If you’re in field beware of ticks and their new virus.

If you love being outdoors, camping, going into the woods and walking on trails, you may want to be extra careful and take some extra precautions.

 

 

There’s been a new deer tick virus discovered in our area and this newly found virus may be deadly.

This virus, which has been found in Albany, Columbia, Rensselaer and Saratoga Counties, is called the Powassan Virus. It affects people faster than Lyme Disease. Some of the symptoms from The Powassan Virus include headaches, being lethargic, fever and drowsiness.

Researchers from the Wadsworth Center, New York State’s public health laboratory have been doing studies on this virus and have discovered that there’s a one in 20 chance that if a person is bitten by a deer tick, they’ll have the fatal illness.

In the story from News 10 ABC, it’s also been discovered that there’s an increase in deer ticks in our area. Some of things that you can do to help to prevent the disease is to use insect repellent, where long pants, especially in those wooded areas and tuck your pants into your socks.

We want everyone to be safe this summer.

The Center for Disease Control has this to say about Powassan Virus:

Symptoms & Treatment

Symptoms

• Many people who become infected with Powassan (POW) virus do not develop any symptoms.
• The incubation period (time from tick bite to onset of illness) ranges from about 1 week to 1 month.
• POW virus can infect the central nervous system and cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and meningitis (inflammation of the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord).
• Symptoms can include fever, headache, vomiting, weakness, confusion, loss of coordination, speech difficulties, and seizures. 
• Approximately half of survivors have permanent neurological symptoms, such as recurrent headaches, muscle wasting and memory problems. 
• Approximately 10% of POW virus encephalitis cases are fatal.

Treatment

• There are no vaccines or medications to treat or prevent POW virus infection.
• If you think you or a family member may have POW virus disease, see your health care provider for evaluation and diagnosis.

Persons with severe POW illnesses often need to be hospitalized. Treatment may include respiratory support, intravenous fluids, and medications to reduce swelling in the brain.

Transmission

Powassan (POW) virus is an RNA virus that belongs to the genus Flavivirus. It is related to West Nile, St. Louis encephalitis, and Tick-borne encephalitis viruses.

Humans become infected with POW virus from the bite of an infected tick. Humans do not develop high enough concentrations of POW virus in their bloodstreams to infect feeding ticks. Humans are therefore considered to be “dead-end” hosts of the virus.

POW virus is maintained in a cycle between ticks and small-to-medium-sized rodents. In North America, three main enzootic cycles occur: Ixodes cookei and woodchucks, Ixodes marxi and squirrels, and Ixodes scapularis and white-footed mice. Ixodes cookei and Ixodes marxi rarely bite humans. Ixodes scapularis often bite humans and is the primary vector of Lyme disease.

There are two types of POW virus in the United States. The first type, often called lineage 1 POW virus, appears to be associated with Ixodes cookei or Ixodes marxi ticks. The other type, lineage 2 POW virus is sometimes called Deer tick virus, and is associated with Ixodes scapularis ticks. Both lineages have been linked to human disease.

Cases reported to CDC through 2001 – 2012

 

There is no specific medicine to cure or treat POW virus disease. Treatment for severe illnesses may include hospitalization, respiratory support, and intravenous fluids.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!

Till next Time,

Squatch-D

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Quotes of the day & Radio Show Update…

“Haven’t we all seen the ‘meat with the hair on it’ trick before??? You remember the one that’s DNA was Human/Opossum back in ‘08???”

“Don’t sell you cabbages twice, in this case…like a dozen times.”

                                                      – Steve Kulls 6/19/14

 

A brief not on my venting of yesterday…some good news!

I spoke with the person whom I called traitor. He apologized for wording something that could easily have been misconstrued, and I understand that. I apologized for being brash and not communicating these perceptions sooner.

Bottom line is that’s fixed to a good degree, which makes me feel much better.

But he made me realize a few things people may not know about my personality and feelings.

•  Sometimes people, even ones I know for 25 years, take my nicety for naivety. Not the case. My parents taught me to be polite. Sometimes I stray from that, but I am only human.
• I choose my battles. I bite my tongue, sometimes to point blood is drawn. But ask me privately, I just may give you an earful.
• Don’t expect to be brought in on something and expect to be in charge. I value ideas, and I will consider, but in something I built, and shed blood, sweat and tears on, lost many a nights sleep over and have paid the price emotionally at times, guess what? I have the final say no matter how much I value you, because ultimately I am the one who bears the responsibility. And that goes for ANY other business venture outside of the crypto or paranormal world, which is why the door slammed shut a couple of times on something that came so close.  
• I respect different ideas, and even though I may feel strongly on a topic, say someone’s evidence for example, other people have the right to voice their own opinion. Debate has a time and place…sometimes even privately.
• Don’t take things out of context which was not part of your conversation judge it as serious because it was sarcastic parody. (Example… Something equals four, is it 1+1? No…)

Okay…enough being a “Crypto-Crank”… stay tuned for more commentary, investigation and analysis! 

Squatch-D Radio or perhaps something else?

There’s a lot going on now, because I and Chris have been putting some boots on the ground, and / or in planning stages of some projects unrelated to the show or the field.

But I would same come the Fall, the show will return in some format, and we’re looking at a new and exciting way to serve it up to the audience. Most likely will involve the use of Google and YouTube services, but nothing is in concrete as of yet.

We kind of miss the Paranormal TV Network format at times, where we were Squatch-D TV. But when the network Founder and President, Laura Kimberly resigned for personal reasons, it kind of fell second fiddle to the other network operations and eventually the network eventually flopped without Laura’s leadership.

We enjoyed the ability to show our followers a multi-platform environment. Once we had that video format, going back to the old radio format, just never felt right.

With BTR it was never cost efficient and we still feel BTR takes advantage of their hosts. The only problem it was the most reliable platform to do a show.

I guess we still are not over BTR welching on their partnerships with their hosts and saying “F.U.” to the people that built them into what they are today.

But BTR never depended on an engineer or human factor, making it convenient albeit not having the greatest quality of sound and quite “prickish” at times for some of the listeners.

So that’s what’s cooking in our coconut on that!

Till Next Time,

Squatch-D

“The Reboot”

Something else is needed other than a reboot

Several have come forth with a theory that Bigfoot research needs a reboot, but in reality what it needs is a boot in the ass, maybe even out the door.

In this convoluted world we have a lot of different view points that Bigfoot is flesh and blood or something else. I have been content to let that argument lay by itself.

But when enough people hear these things without being placed in check, it becomes the new “normal.” 

Without evidence… well I have a hard  time of that.

Now people can argue the semantics of the evidence of Bigfoot as a whole, but there is evidence, just none that is accepted by the scientific community.

But just who the hell is the scientific community anyway?

Are they not just people with fancy schooling and opinions anyway?

Are they “super-human” not fallible to the common things that the average layman are?

BULLSHIT!

Here’s just a few hoaxes in  the last 100 years or so pulled on the scientific community, well…by the scientific community for some sort of gain or game.

Piltdown Man

The whole thing started in 1912 when Charles Dawson claimed to find some interesting bones in a gravel pit.

A paleontologist at the British Museum assembled the bones and believed that they represented the "missing link" between humans and apes.

40 years later scientists proved that the Piltdown man was a deliberate attempt at paleontological fraud.

 Archaeoraptor

In 1999 National Geographic described this creature as the "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds.

Yeah, not so much.

Turns out this "fossil" found in China was actually a forgery constructed from rearranged pieces of real fossils from different species.

Disappearing Blonde Gene

Every generation or so, an alarm is sounded over the belief that natural blonds will soon go the way of the dodo.

The most hoax happened in 2002 when news organizations from the BBC to CNN quoted what they believed to be a World Health Organization report that blonds would disappear within 200 years, because blondness was caused by a recessive gene that was dying out.

Turns out the WHO had never done such a study.

The Nacirema Tribe

The Nacirema were supposedly a tribe of people living in North America, as described by Horace Miner in his anthropological paper, published in 1956.

The tribe Miner described had many odd rituals including "scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument" and another ritual that "consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures."

It was actually a satire of everyday American life. "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backward.

The Rum Island Hoax

Heslop Harrison, an established academic and Fellow of the Royal Society, was in 1948 accused by John Raven, a University of Cambridge classics tutor, of making false claims to have discovered certain plant species on the Isle of Rum on the west coast of Scotland. Whether or not such grasses were on Rum is pivotal to a theory that the islands escaped the last ice age.

*Various sources.

Motive theories by the scientist aside, already we’ve seen one Bigfoot DNA study, being prepared for history to be included in this type of citation, if not for the scientist involved sloshing over belief versus fact… out of eleven “Bigfoot conspiracy theories,” this on was at the top.

A DNA TEST PROVED THAT BIGFOOT IS A PART-HUMAN HYBRID… AND DESERVES U.S. CITIZENSHIP!

Texas veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum claimed last November to have proved via sasquatch DNA sample that the legendary apes are partially human. She even went so far as to insist that the Government recognize them as “an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights."

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/48870/11-crazy-bigfoot-conspiracy-theories

Take away that last sentence, it doesn’t sound all that crazy does it? But add it, and we wonder why Bigfoot research gets laughed at.

You know we see a couple of our much respected scientists, much admired by followers of this field for years, now laying support to a hoaxer. One just glancing but the other much more in depth. We’ve seen this before as outlined here before, (Kranz and Cook in support of some of Ivan Marx’s works.)

But today one scientist chose to ignore in place of what “he saw” and a “visceral reaction,” rather than what can be proved or the empirical evidence before his eyes. Or the ugly proven backstory about the man he now sits on the bench next to. So just diminish or claim ignorance to the back story.

When you do a show with someone, you do some homework. At least due diligence dictates such for a person in such a position.

Maybe it’s a case of being polite to a person he is co-hosting a radio show with. Maybe he doesn’t want to see it, because he’s been vested with him in a popular television show. I just don’t know. The TV show is one thing, but continuing to co-host a radio show, implies acceptance no matter what is said after the fact.

What I say about the skeptic scientists, touting opinion rather than fact is applicable here.

What is standards for them is standards for us too. Opinions without evidence, regardless of what ever title comes before or after your name is, unless you are not human, it is just OPINION.

I laugh at some people (a guy by the name Terry comes to mind)  trying to make a name for themselves with claims people are faking the stuff debunking Standing’s garbage.

Fact is the photo came from Standing himself further proving the huckster he is. And we’ve outlined all the steps people can take on their own here to duplicate our results. So ignore the truth Terry. Hence the term ignorant.

The fact remains, that Standing made entirely up the area Sylvanic, and was planning a Blair Witch (Released in 1999) type movie. But some Bigfoot researchers took this online game (Blair Witch too had a website touting the authenticity of their movie as well). Hmm …

“The Blair Witch Project is thought to be the first widely released movie marketed primarily by internet. The movie’s official website featured fake police reports and "newsreel-style" interviews. Due to this, some people initially thought it was an actual documentary about the ‘missing’ teenagers. These augmented the movie’s found footage style to spark debates across the internet over whether the movie was a real-life documentary or a work of fiction.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project

Included was a movie in Blair Witch style, featuring what is thought to be Standing’s sister, doing the voice and filming, and was known as Sylvanic Film 1, which has disappeared from any Standing owned site, for good reason.

But people like this Terry, that make such unsupported claims, with unwarranted malice, not only have no place in the spectrum of investigation, or research, but are ignorant. I call them the source of a lot of our troubles in the Bigfoot community. But now even respected folks are beginning to emulate that type of behavior.

It is so sad that some people want to have evidence of the existence of Bigfoot so badly, that they would rather live in fantasy land, and accept the non-scientific and live in their own bubble and say what it ever it takes to stay in that bubble. (And unfortunately no matter what you talk about, politics, religion, sports, it is the extreme ends of these, that folks fall into this trap.)

Didn’t we just see that in the last couple of years with an uneducated buffoon.

See that’s the difference hoaxers don’t get. When you are a buffoon, and have bad PR such as “Jake and the Fat Man,” scientists do not find you palatable.

When you are nice, soft spoken, and caring such as a Marx and Standing…there’s your ingredient.

Standing can state very intelligently and eloquently that Sasquatch bury their dead. But archaeologically, bones that are buried are more likely to be preserved and thus found. So there is Standing sounding scientific, why no bones are found, yet in complete adverse to science.

Remember a con game is an abbreviation for “confidence game.”

That’s why at first people were taken by “Jake and the Fat Man” at first.

“They were so nice and congenial,” was a comment when a group of Crypto-folks went to visit “Jake” in Texas.

You don’t get people to believe in you by being an asshole.

Back to the scientists…

Fact is these fine folks (and I do mean that sincerely) in science have been trained in science.

 What they haven’t been trained in is public relations.

When they go out on the cuff, and don’t do their due diligence, and later are proved wrong or their theory sounds kind of out there, even for Bigfoot research, they embarrass us all.

Some who have been proven wrong or have no evidence to back their claims, have taken on the new program of…Ignore it, deny it, chose to diminish it with the least amount of noise.

Well something is wrong… and I am no longer quiet, nor am I choosing to ignore it.

“Scientists are not Gods, Prophets, Presidents, nor Kings. They are human beings, subject to all the fallacies a human is capable of being vulnerable to.”

                                                        -Steve  Kulls, June 2014

 

Airing laundry…a traitor in my midst

Sadly, that’s not the only problem. See I have problems with people being two faced. If people keep close eye on what I do, there has been a person replaced a while ago.

And folks know, that I have dealt with this kind of thing before, but I need to get this off my chest so please grant me the liberty of doing such.

First by destroying a 25 year friendship with someone, by feeding both sides bullshit. Stirring the pot. Took me a while to figure out my friend’s anger, and why a knee jerk reaction angered him more. I realized how this jackass I let in, operates. And I feel the guilt of such.

I miss my best friend, but I think thanks to this ass feeding BS to both sides, it is probably irreparably destroyed.

Then later this Jackass insinuates, that I stole a logo design off of him I had designed for a paranormal group I co-founded. Mind you this is over a single symbol in the design. And the design and color of the symbol are much different them his.

I asked numerous people if they could see any similarities…bupkis. Apparently he felt he has a monopoly on this symbol which we found at least five other groups across the country using.

But he wanted to hear none of it, because it wasn’t about the design, it was the anger of starting our own paranormal group, instead of being a branch of his.

I hear he’s coming over 200 miles to go back into the areas, I showed him.

The group I had coexisted with prior to that, despite our philosophical differences, earned the use of that area.

The old team

As far as the other team, I can co-exist with them, although I think they have a hard time dealing with being dumped and sometimes a quirky remark, very much unnecessary is thrown out there.

They got a little unnerved when I co-founded a paranormal group, but prior to my departure, they did create a Bigfoot organization, which was a direct conflict of what I was told a couple of years earlier their intentions were.

Moreover I saw information there that was in direct conflict with my own theories and were more to the fringe. It was becoming time to move on regardless of any other drama.

As for the Paranormal group it wasn’t a competition thing, it was a continuance of doing something I love to do, as well as supporting my significant other.

Were they riding coattails? Although they have much different philosophies than I now, I believe some out of spite, I considered it them earning their right of passage.

The old team put in blood, sweat and tears consistently for several years. We had many good times, laughs, excitement and a lot of good results.

I was called a mentor on many different occasions by them pertaining to the Crypto-field.

Much to as I indebted to them for cutting my teeth in the paranormal world.

There are other reasons as well, but those are not for public consumption, because it had nothing to do with the evidence they were putting forth, their integrity in evidentiary matters, up until I left, is without question. 

(Up until I left is said, because I cannot vouch for their evidence today as I am not associated with them so I cannot verify. Such is not meant as a derogatory remark.)

I have let bygones be bygones.

Back to the traitor in my midst…

Three months of being in my research area didn’t give him that right to steal it, or corrupt it.

But he does not care. He was riding coattails. He wanted to be noticed. He wanted to be in control. Fortunately, he blanked himself out of any good favor. Expecting me to cave on his latest whim.

Nonetheless I still tried to remain his friend.

But the final straw was when I hear insinuations, because I went on my own for thirty-five minutes during the day time in a public park. I’ve been going there on my own for thirteen years. I think I’ve earned that.

He thinks people don’t talk especially when he’s talking behind my back about me. Then he wonders why I unfriended him. Really? Naïve young man. 

I have three words for him…

Now I won’t name names, because the people in the know, already know about all of this, for some time. Funny thing is he perceives these people as being ignorant but they all know what he’s about.

And mark my words… he’s gonna be calling people telling them I got this all wrong.

Lastly…

So if you’ve been wondering why I have been so quiet, it’s been all just holding in for quite some time.

This isn’t for condolences, nor was it for advice. Sometimes I can be wise beyond my years.

Sometimes.

This is the airing of my feelings and should certain people cross this blog once in a while like I think they do…they now see where exactly I stand.

Time for my ‘’Reboot.”

 

Till Next Time,

Squatch-D