Fluoridation: Were The Conspiracy Theorists Right?

This Friday the government is going to announce a reduction in the recommended fluoride levels in drinking water.  This is the first time the government has walked back the recommended dose of fluoride in 50 years.

The fluoride controversy is so convoluted, confusing, and ultra-paranoid that I have trouble even working through it.  The real problem is that there are some legitimate objections to water fluoridation, but they get muddled up with, and drowned out by, the conspiracy nuts.

The benefit to fluoride is that it basically fossilizes your teeth.  It replaces the calcium molecules in your teeth one for one.  Fluoride is harder than calcium, and much more resistant to decay.  It creates super teeth!

But according to some people, it also creates death, disease, doom, and a population too passive to resist tyranny.  These are some of the most unprovable claims on the planet.  Unless you consider American citizens from the 1940s to today as your study group.  In which case… no, it seems pretty harmless.

Another objection to water fluoridation is that it amounts to mass medical treatment.  This is the reasoning by which many British towns have resisted water fluoridation.  Who are you to say I should get a fluoride treatment?  I respect this position, but I have to note that water fluoridation, which reduces cavities by up to 60% in the population, is considered one of the most successful public health measures ever enacted.

The biggest problem with fluoridation is that many people will never believe that a very tiny dose of something can be useful, whereas a very big dose of it can be poisonous.  Fluoride is very toxic in high doses.  But in tiny doses - about 1 milligram per liter - it can help your teeth.  Many people believe that fluoride is toxic at any level, and that these chronic low doses are killing us with cancer, lung disease, ADD, and whatever other ills they can think of.

It's impossible to refute these assertions, which is one of the best ways to tell if a claim is bunk or not. 

However, one of the more legitimate complaints is that there is insufficient oversight in the source, dosing, and monitoring of fluoride in our water supply.  And given that this is the first adjustment in the official recommended levels since the 1960s, this camp may have a point.

The recommended levels are being dropped because there has been a somewhat mysterious increase in fluorosis since the 1980s.  Fluorosis occurs when fluoride basically stains your teeth permanently.  (I have a rather marked case of fluorosis, although I doubt that most people notice.)  This mysterious increase makes me wonder if water treatment plants are being fully accurate when they add fluoride to the water.  And how well we are tracking fluoride levels in tap water to begin with.

The biggest dental problems in America are happening because kids aren't getting proper nutrition or proper dental care.  And unfortunately, fluoridating the tap water isn't going to help with that.  Most of these kids are either living in rural areas on well water, or in urban core areas where no one drinks the tap water anyway.

Photo credit: Flickr/amandachong

The Georgia Guidestones, "American Stonehenge"

The so-called "American Stonehenge" was built in 1979, when a mysterious person going by the name of "R. C. Christian" (which was possibly a reference to Rosicrucianism) hired a local stone work company to make and install them for him.

Known more formally as the Georgia Guidestones, this monument stands in Elbert County, Georgia.  It is comprised of four gigantic granite slabs arranged around a fifth central slab, a capstone, and an explanatory footnote in stone set nearby.  The Guidestones have ten commandments written in eight different languages, one per face of the four main stones.

The ten commandments of the Georgia Guidestones came up recently when I was watching an episode of "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura."  Someone on the show mentioned that the Bilderberg conspiracy wanted to keep Earth's population low, perhaps in accordance with the Georgia Guidestones.  A totally random reference, as far as I can tell, but it is the first commandment: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."

In fact, all ten of the Guidestones' commandments read like the ten biblical commandments, as translated by the label on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Liquid Soap.  (Although as funny as it would be, commandment #10 is NOT "DILUTE DILUTE DILUTE OK!!!")

Some of the commandments are downright menacing.  #2 says, "Guide reproduction wisely - maintain fitness and diversity" sounds like a pretty solid commandment in favor of eugenics.  Given the Guidestones' location - rural Georgia - and that part of the country's connection to the KKK, well.  Kinda scary.

Other of the commandments are frankly anarchist (in the traditional sense), like #7, "Avoid petty laws and useless officials" and #8, "Balance personal rights with social duties."

And we finish out with a rambling beatnik hippie love song, as wacky as the DOUBLE RAINBOW guy.  Commandment #10 is "Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature."

These tablets weren't created on a whim, as a prank.  And they weren't cheap, either.  Whoever bought the land from a local farmer, then deeded the land to Elbert County, obviously meant these things passionately.  They had a burning desire to communicate, and wanted to ensure that their communication would be heard throughout the ages.

And who might this person be?  Well, there is a lot of "highly persuasive yet circumstantial evidence" indicating that R. C. Christian may be none other than cable television demigod and media empire mogul Ted Turner.

Ted Turner's father ran a billboard business, which Ted took over in 1964.  In the intervening years, Turner parlayed it into a multi-billion dollar business.  Today Ted Turner's worth is estimated at 1.9 billion, and he is America's largest private landowner.  Part of the reason he has become our largest private landowner is due to his self-assigned mission to repopulate the American plains with the buffalo, which Turner ranches on 15 massive estates.

Turner's politics are defiantly left-wing, and he is a supporter both of environmental causes and social causes like Obama's health care plan.  Could the father of CNN be the father of the Georgia Guidestones as well?  If so, he isn't telling!

Photo credit: Flickr/The Rocketeer

Mysterious Appearance of Thousands of Dead Birds and Fish Baffle Scientists

The new year began with a very bizarre series of events. While much of the Midwest battled deadly tornadoes and strong thunderstorms, the southern part of the United States had the beginning of a bizarre and eerie mystery involving thousands of dead birds.

In the small town of Beebe, Arkansas, nearly 5,000 red-winged black birds mysteriously fell from the sky around midnight on New Year's Eve. They were all killed in mid-air but no cause has been determined as of yet. Early test results from the first few autopsies on some of the birds have so far ruled out poison and results show that the birds died from massive internal trauma in mid-air. They were dead before they hit the ground yet there is no explanation for what caused the trauma and witnesses to the eerie event have not reported seeing anything prior to thousands of birds dropping out of the sky.

More dead birds where found 300 miles away in Louisiana a couple of days later. Hundreds of the same birds along with other species including sparrows and starlings were found along the Louisiana highway that lies roughly 30 miles outside of Baton Rouge. These birds suffered from several injuries including broken bills along with broken backs. At this point experts are saying that they believe the birds may have ran into the power lines but why they would have taken such a drastic action is yet unknown.

Similarly in Kentucky, several hundred birds of the same species were also found dead with no apparent reason and testing in this case has also ruled out poison or disease as possible culprits.

What was thought to have been an geographical anomaly seems to be spreading as a mass of dead birds have now been found in Sweden as well.

This bizarre occurrence is becoming even more bizarre as other strange signs of unexplained deaths are occurring not only in birds but in marine life as well. as well. The day before the incident in Beebe, nearly 100,000 fish were also found dead in Arkansas. Millions of fish are dead in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Other countries are also seeing strange occurrences of unexplained mass fish kills including Brazil where several tons of dead marine life including sardines and catfish washed ashore since Thursday and likewise, New Zealand has seen hundreds of dead snappers, most of whom were missing their eyes. Over 40,000 velvet swimming crabs have also washed ashore without explanation in England.

These occurrences have officials around the world baffled. While some have attempted to offer explanations, such as bad weather, none of the explanations so far seem to be fitting the facts.  It could be weeks before test results reveal any answers and the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin is sending in help with the investigation in Arkansas. While most have been reluctant to associate the events with one another, the sheer number and timing means that nothing should be ruled out.  Even though various unsupported theories have been circulating about possible weather or fireworks, such theories have no basis. Conspiracy theories about bio weapons or acoustic power guns and even end of the world predictions are surrounding the mystery as well.

Whatever the cause, it may be worth noting that birds and certain species of marine life who are filter or bottom feeders such as the catfish, crabs, and the drum fish are often key species in understanding environmental dangers because they are often the first to show signs of toxins or other deadly changes. This is why canaries were sent into the mines once upon a time, because as the toxic gases seeped from the ground where miners were working, the bird's death would trigger a warning sign for the miners to evacuate. So is it possible that this, to, is a warning sign of something deadly serious happening in our world? Perhaps time will tell as more information becomes available.

Sleep Paralysis: The "Old Hag"

As you probably know, your mind has a sort of switch that flips off activity in your body when you sleep.  This state of paralysis is what keeps you from actually running in your bed when you are running in your dreams. 

It isn't a complete paralysis - people will still twitch and mutter, and some may even kick around and cause their bed partners a great deal of consternation.  But it works well enough for what it needs.

This paralysis is associated with REM sleep, and is called "REM atonia."  It is regulated by a hormone, which usually wears off after REM sleep passes.  However, sometimes this switch gets stuck for a little while after you wake up.  If you don't know what's happening, this can be a terrifying experience. 

People who have experienced a bout of sleep paralysis report that they can see and hear, but cannot move.  They may feel as if they are suffocating, and panic frequently sets in.  (Understandably so!)  Most episodes last only a few seconds, but it can seem like it takes a lot longer.

To compound the terror, sleep paralysis is often accompanied by lingering nightmare visions which can seem very real indeed.

Sleep paralysis is known in every human culture, and every culture has its own explanation for it.  In Europe and in Cajun culture it was called "the Old Hag."  She was thought to be an invisible spirit who sat on you during the night, thus explaining the feeling of chest compression.

Other explanations have included demons, devils, waking nightmares, spirit possession, black magic, and more.  Most legends of sleep paralysis involve an invisible entity sitting on the chest, or holding the body down. 

It's difficult to get accurate statistics, but many studies indicate that sleep paralysis is surprisingly common.   You may have noticed that there aren't really any mainstream American mythical explanations for sleep paralysis.  Considering how commonplace it is, this is surprising. 

Many people theorize that stories of alien abduction, ghosts, spirit possession, and childhood satanic ritual abuse may in fact be manifestations of sleep paralysis.  People view events through the lens of their culture, which means that in a culture that believes in demons as a literal fact, someone who goes through an episode of sleep paralysis will reach for demons as an excuse.

In our culture, a feeling of floating, suffocation, being watched, and possibly of seeing shadowy figures flitting around the edges of vision could easily be framed as an alien abduction.  Consider how many stories of alien abduction begin with "I had gone to sleep."  The same is true of ghost stories. 

Both ghosts and aliens seem only to come out at night, which has always struck me as interesting.  I know of no alien abduction stories which take place in the middle of the day.  And spirit possession always seems to happen in the middle of the night.  (I have heard of daytime ghostly apparitions, noises, and other subtle manifestations, though.)

Photo credit: Flickr/?????

Thousands of Dead Birds Fall From The Sky on New Year's Eve

Just as the year's odometer ticked over in Arkansas, a huge flock of between 4,000 and 5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky, stone dead.  About 125 miles away, scores of dead drum fish wash ashore in the Arkansas River.

End of days?  Or just a coincidence?

Although many theories have been proposed, the most likely cause of the death of the blackbirds is a high-altitude weather event, like heavy hail.  All of the dead birds showed large amounts of massive trauma to their internal organs, of the sort that could easily be explained by a sudden and severe high altitude hail storm.

Blackbirds as a species tend to form extremely large flocks, which migrate at high altitudes.  Many songbirds migrate at night, taking advantage of a time when predators are likely to be asleep.  These migrating birds take flight invisibly in huge flocks, and they fly high, in order to avoid night-roaming owls.

There is also a classic selection bias happening here.  Put simply, the baffled residents of Beebe, Arkansas are only seeing the killed birds.  It's entirely possible that this was a flock two or three times that size, and that most of the flock was able to fly away unharmed.

Lightning at high altitudes is also a common cause of this kind of sudden bird kill.  Lightning can flicker across the clouds even when no storm is nearby, and one burst of lightning can easily take out a flock of birds.  However, at this time the indications are running against lightning as a possible cause.

The sudden death of scores of drum fish no doubt has a similarly prosaic cause.  Drum fish are a bottom-feeding fish which are also called "croakers," due to their ability to make a drumming noise with their swim bladder. 

The fact that the fish kill is limited to only one species tends to rule out some sort of toxin or contaminant in the water.  Even though drum fish are bottom-feeders, and thus would hypothetically be more affected by a sinking toxin, we would still see some other fish dying as well.

Every species of fish has a particular and specific tolerance for both temperature and oxygen dilution.  This is why pockets of "dead water" most often cause species-specific fish kills - the most susceptible species dies first, while the rest survive. 

Species of fish also have different resistances to disease. Disease could easily kill an entire collection of drum fish, while leaving other species intact.

Adding to the situation, January is a tough time for freshwater fish in North America.  Water is at its coldest temperatures, which makes fish more sluggish, more susceptible to disease, and means they have a harder time surviving in general. 

To help combat these difficult conditions, fish will often school together in one big, deep pool.  Although the dead fish have been washing up for 20 miles of shoreline, it's entirely possible that this is just the remains of one big school which picked the wrong pool to hole up in over the new year.

Photo credit: Flickr/Laura Whitehead

Earworms: Are They Dangerous?

I was concerned when my German friend told me she had an earworm and asked her if she needed to go to the doctor to get the (possibly parasitic) worm out of her ear.

She laughed and replied that no, she did not need to go to the doctor; she just had some stupid pop song stuck her in head that she couldn’t get rid of.

The word earworm—which is quite possibly my new favorite word-- originates from the German word “ohrwurm.”  Earworms are the songs that loop and repeat in your head over and over whether you like the song all that much or not. According to this research, nine out of ten people have experienced ear worms at some point in their lifetimes for sixty minutes or longer and one out of ten people has found the ear worm so distracting that they were unable to complete other tasks. 

This site claims that the original German ohrwurms were in fact real worms that “could crawl in your ear.” (I’m going to try and forget that I ever read and wrote that so I can sleep at night.)

Getting rid of catchy musical earworms is not easy; the same researchers who studied the frequency of the earworms found that deliberately trying to get an ear worm out of your head can be “counterproductive” and can actually make the earworm stay in your head longer. A poor strategy for dealing with earworms might be replacing one earworm for another; as this writer points out, you might “develop a playlist of earworms” this way. 

 The Wikipedia site on earworms offers up a few interesting examples of “Earworms in Fiction”; my personal favorite from the short list of examples is “Demolished Man”, a sci-fi novel from the 1950’s. In the novel, the main charater “uses a jingle specifically crafted to be a catchy, irritating nuisance as a tool” to prevent people from reading his mind by blocking out his thoughts. (It occurs to me that Harry Potter himself could have benefited from a similar tool to stop Voldemort from reading Harry’s mind and entering his head without permission.)

(As an aside, several sites focusing on earworms want Trekkies to understand that musical ear worms are different from “the mind-warping parasites from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan,”.  It’s just a guess, but I have a feeling the Star Trek earworms are worse.

Image Courtesy of Flckr User: jemsweb

Springheel Jack: A Victorian Mystery

Springheel Jack was first sighted in London in 1837, through the early 1900s.  He continues to be sighted in England today, albeit rarely.  Jack's heyday was Victorian London, but surely it is only a coincidence that his appearances overlap the timeline of Jack the Ripper?

Springheel Jack was the star of the penny dreadfuls, and terror of London and its surrounding suburbs.  He leaped tall buildings in a single bound, clichéd though that may sound to us today. 

He wore a cape, or perhaps it was flappy wings, and tight-fitting dark colored clothes, with half boots.  He was tall and thin, with a regal bearing, and pointed features that were often described as "devilish."

He also shot bolts of blue fire from his mouth, and his eyes could blaze red.

Now granted, most of the accounts of Springheel Jack probably mix a blend of actual attacks with word of mouth, exaggeration, and a bad mix of cheap gin and poor lighting.  In many accounts, Springheel Jack leaps out from the darkness to attack a woman or young girl.  He rends their clothes with knife-like fingers or metallic claws, then springs away into the darkness when she screams.  In other cases he would leap out before a coach, startle the horses, cause a traffic accident, and then jump over some improbably high barrier to escape.

Springheel Jack is very closely aligned with the devil, and many sketches and accounts of the time make this quite clear.  He is often portrayed with a small pointed beard, just as the devil is.  His attraction to beautiful young ladies and his ability to leap away are both also traits which the Victorians assigned to the devil.

Victorian London was a terrifying place.  There was no need to look for monsters, but people found them anyway.  It was a filthy city, riddled with a poverty so profound that people paid extra to sleep sitting upright on a bench overnight, disease rampant, horse droppings and rotten food everywhere, and the constant haze of industrial smog and coal dust.  Rape, murder, and thievery of every sort was an everyday occurrence.

And then there was Jack the Ripper, whose terrifying reign over London stretched from 1888 to 1891, and perhaps beyond.

Despite - or perhaps because - of the fundamental facts of London life in the 1800s, tales of monsters and ghosts abounded.  This is the era that gave us Frankenstein and Dracula, the wolf-man, the Murders at the Rue Morgue, the birth of the Victorian ghost story, and more.

One likely culprit for Springheel Jack is the Marquess of Waterford, who hated women and the police with equal fervor.  He often bragged of playing a prank on women where he would leap out from the darkness and terrify them.  (Hilarious.)

Other theories include one of my favorites, which is that he was an alien from a planet where they breathe phosphorus (thus the blue flame breath), and a higher gravity (thus the ability to jump).  No explanation is ever given for why an alien should want to visit Victorian London, much less why it would spend all its time scaring poor young women and upsetting carriage horses.

Photo credit: Flickr/wallyg

Dancing Mania

From the 14th to the 17th century, mainland Europe periodically experienced outbreaks of a "dancing sickness."  This mania has never been seen before or since, and no solid explanation has ever been found.

When an outbreak occurred, people took to the streets to dance uncontrollably.  It was more than dancing; it was a full-out hysteria, with screaming, laughing, hallucinations, speaking in tongues, and singing. 

Unlike today's penchant for lip synch dancing flash mobs, the dancing mania outbreaks of the Renaissance Era often proved fatal, with people dancing until they collapsed from exhaustion and died.

Many cases of dancing mania were associated with St. Vitus.  It was originally considered by some to be part of a curse sent by the saint, an idea which spread in the Renaissance equivalent of a meme.  Many processions of those afflicted with dancing mania wound their way through town to a place dedicated to St. Vitus (often a church), and outbreaks were more likely to happen during the Feast of St. Vitus (June 15th).

The Dancing Plague of 1518 is the worst recorded outbreak of dancing mania.  It struck Strasbourg, France in July, and lasted for about a month.  A woman named Frau Troffea became the "patient zero," when she "began to dance to dance fervently in a street."  Over the course of the next month, a rolling collection of people "caught" the dancing mania and danced until they collapsed. 

Mass hysteria can take many unusual forms.  Contemporary Americans may be most familiar with mass hysteria from a particularly intriguing episode of "House," when House and Cuddy have to save an airplane full of people who are apparently suffering from a severe and communicable malady.  Which in the end turns out to be mass hysteria, plus one guy who had the bends.

Panic and fear are communicable states, which is good from an evolutionary perspective.  If two people are sitting around a fire in the darkness two million years ago and one of them gets up and runs away at high speed, it behooves the other person to do the same.  Our ancestors who failed to pick up someone else's panic and fear didn't last long, as a rule.

One theory about the Dancing Plague of 1518 is that it was at least partially fueled by the dire social conditions at the time.  Crushing poverty and illness made life extremely difficult, and being swept up in a collective movement can be a release from the day-to-day stresses.  (See also: Sunday church, raves, Burning Man, and fad diets.) 

You can imagine being desperately poor, filled with hopelessness, and then believing that you had been cursed by St. Vitus for some reason.  In such cases religion serves as both the cause and the cure, because many people stopped dancing when they were taken to a place dedicated to St. Vitus and given a priest's blessing.

Mass hysteria has been blamed for many historical incidents, including religious visions, the panic that accompanied the first "War of the World" broadcast, and the witch hunts of colonial America.  Episodes of mass hysteria are rarely as bizarre or as fatal as the dancing sickness, though.  Despite happening many times over 300 years, with numerous written accounts, it still remains a mystery.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Bilderberg Group: Global Conspiracy, Or Boring Annual Meeting?

Every year, 120 of the world's most influential people meet in secret - invitation only - for a three-day conference.  Called "The Bilderberg Group" after the hotel where the conference first met, this meeting is shrouded in the highest security. 

Obviously THEY ARE PLANNING TO KILL US ALL.  So contend many conspiracy theorists, who - according to this episode of "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" - really have taken this supposed global plot right over the edge of sanity. 

The Bilderberg Group is interesting from a conspiracy perspective in that the meetings are verifiable fact.  Unlike so many conspiracies, the Bilderberg Group is a real thing that actually happens.  They have a website and everything. 

(I am bemused to note that a committee of the most powerful people in the world can't manage to figure out the title tag, much less preloading images in order to make the color transitions for their menu items' rollover effects seamless.)

Strangely enough, this doesn't make it more difficult to deny claims that the group is planning to severely "depopulate" the world.

Most of the Bilderberg claims revolve around a global death plot.  There are too many people, you see.  Too hard to control.  In order to take the planet's reins, the Bilderberg Group participants are planning to kill up to 80% of the current population.  (Why they should do such a thing when it's the number of people that launched them to power in the first place is never addressed.) 

My guess?  It's a lot of rich people paying a lot of money once a year to be made to feel even more important than they already do.  Shocking memo: these people have insatiable egos.  That's how they got where they are in the first place.

When you get right down to it, my ability to buy into this conspiracy is undermined by my decades of real-world experience to the effect that nothing useful ever happened at a meeting, much less a three-day conference.  NOTHING.  Of all the forms of human effort, meetings and conferences are surely the least productive.

If a global group of elite maniacs really does plan to create a "hellish prison planet" (in the words of conspiracy theory expert and radio host Alex Jones), they are unlikely to be planning it over a three day conference.  Most likely they are killing their own kind with endless Powerpoint presentations.  (I must admit, the thought gives me a warm glow.)

This episode runs off the rails (as all Conspiracy Theory episodes eventually do) when Ventura starts investigating HOW the Bilderberg Group plans to kill us all.  Suddenly the show bogs down in a morass disparate threads, each crazier than the last.  Water fluoridation is a plan to introduce long-term toxicity into our bloodstreams.  Vaccines are actually a toxin, deliberately administered by the World Health Organization, which is simultaneously spreading swine flu via nasal spray "so-called inoculants."

I've heard a lot of crazy-ass stuff from the anti-vax crowd.  But "vaccines are a WHO plot to KILL EVERYONE" is a new one to me. 

Unfortunately I'm afraid that the truth is far more mundane.  Vaccines do not represent the beachhead of a "genocidal Holocaust."  No one is changing the course of the world via a three-day annual conference.  And if we're all going to hell in a handbasket, it's our own doing, not the evil machinations of a secret underground power conspiracy.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe while celebrated at Christmas for reasons that are, historically speaking, distant enough to be unattributable to a specific cause, is unfairly held in disdain the rest of the year. The green small-leaved white-berried plant dismissed as a parasite the rest of the year, is, at Christmas, gathered in small bunches, woven with ribbons, and suspended above the heads of unsuspecting, and sometimes, unconsenting adults. The idea being that adults caught beneath the Mistletoe are compelled to kiss; traditionally, a berry was then removed from the Mistletoe. When the berries were gone, so were the kisses.

The Mistletoe plant itself is really not appreciated; it is not a true parasite in that while it can and does live off of trees, it is also capable of growing independently. There are two main varieties. The European sort, Viscum album (pictured above), which has smooth oval evergreen leaves that march in pairs along a woody, fibrous stem and waxy white berries that grow in dense little clumps. This variety sometimes takes root in the dirt and produces a shrub. When it does grow on a tree, it seems to be more commonly found on apple trees, and sometimes lime, ash, hawthorn, and less commonly, on oak trees. The North American variety Phoradendron flavescens has leaves that alternate along the stems, the leaves are shorter and a bit broader, and it has larger clusters of berries.

Mistletoe plants occur in male forms (they bear pollen) and female forms, which bear berries

. The berries are not safe for human consumption and can produce serious gastrointestinal pain as well as other symptoms, but Mistletoe berries are favored by a number of birds. The birds eat the berries, the seeds pass through their digestive system. The seeds exude a sticky sap, and many seeds stick to limbs and branches of trees where the birds are perching. The seeds germinate, and send roots through the bark of the trees and into the sap-bearing structures of the tree. Over time, the Mistletoe grows, exceedingly slowly, and eventually may bear berries of its own. Mistletoe is the favorite food of a particular European thrush, the Mistle Thrush or Turdus viscivorus named after the Mistletoe plant, because it feeds primarily on the berries.

Etymologically, Modern English Mistletoe derives via Middle English from Old English misteltan, a compound of mistel, and the Old English plural tan. Through the phenomenon of back formation, the Old English misteltan was thought to include the plural of toe, when in fact -tan is a remnant of the *I. E. tan for "twig," suffixed to the * I.E. meigh- a word that means "to urinate." The same root that gave us Mistletoe, gives us Modern English mist, mizzle, and micturate. Meigh- gives us Mistletoe almost certainly via the Germanic diminutive form *mih-stu, or "urine" association with the Mistle Thrush, because the Mistle Thrush propagates the plant through its droppings.

Image Credit: Mistletoe
Mistle Thrush: Gerard Blokhuis

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