According to Quantum Possibilities, “Clairgustance is the ability to taste substances without putting them in your the mouth.” The premise is that some people possess special insight to perceive the essence of something from the ethereal realm through instinctive taste, minimizing the need to use memory to catalogue them within the interior mind.

Part of the problem is that this particular claim contains obvious flaws which distracts from its credibility. How can one identify flavor without having first placed something on the tongue allowing texture, form and smell to be recalled at a later time? It is inconceivable to be able to do this unless some base of reference, dependent on memory is created to guide the interpretation of qualities unique to a substance.

In general, clairvoyance is closely associated with paranormal studies historically found in most cultures. Clairvoyants are often defined as religious or shamanistic individuals who meditate and are able to  exert high levels of personal discipline. They can also exist as the focus of cults who proclaim them as having “clear experiences,” strongly suggesting that their pronouncements are reliable and above suspicion. These people attract large numbers of individuals uncertain about the future, seeking those who they think can access energies that can help them avoid pain and suffering by creating  better choices or convincing illusions foretold from such a vision.

According to some historical documents, the earliest record of clairvoyance was made by Marquis de Puységur, who in 1784 was treating a peasant man, Victor Race, identified with feeble intelligence. It was reported that when in treatment, Race would enter a trance state and undergo personality changes that made him noticeably articulate. He proceeded to diagnosis his own disease and prescribe a course of treatment, as well as many illnesses of strangers. When the trance ended, he returned to his limited mental capacity totally unaware of anything he had said.

Although Puységur used the term clairvoyance, there is no evidence to support a belief in the paranormal since he was a follower of Franz Mesmer, the founder of the Mesmerism school of thought which included certain spiritual phenomena and magnétisme animal as its basis. The evolution of Mesmer’s ideas and practices led Scottish surgeon James Braid to develop hypnosis, a respected tool of psychiatry, in 1842.

There are a number qualities identified as part of the clairvoyant experience. They are usually refinements of the known senses of hearing, seeing, touching, taste and smell, extending into some realm that can only be individually perceived. They can suggest images from the past, visions of the future or be connected to objects such an heirloom.

Most skeptics argue that clairvoyance is the result of self delusion and a failure to consider chance occurrence, “If you test a clairvoyant in a scientific experiment, they will inevitably get a number of answers correct during a series of trials, much like the 20% chance of picking the correct possibility in a multiple choice test with five unknown choices.” This does not mean that there are any special abilities at work other than guessing. Non believers are quick to suggest that the clairvoyant experience should be amenable to established scientific scrutiny in order to be considered valid.

Try and explain that to someone who has had such an event that changed the course of their life and opened them to things they never knew they had. For them, there is no need to justify their ability since they implicitly understand the solitary and unique nature of the introspective experience.

Aside from water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage with a history steeped in rituals about the simple task of boiling water and dropping leaves into the pot.

According to myth, the emperor Shen Nung of China, who scholars say was well versed in science and the arts, ordered all of his subjects to boil water before drinking. Some historians believe this was based on a knowledge of medicine and the life cycle of germs. Others speculate that, “while the emperor was resting one day after traveling with an elaborate entourage, leaves from a nearby bush fell into the cauldron of boiling water being prepared for him. The monarch, noticing the flavourful aroma and dark color, ordered his food tasters to sample the drink. When the emperor finally sipped it himself, convinced that the tasters were not poisoned, he said ‘this is good.’”

It wasn’t until the Ch’a Ching was written in 800 A. D. by the renowned Lu Yu, an orphan raised by scholarly Buddhist monks in one of China’s finest monasteries. His training as an observer reflected a Zen Buddhist upbringing and led to the first comprehensive book written about tea and its evolution in culture. He recorded the various methods of it’s cultivation and preparation in ancient China that was eventually exported to imperial Japan by Zen missionaries, projecting Lu to near sainthood within his own lifetime.

Although this discovery was a step towards the development of herbal knowledge and the infancy of pharmaceuticals, Lu Yu still considered his life a failure and without meaning. Perhaps it was the realization that in all its glory, tea is nothing more then water with variable solvents open to interpretation when the liquid is poured from the cup and the clumps of leaves left behind reveal clues about the life cycle of whoever was drinking from the cup. This may have also been the origin of reading tea leaves, a form of divination.

Around the time of Socrates a lesser known philosopher wrote, “perspective is the ability to visualize two points on any horizontal line with a third point elevated in the distance allowing parallel lines to be drawn intersecting at the ‘vanishing point’ beyond which nothing is seen.”

An example of this occurs when vision is focused on a point along the horizon driving an automobile on a flat desert highway with cactus and sand on either side. Then, its noticed that the road in the distance disappears and becomes a dot. If the path has been traveled before, familiarity with what one expects to find is reinforced with confidence about what still lies hidden as memory saturates the event.

Artists of all sorts such as painters, sculpture’s and architects write using perspective in various ways to stimulate imagination  suggesting, “what lies beyond can be perceived with a little bit of flexibility surrounded by rational thought reflecting that which  is not visible,” recognizing it as a place where the hypothetical becomes tangible.

If the gaze is fixed and the horizon moves, a cause could be myodeopsia, a condition characterized by the appearance of spider’s web thread like spots moving as the field of vision shifts. Floaters as they are known in ophthalmology are small pieces of hardening vitreous structures that break off within the eye and move freely in the fluid causing shadows to be cast on the retina.

Even though they are common and considered more an  annoyance than anything seriously wrong with one’s visual capabilities, an exam by an ophthalmologist once a year is advisable.

Floaters are often a result of aging, a corneal abrasion or an infection. Some think they are  optical illusions  which are perceptual effects that arise from interpretations of an image by the brain rather then an entoptic phenomenon. Others may consider them a figment of science fiction but only those who have them know for sure.

Although The Nutritional Aspects Of Expanding Populations sounds like a worthy subject for serious study in Biochemistry and Nutrition especially when considering the impact of the large spike in population growth during the post war period and its sociological implications on the  baby boom generation, it became the basis for a landmark 1955 cinematic classic  about the development of a growth serum and how it could be used to solve the problem of overpopulation and world hunger, a neglected subject in the mid fifties.

The elixir depicted in this film adaptation is so potent its promise is in providing the complete nutritional needs of any growing organism, a claim overshadowed only by the myopic scientific experimentation focused solely on animal rather than plant life which could have made it more palatable for vegetarians and provide a sound basis for reducing cardio-vascular disease when coupled by increased exercise and the cessation of smoking.

The film is titled Tarantula and was directed by Jack Arnold and stars John Agar,  Leo J. Carroll and Mara Corday with an uncredited appearance of twenty-five year old Clint Eastwood as a jet pilot dropping napalm at the films’ climax. Arnold went on to direct The Incredible Shrinking Man two years later in 1957 considered by many as his masterpiece and  Eastwood became a multiple Oscar winning director.

In this scenario,  Professor Gerald Deemer  is a scientist with a just motive, a hero trying to avert food shortages which are predicted as a result of the world’s expanding population of two billion in 1955, a role passionately played by veteran character actor Leo J Carroll. This is the premise that sets it apart from most giant bug movies featuring  mutations caused by either nuclear weapons or a demented scientist. In this case its a result of noble intentions gone wrong with a sound display of scientific methodology and  multi layered sub plots such as a budding love story and a rare medical condition known as acromegaly artistically shot in black and white featuring an arid desert with whistling tumbleweeds. It is here Professor Deemer invents a special nutrient on which animals can exclusively thrive causing them to enlarge many times their normal size to serve as a source of food.

Harvested in the professors’ home laboratory are several over-sized rodents and a tarantula that escapes somewhere  in the California, Nevada area, hungry and lurking for prey, growing and yet undetected despite  leaving pools of arachnid venom and skeletal remains whenever it fed.  Why spiders and rodents were used to experiment on instead of cattle or sheep is left unexplained, but  perhaps it  suggests that Deemer thought there may be a time when a high protein diet would be defined by how many legs are on the plate.

Unthinkable imagery created by very sophisticated  visual effects and score, the film has a sharp   witty script written by Robert Fresco and  Martin Berkele based on a story by Ray Bradbury, yet its science fiction basis never diminishes the credibility that advancing bio technology may one day lead to the discovery of such a nutrient with unanticipated consequences.

When a very bored hotel concierge  asks Corday, a 1954 Playboy centerfold who  arrives in town as a biology student working on her Masters dissertation, The Nutritional Aspects Of Expanding Populations and Agar who plays the town doctor, “Well ain’t you going to introduce yourselves?” as they leave the hotel for a ride in his car.

“No” they respond in unison, as the hotel manager scratches his head and  mutters,   “Yep, it can be an awfully fast world.”

At present, the merits of health care insurance reform are increasingly at the forefront of public tension. However, the problem with this debate is that there has never been a system to reform in the first place. The current structure of private insurance evolved from a vacuum created by the lack of ideas to share the developments of advancing medical technology which demonstrated the ability to increase life span and extend the opportunity to live a longer and healthier life.

The only group that has total accessibility to the best medical care is the wealthy since they have so much money they can pay for the high cost without effecting their economic lifestyle. For most, insurance is the only way to pay for medical costs and avoid debt, until the price for coverage itself becomes so expensive that its weight threatens a financial disaster even in countries that have universal access run by the government, since the cost of medical care is rising everywhere, just at a slower rate then in the United States.

Until the personal need for health care becomes acute, thinking about it is as appealing as writing a will or purchasing life insurance by focusing attention on a subject influenced by anxiety. Most people know they are mortal, but that doesn’t mean they want to be reminded of it. That’s why sickness and end-of-life issues are difficult and often subject to the influence of superstition, overwhelmed by considering the theories of the unknown revealed in religion and myth.

When illness brings the issue to the forefront, it is then revealed whether one’s existing insurance is sufficient to cover whatever medical situation may arise. In most instances, it’s not enough. If a public outcry is unleashed, private interests concerned with maintaining the status quo, a lucrative industry, debate that a single payer system run by the government can only lead to declining quality because it creates no incentive to encourage competition which they claim would lower the cost of medical care. This has always been the argument against a single payer system, although decades of the private sector approach have failed to result in controlling the cost of medical care. This is why reform is needed.

HMO’s are businesses and are accountable to their stockholders, existing as private co-operatives that maximize profits by excluding those with pre-existing conditions unless they can get coverage as a benefit of working for a large company that can negotiate a package for employees. If jobs are lost, so is medical coverage. For that reason, equating health insurance with employment needs to be reconsidered. Some people argue that this is a threat to free enterprise; others see it as a moral dilemma with cultural consequences.

Private insurers claim that they comply with all the regulations that exist although requirements placed on them vary widely from state to state, creating too many different markets to keep track of, a real problem when trying to develop uniform standards. Relying on them to monitor themselves is similar to what happened on Wall Street. These companies specialize in creating complicated forms and booklets with paragraphs that are difficult to comprehend without a knowledge of medical terminology or a familiarity with contracts.

Individual policies are so expensive for those who are already sick to intentionally discourage them from seeking insurance. They are forced to get treatment at the emergency room which drives up the price for medical care because Medicaid, a state run system, pays the cost by increasing taxes for everyone. Medicare, also a government program, is a problem as physicians, unhappy with the cost limitations imposed by the government, are increasingly refusing to take on Medicare patients just as the baby-boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, approach the age of 65, adding more stress to a system already close to collapse.

This is where we are now as President Obama tries to convince the public that in order to prevent another financial meltdown health care insurance must be reformed especially since medical technology is so interconnected with other aspects of the economy. However, whenever there is an increase in government intervention or regulation, the cry of Socialism fills the air.

Any agenda for reform has to include concrete plans focusing on prevention and an increase in primary care physicians who are trained as adept diagnosticians who know when it’s appropriate to refer to a specialist. Family care practitioners can deal with eighty percent of medical problems. Perhaps government financing medical students in exchange for practicing in primary care settings for several years after they graduate can be one part of the solution. But this would be a government program that costs money up front, and yet it is difficult to be precise about costs and savings when you’re talking about preventing something that hasn’t occurred yet .

The focus, in reported news stories, on the sensationalism of the disruptive elements occurring at the town hall meetings that took place in early August, littered with irate constituents demanding to know the exact cost rather than on the improvised clinic of Inglewood California just outside of Los Angeles, as thousands of people stood in line for days waiting for medical and dental care. According to the New York Times editorial of August 16th, “there is a vast palpable need for a change in the health care system, one that politicians opposed to reform insist is the world’s best.” This debate is less about health care reform than about reforming medical insurance.