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I felt compelled to write this anecdotal story to highlight how much my research has affected the way I perceive every day things.

Today, the 18th of April, my wife came back from work, moaning at her difficult day and how people were getting so stressed because of Easter.  I could not imagine why this particular holiday made people act differently, it is not a stressful time and the idea that Easter made people act so aggressively made no sense to me.

She was telling me that she had people being so unreasonable today that everyone in the office had a very bad day.  I light heartedly said lets check the lunar calendar, who knows what that might suggest.  Guess what, after checking, I discovered that today is a full moon day and it appears to be true that lots of people are acting more aggressively than normal.

As anyone reading my forum on my website knows, so many people have commented that they have experienced changes of behaviour on full moon days.  Now I can add myslef to that list.  My wife is going to mark the next frull moon day in her calendar to make sure that she knows when the angry people will make their presence felt the most.

I have been concentrating on re-writing the book and getting it ready for printing. This has proved quite stressful as I am trying to find the cheapest printing company who can do a professional job for me. It is quite remarkable how much the price changes. It appears that the cheapest prices come from non UK companies who obviously don’t have to import the paper as it is grown locally. This allows them to offer a much cheaper and competitive price. For example a 1,000 print run ranges in price from £3,600 down to £1,800. A very significant difference particularly when the margins on book selling are so small, achieving the lowest manufacturing cost is vitally important.

Last week we spent time looking at our marketing strategy for when the book is launched and subscribed to Gorkana, a database company that provides lists of journalists who we can send emails to.

As there are so many just here in the U.K it took a lot of time to collate and compile. We will have to write many different press releases as they cover a lot of different interest groups. This is not easy as you have to come up with a tag line for each one. So far we have 426 journalists on our list. We will be spending a few days this week writing the press releases so that when the book is ready for release we will be on top of the situation.

We continued to comment on blogs in various websites. Finding them is not hard, but finding the right ones is much harder. An easy way is to search news stories and comment on those. These bring in a disproportionate amount of hits and are often a much better quality hit than generated from random sites.

Facebook is a regular haunt and pulls in lots of readers. It is a very good place to get recommendations, which is the best form of marketing as it does not require any work and everyone responds positively to it.

I was interviewed for the natural news website and want to provide a podcast of the interview. It was by no means an easy ride, many tough questions. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the website had written a glowing review of my book even though they had already published one only a few weeks previously. They must really like it. http://www.naturalnews.com/031962_science_vibrational_healing.html In terms of numbers this is gold dust, as in pulls in many thousands of new readers who I would say were people who are predisposed to liking the book already. A perfect market for me. I have discovered there is very little value in getting scientists to change their attitudes; it is time very poorly spent and only causes me anger when I read their ill-conceived comments on my forum.

By the end of the week I feel that I will have achieved the targets that I set out to achieve, 15,000 hits and 3,000 registered members. This, I was told is a very high benchmark to set, and in the first few weeks felt I was never going to achieve it. Luckily for me it seems that the book is proving to be very popular and is generating interest equal to or greater than I had dared hope. I have achieved my targets three weeks early.

For the rest of the month I will now be concentrating on the book launch itself which will take place over the month of May.

BLINDED BY SCIENCE front

What a controversial question for such a huge issue. So before we begin answering let’s take a look at the facts. If we look back to 1985 we would see that 30 million people across the globe suffered from diabetes. This then increased to a whopping 171 million by the year 2000. Furthermore, it is expected to more than double to a staggering 366 million by 2030. So what is the reason behind this? Doctors would have us think that is due to poor diet and exercise, which might well be a contributing factor in some cases, yet could technology and our modern way of living actually be doing an even greater deal of damage?

Let’s take a look at China. If doctors are so sure that diet and lack exercise are to blame and so reluctant to look at other reasons, then perhaps they ought to consider the number of Chinese people with diabetes. With 92 million diabetics, China is now home to the most cases worldwide, overtaking India. The change is happening very rapidly. If the one major cause is apparently diet, how have the Chinese diet changed over the years? The answer is – not a lot. It has barely changed. Most of the people do not eat all the added salt and sugar that Western diets have, and parts of China don’t even have access to this kind of food so eat very traditional diets. It is the same where India is concerned.  Therefore, diet simply cannot be the exclusive cause of diabetes. They absolutely must be another factor, which could very well be technology.

It has been suggested in a scientific paper than “dirty electricity” is to blame.  This refers to man-made electromagnetic fields caused by modern day technology.  In a 2008 study by Magda Havas it is suggested that as well as Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, doctors should look at a third type. She says that this Type 3 diabetes is triggered by electromagnetic waves and can be aggravated depending on levels of exposure.  During her study she tested a man with Type 2 diabetes over a week long period. It was discovered that his glucose levels were not affected by what food he ate, but by his working environment.  This is because his glucose levels rose significantly having been in the doctors clinic where there were five computers emitting electromagnetic waves. When away from the building these levels reduced dramatically. Another study also showed levels being affected when in the gym. So places with a high number of electrically powered machines are a clear trigger.

It is unrealistic to suggest that the answer to this problem is for everyone to get rid of things like mobile phone, television and computers and they are aspects of daily lives for many of us now.  Nevertheless, there is something that could help. These are called GS filters and have been proven to reduce blood sugar levels, and therefore decrease the need for such high use of medication. GS filters are an invention that apparently reduces the amount of electromagnetism in a localised area, such as your livingroom or bedroom by simply plugging into a socket.  GS filters have also been shown to reduce symptoms in other illnesses such as Multiple Sclerosis, chronic fatigue, hay fever, asthma and ADHD.

So with evidence like this it is hard not to believe that the advancement in technology and the rising number of cases of so called “21^st Century” illnesses are not linked. Surely there must be some consequence of the way we now live which is affecting our health without us knowing. There needs to be more research in relation to electromagnetic waves to prevent the situation getting worse.

To find out more about this, read my chapter on ‘Technology’ in my book Blinded By Science which is free to download until 30^th April 2011 at http://www.blindedbyscience.co.uk

I recently received a rave book review from a leading scientist, Dr Magda Havas, whose study I quote from in my chapter on Technology.  It is always gratifying to receive such postiive comments.

Matthew,

First let me thank you for sending me a copy of your book “Blinded by
Science”. I did not respond right away because I wanted to read the
entire book rather than just one chapter.

I found your book a joy to read. Many of the concepts you discuss I’ve
been interested in for years. For the lay audience, this book will be a
wakeup call about vibrations and electromagnetic energies and I hope
that students who read it will want to pursue research in the many areas
that need more study.

You wrote an excellent book and I hope it reaches a large and diverse
audience.

Thank you again for sharing it with me. I would like to share this book
but I assume you would prefer I not send it to other people.

Thanks,
-magda

Dr. Magda Havas, BSc, PhD,
Environmental & Resource Studies,
Trent University, Peterborough, ON, K9J 7B8

Firstly, let’s get the disaster out of the way.  I happened to go away on Saturday to the beautiful English countryside on a walking weekend in the Peak district.  The hotel we stayed in did not have wi-fi so after a very long and tiring walk, I went into a cafe that had wi-fi at about 6.00 p.m.  Now, in my defense, it had been a sunny and slightly windy day and I think I had not drunk enough water, as when I sat down to look at all of the comments on the forum, I seemed to press a few wrong buttons.  There happened to be about 70 new comments just in the past 24 hours and a few needed deleting as it was obvious that the person had not read the chapter first, just commented.  Seven comments in a matter of minutes is always a give-away.  So I innocently deleted the comments only to discover to my horror that I had deleted not only the comments but also the whole thread as well.  Five weeks of extremely flattering and interesting debate disappeared in front of me.  Oh well, life goes on. The book is still there, no-one got hurt, except my ego.   Consequently I wrote a grovelling letter of apology to the 1,000 or so people who have already downloaded a chapter.

The good news is that people are still downloading and commenting in high numbers.  Could this all be due to our marketing plan?

At the beginning of last week one of my interns, Harriet, concentrated on blogging on issues related to the full moon and lunar cycles. By Wednesday we decided to try out newspapers and news stories that raised issues that are covered in my book.  So she wrote comments on health issues in many different papers around the world.

My other intern, Rebecca, started with astrology forums and then moved onto news stories related to health.

I had my days full with answering questions, chatting to people on facebook, adding friends, tweeting and sending out emails. It is hard to tell exactly what was the success story of last week.  We had some serious spikes when specific bloggers sent out on their newsletters with complimentary noises about the book.  Dr Carolyn Dean’s newsletter brings in a regular flow of hits.  Although the biggest spike on Friday was from a hindu blog who wrote glowing reports about the book in reference to the science behind Hinduism.  It appears that my book helps to support the notion that scientifically, Hinduism is based on a lot of scientific principles, such as water having energy.

Word of mouth is now generating a lot of new registrations, as friends are now recommending the book to each other.  This is the best form of marketing and we hope to generate more hits this way.  One comment when asked how they heard about the website, said,”my friend is reading the book and she can’t put it down”.  Enough said..

I am trying to encourage more people to look at some amazing results in Italy using a seqex machine. I got this response today from an email I sent out. Encouraging stuff

Matthew,

Thank you for letting us know about this paper on the use of ion cyclotron resonance as therapeutic support for eight autistic children. The fact that improvement was noted in all cases is encouraging news for parents who cope with the needs of autistic children. Read the rest of this entry »

Most people when you mention the word physics run a mile, the same with chemistry, less so with biology.  I believe that is because most of the time it is too complicated for us to comprehend and to be truthful not very interesting.  So in this article I am going to give you a puzzle to complete, that I hope, will explain how homeopathy works without resorting to the boring facts of physics, chemistry and biology.

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Whatever you have heard about biodynamic farming as having any sort of spiritual connotations, please eradicate this from you mind.  I have become utterly sickened when people who talk about this type of farming refer to the need for a spiritual involvement. One writer on biodynamic farming said that every farmer needs to have a “link with the spiritual cosmic world”.  I am sorry, but this sort of argument gets me really angry.  Biodynamic farming is nothing more than old fashioned farming, a method of producing quality soil and quality produce using ideas that stretch back thousands of years. There is nothing too complicated or strange about it, it is simply a method of putting good quality bacteria back into the soil.  It has nothing to do with a holistic approach, spirits, positive energy or any other new age idea, it is simple common sense farming.

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Writing a book is only the first part of the battle, the second is the marketing.

I am lucky in as much as my background is in business.  I have a masters degree in marketing so you would think that this would give me a great advantage in knowing how to successfully market my book.  So did I, until I discovered that within just a few years, marketing is a very different beast to the one I studied all those years ago.  Now it is necessary to be an expert in SEO, blogging, facebook, tweeting, youtube, forums and web design.  None of these were my areas of expertise.  So I have had to take my experience of business and adapt them to the new computer generation to get people to start talking about my book.

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