Baron's Son Kills Wife and Himself, Say Jersey Police

I was researching a branch of my tree and came across the obituary of a cousin three times removed or some such. In that article, the names of her family members were included. I added the names to my private, off line tree; these are my cousins, after all. I then went and looked at my DNA and found a person with one of those names... What a find! So I contacted her through Ancestry and we have been having a delightful time comparing notes and talking about the research we have done.

One of the things she lead me to was this article. Now von Boecklin is not biologically related to either of us, but peripherally so.

What a fascinating and heartbreaking story.
I found the article in the New York Times archive, from 1978. Written by Robert D. McFadden.

A 74-year-old “gentleman farmer” and cat fancier apparently shot and killed his wife, a pet cat and himself in a murdersuicide Thursday morning at their home on a 150acre estate near Blairstewn. N. J.. the New Jersey state police reported yesterday. The victims were identified as Rupprecht von Boecklin, the son of the late Baron. Rupprecht von Boecklin of Rust. Baden, Germany, and his wife. Mary, 36. Mr. von Boecklin. who moved Ito this country about 30 years ago. was ‘ known to neighbors as an eccentric who kept cats, as well as statues and figurines of cats, and had cat figures carved on his ovra tombstone years ago. Mr. an Mrs. von Boecklin were found shot at their estate, Red Cat Farm, in Warren County. about 10 miles from 1.112 Pennsylvania border in northwestern New Jersey, about 7:30 A.M. Thursday. Suicide Note Found Shortly before that the state police received a telephone call, allegedly from Mr. von Boecklin. The caller was said to have told the police that he had shot and killed his wife and was about to take his own life. Arriving a short time later, the police found Mrs. von Boecklin dead on the floor of a den and Mr. von Boecklin fatally wounded and lying on a bathroom flocr. Both had been shot once in the head. Mr. von Boecklin was pronounced dead about two hours later at Newton Memorial Hospital.
Authorities found a revolver believed used in the shootings and a purported suicide note by Mr. von Boecklin, but they refused to divulge the contents of the new or to give any information about the weapon, saying the investigation of the deaths was continuing. The police said that the couple's pet. cat had been shot in the head and killed, and that their German shepherd dog also had been shot in the head, though not fatally. Neighbors said yesterday that the cou- ple had lived a reclusive life on their farm. Trespassers, they said, were occasionally greeted at gunpoint, even if they had intended only to ask for directions. Statues and figurines of cats adorned the grounds, and signs depicting cat figures proclaimed the farm's name. At Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown, Mr. von Boecklin installed a tombstone for himself and his wife more than a decade ago. The red granite stone had a crouching cat carved at the top and a mouse in bas relief below, and bore inscriptions for Mr. and Mrs. von Boecklin giving, only years of birth. Several cats were buried in the family plot, according to neighbors, who said some members of the community had objected.

The U.S. threatened Ecuador into dropping a U.N. resolution to promote breastfeeding.

It has been such a long time since I have written, but I couldn't sit idly by and not post this little tidbit. If this is true, Holy shit. In this climate with everything going on between Russia and the US/Trump, it's hard to put into place, unless, of course it was a power play.

With all we know about the benefits of breast milk, why would the US threaten Ecuador over a resolution? The story tells us why... But that makes me want to throw up.

photo by Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images (taken from The Week Magazine on July 19, 2018)

The delegates to this spring's World Health Assembly, the annual gathering of the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, expected that a resolution to promote breastfeeding would pass easily. Then the U.S. delegation tried to water down the resolution, siding with the $70 billion infant formula industry, and when that failed, the State Department threatened Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the resolution, The New York Times reports, citing interviews with more than a dozen participants from several countries.

"The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid," the Times reports. "The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced." Other Latin American and African nations declined to step in, fearing reprisal from the U.S., and the U.S. also reportedly threatened to withdraw its funding for the WHO. "In the end, the Americans' efforts were mostly unsuccessful," the Times says. Why?

It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them. ... A Russian delegate said the decision to introduce the breast-feeding resolution was a matter of principle. "We're not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world." [The New York Times]

Decades of research shows that breast milk is the healthiest food for infants, providing nutrition as well as hormones and antibodies, and a 2016 study in the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that universal breastfeeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year and save $300 billion in global health-care costs. Infant formula sales have flatlined in wealthy nations but are still growing in the developing world.

Written by Peter Weber at the New York Times.

I found it in the Week, in the July 20th edition.

Happy Mardi Gras, Y'All!
Go out and have some fun!

Gene editing: A path to "designer babies"?

So, whose DNA do they stick back in the area they cut out? And how did they figure this out? What might this mean for DNA for family research? Would there be another set of DNA in there from another person who was not in the room when the egg was fertilized?

“The era of human gene editing has begun,” said Vivek Wadhwa in Washington​Post.com. In a major biological breakthrough, a team led by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have successfully modified the DNA of human embryos to replace defective genes that cause a hereditary heart condition. The scientists used CRISPR, a “gene-editing system” that essentially cuts the faulty DNA portion out and replaces it with a healthy version of the gene. This is a monumental breakthrough—one that could eventually lead to the eradication of “all hereditary diseases,” including cystic fibrosis, early-onset Alzheimer’s, and some cancers. But it has sparked an ethics firestorm. Will gene editing also be used to make people taller, stronger, smarter? Where will we “draw the line”? There are already “plenty of people who wouldn’t think twice about dictating their embryo’s IQ,” said Nicole Russell in the Washington Examiner. The CRISPR research moves us a step closer to “designer babies.”

Sorry, but “these fears are closer to science fiction than they are to science,” said Pam Belluck in The New York Times. CRISPR alters just one gene with a harmful mutation; characteristics like intelligence and height are shaped by thousands of genetic variations. To prevent scientists from going too far with genetic modification, society simply needs strict laws, regulation, and oversight. Every advance of this type has produced “hysterical” predictions of engineered superbabies and mutants, said André Picard in The Globe and Mail (Canada). “We saw it when in vitro fertilization was pioneered” and “when Dolly the sheep was cloned.” Yes, there are potential perils, but with 10,000 single-gene disorders plaguing mankind, think of the “hurt, heartache, and premature death” we can prevent.

Be that as it may, there is still “a great deal we don’t know” about gene editing, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Once people start passing edited DNA to their offspring, “minor issues might become major ones.” When scientists first used genetic modification to create “more uniformly red” tomatoes, for example, they inadvertently “turned off the gene that gave tomatoes flavor.” Who knows what might happen when edited embryos grow and develop? Clearly, preventing disease and suffering is a worthwhile aim. But let’s “get human gene editing right rather than just getting it soon.”

Taken from the August 18, 2017 edition of The Week magazine.

Happy New Year!

I hope your year is full of wonderful surprises and new adventures! If you read this, will you leave a comment below?

Where your atoms came from

This is so interesting. I recently re-watched Bill Moyer's PBS interview with Joseph Campbell and what struck me was that Joseph Campbell used the existence of myths as the conduit for understanding our connectedness to the universe. That myths are our way of understanding that everything that we are made up of is in essence the universe. Powerful stuff.

And it brings me to my father... he was also very struck by this realization. He gave me the book The Power of Myth before he died. I wish I had asked my father more questions about what resonated for him - meaning, what in particular it was that struck him so profoundly. I wonder if he used the Hero's Journey to understand some of the aspects of his own life.

It is worth the watching. And now I need to go out and get the book again.

Taken from the Joseph Campbell Foundation web site.

As much as half of all the matter in the Milky Way, including the atoms that make up the human body, may have come from distant galaxies up to 1 million light-years away, reports NBCNews.com. Researchers at Northwestern and other universities used supercomputer simulations to study how galaxies evolve over billions of years. Exploding stars, known as supernovas, eject trillions of tons of atoms into space with such force that they can escape the gravitational pull of their own galaxy. Carried by powerful galactic winds consisting of gas particles from the supernova explosion, these atoms can travel across the universe at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second to another galaxy—which can then “steal” the material. It was previously thought galactic winds weren’t powerful enough to transfer a significant amount of mass from one galaxy to another. But this new analysis finds that the Milky Way absorbs about one sun’s worth of “star stuff” each year. In a very real sense, says co-author Daniel Anglés-Alcázar, “we are extragalactic visitors or immigrants in what we think of as our galaxy.”

Taken from the August 18th edition of The Week magazine.

Wine wards off diabetes

Back to moderation; as always. This was discussed back in August of 2016 on this blog, here. But even then I was late, as the Week magazine had mentioned it in October 2015. Ironically, readers may have noticed that I am doing the same thing again... writing a lot to clear off my desk.

Consuming alcohol every few days may help protect against type 2 diabetes—even more than not drinking at all. A team at Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health analyzed data from more than 70,000 healthy Danish adults who were surveyed about their health and drinking habits between 2007 and 2012. During that period, nearly 1,750 of the participants developed diabetes. The people who drank alcohol at a moderate rate were significantly less likely to develop the disease: Men who consumed 14 drinks a week had a 43 percent lower risk than teetotalers; women who had nine drinks a week had a 58 percent reduced risk. How often the alcohol was consumed made a difference: Participants who drank three to four days a week were about 30 percent less likely to develop diabetes than those who drank less than once a week. And wine, which contains chemicals that help manage blood sugar, appeared to be more beneficial than beer. Lead author Janne Tolstrup cautioned that the possible benefits of moderate drinking may well be outweighed by the potential health risks. “Alcohol is associated with 50 different conditions,” she tells BBC.com. “We’re not saying, ‘Go ahead and drink.’”

Taken from the August 18, 2017 edition of The Week magazine.

New Orleans turns 300 in 2018

Wow. It's going to be a fun year of celebrations in the city of New Orleans.

Happy New Year!

Wishing my readers good health and abundant happiness this year. May our world makes strides towards peace, acceptance and adventure.