our happiness:

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: SMUGGLERS PARADISE

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 7, 2025

Khasab, Musendam, Enclave of Oman, October 2006. The sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil.

I came here to see the Persian smugglers. Go down to the wharves in Khasab and you will see them piled high with waterproof-wrapped bales of clothes, cases of soft drinks and juice, cartons of children's toys and electronic goods, an entire shopping mall of stuff, all ready to be crammed and tied down into 20 ft. long open speedboats with powerful outboard motors capable of outrunning Iranian Navy patrols.

There are dozens, scores, of waiting speedboats. The run from Khasab harbor to coves on the Iranian coast or the Iranian island of Qeshm takes about three hours. An average night will see dozens of speedboats racing across the Strait of Hormuz smuggling goods into Iran. The smugglers couldn’t have been more friendly to me. They hate the mullahs and are proud they are helping poor people in Iran. I had a great time with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #169 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

LION ON A CAT

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 6, 2025

Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti, Tanzania. Ngorongoro is one of the world’s great natural wonders, created over two million years ago when the cone of a gigantic volcano collapsed in on itself. The crater floor is over 100 square miles, teeming with African wildlife that includes the densest population of lions in the world. You’re only allowed to drive on certain dirt roads to see them, but lions sometime have different ideas.

Here’s a lioness we found sunning herself on the hood of a Caterpillar road-grader, completely unconcerned by our presence. We spend a few days exploring Ngorongoro to cap off our safaris in isolated roadless areas of the Serengeti. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #286, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

WHAT A REAL CANNIBAL LOOKS LIKE

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 5, 2025

On the remote north side of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu, there lives a cannibal tribe called the Big Nambas. The men wear a penis gourd wrapped in pandamus fibers, and eat “man long pig,” cooked human enemies. You have to trek over mountains of thick jungle to reach them. When I was able to years ago, there were a few men who continued the practice. This gentleman is one of them. I was in no danger as they were very kind and gracious to me.

That wasn’t the case a century ago when the first explorers, Martin & Osa Johnson, reached them. Their 1918 film, “Cannibals of the South Seas,” made the Johnsons famous, and you can see it on YouTube. Today they are far more benign. It is an extraordinary experience to meet a culture of fearsome reputation and realize they are people like you and me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #103 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

ELEPHANTS IN THE SAHARA

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 4, 2025

10,000 years ago, the Sahara was green, with lakes, rivers, and such an abundance of animals it was a hunting paradise for people who lived here. You’ll find their petroglyphs carved on to rock outcroppings like this that my son Jackson and I found on a Trans-Sahara Expedition in 2003.

The Milankovitch astronomical cycles that drive Earth’s climate produced a West African monsoon that greened the Sahara back then. When the cycles shifted ending the monsoon, the Sahara turned dry desert as it remains today. Political cycles that permitted a peaceful crossing of the world’s greatest desert have also shifted, making this too dangerous now.

A Trans-Sahara Expedition is one of the world’s great adventures. Hopefully, one will be possible again in the not-too-distant future. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #7 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

THE TOMB OF TAMERLANE

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 3, 2025

This is the interior of “Gur Emir,” the tomb of Tamerlane (1336-1405) in Samarkand, the great Silk Road city now in Uzbekistan. Tamerlane was the last of the nomadic conquerors of Eurasia, a Turkic-Mongol whose conquests extended from New Delhi to eastern Turkey.

Gur Emir is only one of a multitude of extraordinary sights in legendary Samarkand that make being here a life-memorable experience. WWe’ll be here during our exploration of Central Asia soon again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #59 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

LOOK, SON!

ToThePoint March 7, 2025

HALF-FULL REPORT 02/28/25

Dr. Jack Wheeler February 28, 2025

Holy Moly, Sheikh Ratoli, there’s so much going on this week, it’s hard to know where to begin – but Branco’s summation of where the Dems and their media propagandists are now as good as any.

For that pinpoints it, yes? The Dems are drowning in the swamp of TDS rooting for America to lose while Trump, DOGE, and the GOP fight for America to win.

It’s a Dem Two-Fer Trap. The utter failure of their key issues to ruin America’s culture of moral decency has driven them straight into mental empoisonment:

While being paralyzed in a state of shock and awe over what T47 is doing to them:

NO FEAR OF THE EVIL EYE: THE FASCIST METAPHYSICS OF MARXISM

Dr. Jack Wheeler February 24, 2025

[This is the seventh chapter of Part I: Envy of my forthcoming book NO FEAR OF THE EVIL EYE: Key to Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity. Previous sections and chapters can be accessed here. I will really appreciate any feedback you have.]

The motto of a free society is: Live and Let Live. The motto of a communist society is that of Lenin: Kto-Kovo, Russian for "who-whom," who conquers whom.

As Stalin said, "The fact is, we live according to Lenin's formula of kto-kovo."^[1] If the only way to achieve your goals is at someone else's expense and the only way they can achieve their goals is at your expense, then the only question left is who conquers whom.

Place this perspective in a tribal context in which the individual subordinates his will and identity to that of a tribe and you get class or racial warfare.

Just as Marxism is a primitive way of thinking, recasting envious black magic as exploitation, it is equally atavistic in defining a human being's identity as a member of a tribe, urban tribes such as the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, racial tribes such as non-white “people of color” versus “white.”

Class warfare, or the racial warfare of Marxist “identity politics,” is urban tribal warfare, with the Marxists as sorcerers telling the tribes they have to fight each other.

The intellectual justification for this tribal mentality is also a regression, namely, back to the worldview of pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (533-475 B.C.), which was shown to be nonsensical by Aristotle 2,300 years ago.^[2]

The metaphysics of Marxism is so bizarre and off-the-wall that your first temptation will be to say, "Oh, come on — no one can actually believe that!"

Yet the following is what every school child in the Soviet Union had, and continues to have in Communist China, drummed into his or her brain as a catechism – and is the unspoken foundation of what “progressive” professors in elite US universities drill into their students that turns them into snowflakes today.

FEED YOUR BRAIN

Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw February 27, 2025

[As you know, Durk and Sandy have passed on. Durk as “Skye” was beloved on TTP. We are preserving his and Sandy’s legacy through these “Live Long and Prosper” TTP columns. The following is an interview they gave to us that is abundantly informative. Greg and Michelle Pryor of Life Priority]

DURK: Everything that happens in your brain … every memory … every thought … every emotion … every innovation … every “wow, that’s great!” … is a result of the release of neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters are not drugs; they are natural substances made by nerve cells in your brain that transmit messages from one nerve cell to another across the synapse that divides them. That’s why they are called neurotransmitters. They are made the nutrients in your diet, but there is a very good chance that even if you have a good diet, you’re not getting the optimum amount of the raw materials that your brain can use to make neurotransmitters. LIFT is our formula created to help support more get up and go and help eliminate mental fatigue.

The three most important neurotransmitters have been known for a long time: acetylcholine, noradrenaline, and dopamine.

Acetylcholine is involved in memory and organization—the way you order things in your mind, the way you retrieve them in an orderly manner. It’s also involved in focus and concentration. A good example of what happens if you don’t have enough cholinergic activity can be found in a person who has taken the psychoactive drug atropine or any other anticholinergic drug. In many respects, they resemble someone with Alzheimer’s disease.

ANGRY DONORS TURN OFF THE DEM MONEY TAP

Amie Parnes and Hanna Trudo February 25, 2025

Democrats are anxious to rebuild their party on the heels of President Trump’s victory in November. But they have a major problem as they try to refashion their brand: The money isn’t there.

Democrat donors — from bundlers to small dollar donors — say they are still angry about the election results and uninspired by anything their side has put forward since then.

“I’ll be blunt here: The Democrat Party is effing terrible. Plain and simple,” one major Democrat donor said. “In fact, it doesn’t get much worse.”

A second donor was equally as pointed. “They want us to spend money, and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking. … The thing that’s clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016. They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies and to what end?”

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