Just Got Lucky

Facebook Police: Blocking Cellphones, Saving Lives...?

2011-08-16T10:50:00.001-04:00

A BART train in the station.

In "Is Social Media Free Speech" I discussed the nature of things like Facebook relative to free speech.

Today we have the California Bay Area Transport (BART) in the news for shutting off cellphone (I've always wondered why Google spell check thinks "cellphone" is one word but not "highschool") coverage inside its tunnels as a planned mechanism to limit an anticipated protest.

Apparently in the recent past a BART police officer (and why do thing like BART or the NY Subway have their own police forces? Are the crimes somehow different?) shot a homeless man who was supposedly wielding a knife. The protest was related in someway to this event.

In anticipation of the event BART turned off cellphone coverage in four of its stations for several hours. One of the reasons was ostensibly that, like London, the protestors would be using cellphones and social media to coordinate the protests (see this).

So now we have an interesting dilemma.

On the one hand, using social media to coordinate a ~~riot~~ protest would be a crime - though a crime if and only if it was not approved by the government and did not remain peaceful. (I've often wondered about violent protests against those who conduct violence on innocents.)

On the other hand, what if grandma has a heart attack during her ride and no one can call for help so she subsequently dies?

Neither event happened - no ~~riot~~ protest, nobody's grandma is dead.

And BART claims that since it owns the cell antenna's in its stations it has the right to do what it like with them.

But what if their actions bring harm to others - even indirectly? Isn't cell service today like a utility? Something people rely on for daily on-going life? Can I rely on cell coverage to coordinate the pickup of needed medicine? A ride to the hospital? A life and death matter with a doctor?

Certainly there would be problems shutting off power to a few blocks of the city in anticipation of trouble.

As for cellphone "blocking" the US Criminal Code 47, Sections 301, 302a, 333 says that "The Act prohibits any person from willfully or maliciously interfering with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act or operated by the U.S. government. 47 U.S.C. Section 333. The manufacture, importation, sale or offer for sale, including advertising, of devices designed to block or jam wireless transmissions is prohibited. 47 U.S.C. Section 302a(b). Parties in violation of these provisions may be subject to the penalties set out in 47 U.S.C. Sections 501-510. Fines for a first offense can range as high as $11,000 for each violation or imprisonment for up to one year, and the device used may also be seized and forfeited to the U.S. government."

Cell jammers are illegal so one imagines that shutting off a cell antenna is a similar problem.

The problem here is that government, in this case BART in the guise of the State of California has taken it upon itself to limit your free speech in anticipation of you doing something illegal or wrong with that free speech.

Mind you there is a difference between texting "meet me in front of Joe's Diner" and "help me destroy Joe's Diner" and "OMG I can't believe what's happening at Joe's Diner."

In the first and last cases I may or may not know why I am to meet at Joe's - leaving other events or evidence to determine if I am involved in the "conspiracy" to trash Joe's Diner. In the second case merely showing up is proof of my involvement in a conspiracy to damage the diner.

And even if previous public Facebook plans are made to ~~riot~~ protest in a BART station doesn't shutting off cell service leave the remaining patrons without a means to call for help? The ~~riot~~ protest has already been coordinated - its not like someone is actively standing on the BART platform publicly calling for assistance in ~~rioting~~ protesting. (If they were it would be like shouting "fire" in a theater - there are already laws on the books to address that.)

Instead I think that BART is acting more like a building owner who chains the EXIT doors of a theater reasoning that there won't be a fire.

It seems like BART is taking the view that some or all of its patrons are potentially guilty of conspiring to ~~riot~~ protest illegally and therefore it is okay to deny everyone else their rights to use their phones for which they have paid, for which the service providers have paid, and for which services have become a public "utility" like power or water.

Sadly this sort of "you must be guilty" action of the part of government has been creeping into society for years. If, for example, police find drugs on one person in a car in most states you, who have none, are also considered "guilty" do to an implicit conspiracy.

The long term effect of these types of laws and actions such as BART create chilling societal effects.

For example, I no longer give anyone I do not know a ride. Why? Because I don't know what you might have on you and I do not want to pay the price for your stupidity should I be stopped.

This makes society a less friendly place in general because those that are responsible are treated as if they are not.

Another effect is that, since you treat me as if I were a criminal or outlaw in the first place, then I lose nothing by acting like one.

Actions such as BARTs make using the subway a negative choice for patrons - particularly if they have need of communication while in route.

It seems like all of this is the slow and steady drive to "thought crime". Social media makes it easier for the government to "listen in" on what the citizenry is up to (due to their own ignorance or lack of understanding that posting it on a publicly viewable website might be a crime).

Of course, this will only catch "stupid" criminals who Facebook about their criminal activities.

Which will lead to 'profiling' of the stupid and criminals.

Which will lead to making places like Facebook 'fairer' so that the stupid and criminal are not singled out.

Which will lead to more government agencies to help stupid people use Facebook "properly".

Which will lead to the "virtual Facebook police".

An Short Iodine Story...

2011-08-09T18:29:00.001-04:00

Mrs. Wolf told me an interesting iodine story the other day.

Six months ago her friend, Miss C, had confided that she had recently had a mammogram that revealed a small lump in her breast. The doctor, while concerned, suggested she come back in six months to have a follow up.

They had been previously discussing iodine and its affects so Miss C decided that she would purchase some over-the-counter skin-use-only iodine from the local drug store and apply it to her skin.

After doing applying this to herself regularly for six months it came time to visit the doctor again.

The doctor was shocked to discover that the lump in Miss C. breast could not be found. So shocked, in fact, that she sent Miss C for additional tests - none of which could locate the lump.

Miss C received a clean bill of health with an admonishment to periodically checking in with the doctor.

Did this simple at-home iodine treatments alter Miss C's outcome?

You'll have to decide that for yourself.

However, there are many sites around the internet (such as this, this and this) claiming links between breast cancer and iodine deficiency.

A few months ago Mrs. Wolf was talking to a woman who was in graduate school (I forget the exact discipline - microbiology or something like that) studying the genetic aspects of cancer. Mrs. Wolf asked if the woman thought that cancer was in any way related to diet.

"Oh no," said the woman, "its a genetic disease."

So Mrs. Wolf asked "don't some cancer's come from the environment?"

"Well, yes," replied the woman, "certain forms..."

"Isn't your diet part of your environment?" asked Mrs. Wolf.

A lengthy discussion ensued.

The woman conceded that indeed it would be possible that cancer and malnutrition could be related.

More interesting, though, was that until her discussion with Mrs. Wolf it would have never occurred to the woman to think that diet and/or environmental changes could improve a cancer outcome. Her education was such that looking at cancer beyond the standard dogma was simply out of the question.

(Kind of like "Of course the world is flat.")

While its nice the FDA is so very worried about all the evils of things like cigarettes and child safety you have to wonder why there is so much less interest in something as simple as proper nutrition.

Then there is lung cancer and smoking.

I have always been fascinated by the fact that 1/3 of all smokers don't get lung cancer. Why one third - what's so special about them. The relationship of smoking to cancer is a statistical one. Not every one who smokes gets cancer and not everyone with lung cancer smokes.

I am starting to wonder if its in fact the case that things like diet play a significant roll in lung cancer. Could it be that those with certain dietary elements, for example, high iodine, could react to smoking differently. The Japanese, for example, smoke quite a bit and yet their lung cancer rates are much lower (though rates for other cancer are equivalent to the US and some types are higher.)

Could it be their high-iodine diet?

See this for some interesting results: "The risk of lung cancer in the United States study population was at least 10 times higher than in Japanese despite the higher percentage of smokers among the Japanese."

Bioweapons in Your Sinus... (Part II)

2011-08-07T11:39:00.001-04:00

On of the most popular posts I ever wrote was "Bioweapons in Your Sinus" on my personal blog.

If you suffer from any sort of sinus problems you should read it.

Around the same time I also wrote "Are You Iodine Deficient" - no where near as popular.

One of the interesting things about these blogs is it makes tracking changes in my life pretty simple. I can look up what I was doing a year ago and have a pretty good idea of where are I stand today relative to then.

I discovered iodine deficiency after I wrote about sinuses. If you read the Sinus article you will see that I have been a big fan of sinus flushing over the last several years to clear out infections. Over all I would say that up to that point it was about the most effective thing I could do.

However, in the eight or nine months since I wrote those articles I have been following along a different path. It started with this post: "Where For Art Thou, Oh Iodine".

I discovered that the entire US is, for the most part, vastly iodine deficient, myself included.

In the intervening months I have undertaken to fix this problem by supplementing my diet with iodine as I describe in the Where post - I basically added a drop or two a day of Lugols 2.2% solution to my diet.

My results so far:

- No more need for sinus flushing. At ten drops a week of Lugols 2.2% my sinus problems have all but disappeared. Nada, none, zip.

- My chronic athlete's foot, er, well small right toe, went away (in others I have seen an increase in iodine kill off that nasty yellow toenail fungus).

- Not one day of illness.

Over all interesting results.

I surmise from this that I have been supremely iodine deficient and, that with a full complement of iodine for my thyroid to use, I am in dramatically better health that I ever was - even at 54 years of age.

About a month after the iodine article I wrote "ADHD & A Spoon Full of Sugar" about memory loss and other problems. Since that time (December of 2010) I have been taking Cod Liver Oil as well every day.

This has cleared what I thought was an "old age" mental fog.

(Just to be clear I also upped my Vitamin C dosage to 2000 mg per day from about 1100 mg during this time.)

The bottom line in all of this is that, to my mind least, most of what people think are "wrong" with them - from digestive ails to sinus problems to various other significant health issues are more than likely related to or have a strong nutritional component.

Now iodine today is nothing - nothing in the minds of the medical establishment - nothing of interest for research - really nothing at all. Most if not all doctors believe that iodized salt is doing the job.

But the problem with that belief is that you'd have to eat an unhealthy amount of iodized salt to get enough iodine. There is just enough iodine in iodized salt to keep you from getting a goiter - and that's about it - not enough for proper bodily function.

A while back I heard on the radio an interesting comment on vitamin C. How, the commentator asked a guest, did the government RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for vitamin C get set he wondered.

The guest replied that it was based an amount large enough so that you would not get scurvy.

Well, asked the commentator, is that enough as in what you really need?

No, replied the guest. The amount in the RDA is really about "enough" so that you don't see the symptoms of scurvy - but not enough for proper nutrition.

(When my wife bred English Mastiffs she always supplemented their diets with 1000 mg of vitamin C because though dogs produce their own vitamin C they do not produce enough if they are large.)

This conversation, for me, sums up modern medicine: "Just enough nutrition so that you don't have symptoms - we'll fix the rest with costly, dangerous prescription drugs."

The truth, of course, is that if you had proper nutrition you probably wouldn't need nearly as much "modern medicine" to be healthy.

I believe this enough to follow it in my own life - and it's been vastly successful so far.

(Of course I fully expect that I could drop over dead at any time just because that's how the world works - but even that would not change my mind at this point.)

Open Mic at Mike's New Moon Saloon - Thursday's

2011-07-18T17:28:00.001-04:00

Thursday's 8 PM to Midnight in Gibsonia, PA

Mike's New Moon Saloon
2059 Saxonburg Blvd
Gibsonia, PA 15044
Phone: (724) 265-8188

Located in Northeastern Allegheny county - Easily accessible from Rt 228, New Kensington, south Butler, Freeport, Natrona Heights.

Good prices on drinks and food. Friendly atmosphere.

Mike's on Facebook...

Directions via Google Maps...

See the "Lone Wolf" in action...

Emma Weylin on "SlutsWalks"

2011-05-11T10:58:00.000-04:00

Check this out...

Women are Insane, Men are Stupid (Where have all the good men gone...?)

2011-02-24T10:05:00.001-05:00

There is an article over on WSJ about "Where Have All the Good Men Gone?" by Kay S. Hymowitz.

She points out that men, er boys actually, in the late twenties and early thirties are basically useless as men. They live in a quasi-child/adult roll partying, loafing, and generally being unproductive. She talks about a "gender gap" where women of the same age have societal value, careers and a life.

What I wonder is why is this a surprise?

These young men are useless because the women in society have made them useless.

That's right - women have made them useless.

How?

Very simply by making "adult sex" a part of the "extended 30-something childhood" she complains men are living in today.

Let me explain.

For the last few hundred thousand years or so women have always had to make the greatest investment in societal progression. The investment I talk about here is not one of money but instead of self, of time and of focus of effort. Once attached to a man a woman was responsible for having and raising the children, for taking care of the man, for advancing their (the family, the couple, the children) social role in society, and much more.

This investment was often the ultimate investment - women literally sacrificing their lives for the betterment of their children and families. (Is this really crazy? I think not...)

And like any shrewd investor women had to make the very best (and wisest) investment that she could given her situation.

And what were they investing in?

Men, of course.

Women (or the woman's family) selected the best men they could to be their spouse. After all, they would spend their lives with that man, so they better pick the best one available. Just like investing in a stock or a bond, women (and/or her family) shrewdly analyzed what was available based on extended family, genetics, appearance, strength, and whatever else to help make the best decision. This choice often, at least before about 50 years ago, involved a strong familial element as well: A father would want to know if the man was good enough? Did he work? Was he reliable. And so on. So the investment often went beyond just a single woman planning a future but involved the progression of the entire family unit.

Would the man be reliable enough to keep the daughter around when the daughters parents got old so they would have a place to live. Even thirty five years ago I remember the fear of meeting the 6' 4" 300 pound father of my future wife - would he kill me on the spot? (Years later I would come to find out that her family knew I was a hard working guy and I would make a good husband - I guess the "kill you on the spot" act was just for show...)

The choice made of a particular investment the woman next set about to "close the deal" as it were.

This might have meant "making the best" of an arranged marriage or might have involved meeting a man through a family connection. But whatever the details it was up to the woman to make it work. And clearly sex and children were part of making it work.

And what was the man to do in this situation?

Like any prize show animal his job was to, well, "show off". To demonstrate how he would be able to make a successful life - whether by showing off dad's previous efforts or his own. Show his strength, his fast car, his daring... Show the woman he was the one for her (hormones I suppose).

And the real driver behind all of this?

Sex. Plain and simple.

No wife, no sex.

Sex, for the man, was the reward for acceptance of the responsibility of adulthood.

And so, as a man, your future sex life was defined by being married. (Sure you could fool around and certainly there were women who would oblige. But over all this was not the focus of society.)

And once there was sex there were mostly likely children, responsibility and all the rest. All the rest of the reasons that a man has to grow up and be a man. And if you as a man didn't look like a good investment opportunity your chances of sex over the long haul were very limited.

But all this changed in the 1960's when feminism cast out the traditional role of woman from society.

Now the role of women and sex is different. There is no investment involved. Woman can have sex as indiscriminately as men.

Whatever you might think about this consider what this has done to the role of being a man.

It has removed the "prize" aspect of ~~selecting~~ being selected by a wife. Of being thrust into a role of responsibility, of having to grow up.

Ms. Hymowitz talks about a movie where twenty-somethings loaf around all day smoking pot, playing video games, and planning to develop a porn site. What's not said, of course, is that foolish women are certainly "hooking up" on the sly with these guys on at least a semi-regular enough basis to keep them lazy, stupid pot-smoking loafers.

If there were no sex involved in their current lazy, stupid lives they would quickly grow up and find a serious relationship.

So my point is simple.

Modern feminism has made men superfluous. Men can find sex without commitment, effort or responsibility - and so they do. And that keeps them stupid and lazy.

Since only women can offer sex to the men it is they who are responsible for the men being foolish, stupid and lazy. Men, as they say, are stupid to begin with and taking away what drives them to overcome this is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want good men.

So, Ms. Hymowitz, things are only going to get worse, not better. In a decade or two your daughter will find that men will still be "adolescent" in late 30's or 40's instead of the 20's and 30's of today.

Men, left to their own woman-less existence, will continue to invent amusements like video games, cell phones and other geek toys, Maxim magazines, porn web sites and the rest to alleviate their need for a strong, solid on-going relationship with a woman.

There still are good men out their - you just cannot find them because you are not looking for the right kind of man nor are you looking in the right kind of place. A serious man that wants a long-term relationship with a woman for the old fashioned reasons I mention above is not going to be readily available for an on-the-sly "hook up" and the local speed dating site or bar.

(He, no doubt stupidly, thinks better of a true woman than that...)

You see there are still good men out their - and its harder for them to find good women - women who want the have children and raise families.

They just know better than to hang out where modern women might find them...

Single Serving Egyptian Friends (I hope you are well...)

2011-02-03T10:14:00.002-05:00

I have been following the protests in Egypt with interest. About six years or so ago Lexigraph, my business, was working with a couple of people from the Egyptian offices of a large, international computer business. This was for a potential project related to some printing for an international gathering.

As part of the project Basem and Asra came over from Egypt to the US to spend a week on the design of the system we were building. Basem, the IT Specialist, was a Coptic Christian and Asra, the Project Leader, a practicing Muslim. Both are a relative rarity here in rural western Pennsylvania where I live. Over the course of the week they were here I had a chance to get to know them and learn a little bit about their culture.

What made me think of them was the fact that much has been said about the fact that many of the protesters are "young", use cellphones and the internet for communication, and so on. Of course, both Basem and Asra were relatively young and no doubt fit the profile as "tech savy" types that would be plugged into the protests, at least according to the news accounts.

As the visit progressed we were able to take our guests to lunch and sometimes dinner. Each outing was an interesting cross-cultural affair.

As a Christian Basem was considerably more westernized in his views - though perhaps more with an flavor of the 1800's than the 21st century. Coptic Christianity, which originated int the first century, is a faith practiced by about 1/6th of all Egyptians (10 million out of 60 million) - a figure surprising to me at the time as I considered Egypt to be a Muslim country.

(Even the name Egypt is a western creation. It was first used by the ancient Greeks, Egyptos, from the ancient Egyptian words (Hut-Ka-Ptah), one of the names for “Memphis”, the first capital of Ancient Egypt. I spent some time studying the Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek languages in school.)

Basem was gregarious and cheerful. He was happy to talk about his culture, his life and his family.

For example, he told us dating was allowed only as a group affair - there were no western-style boy-girl dates. Basem, who I estimated to be in his middle-late twenties, described of how mixed gender groups of friends would get together and go out to restaurants or parties in order to get to know one another. As two people's interest in each other would grow there was eventually a formal process for the male "asking for the hand in marriage" of the female dictated by their culture and faith.

There was no "living together" or any of the common western-style relationships one finds today. Beyond this he was generally familiar with the west and our views - though he considered our model for male/female courting and dating absolutely bizarre.

Asra, on the other hand, told us that she was initially frightened of us. Being a practicing Muslim woman from the middle east alone in the USA her perspective on the west was that we were probably all war-mongering barbarians (sort of along the lines of the Capitol One airline mile credit card barbarians you see on TV). However, as the days passed her views changed, at least a little. By our second or third group trip to lunch she began to believe that we would not attack and kill her and began to relax a bit.

We found out that she was concerned, for example, that she would not be able to eat anything here because of Islamic dietary laws. However, that turned out not to be the case as she found that most places we went to had a large variety of food on the menu - much of which that could be fit to her dietary requirements. Asra, did not talk much about herself, her family or her social life I think out of fear.

At one point my wife and I took the two of them to dinner. Up until this point both Basem and Asra had only interacted with males since the entire corporate staff of four at that time was all male. Upon meeting my wife Asra seemed to open up considerably talking about how afraid she was initially that we were all barbarians and talking openly how she believed that everyone in the USA was out to destroy and kill all Muslims. I think that this dinner to some degree gave her a different perspective on us western barbarians.

At the end of the week when they were preparing to leave they offered us gifts - papyrus paintings of the pyramids and Spinx they had brought with them.

The project was ultimately canceled (run by a shady Brit it turned out to be just hot air) and he left Basem and Asra's employers with a very large unpaid bill. Unfortunately, like so many "single serving friends" you meet in the corporate world we lost touch over the years.

From the Land of Unintended Consequences...

2011-02-02T10:30:00.002-05:00

The legacy of clean, efficient nuclear power.

I am as clean and green as anybody. I live in a house made partially of recycled material, have a garden, generate only a bag or two of trash a week, work extensively with recycled rather than new materials... but there are limits.

One of the important limits of "green" is really understanding what the differences are between things that might be green and things that are green. At issue is that many people like to talk about green but really don't understand what that means.

For example, is buying a Prius hybrid really more green that using and existing vehicle? My existing truck sits in my driveway. It uses no energy unless I drive it. However, its big and old and probably not as efficient as a new hybrid one. A new one would use less gas but I'd have to think about what the overhead and cost in terms of energy and "green" it would take to build it. What about battery disposal and/or recycling? As you answer these questions you see that even though something might be new and more "green" the actual cost of it in terms of "green" when you factor in all of the elements makes it much less attractive.

The same is true of "climate change."

Here there is a lot more rhetoric. And one theme in particular is loud and clear: "Big coal fired power plants are filling the atmosphere with CO2." The implication is, of course, that this CO2 is triggering "climate change."

This mantra has been going on from some years and what's interesting to me is the effect its having on other countries.

China in particular.

And China is often demonized for building a lot of coal-fired power plants (such as this article).

Like any self-respecting country China has decided to do something about these problems - both the perception that their country is a big polluter as well as their problem of being one of the most energy-hungry countries on earth.

Their solution?

Clean, efficient nuclear energy.

But not just any nuclear energy.

No, not at all. They plan to use something called a molten salt thorium reactor.

So why write about this? Well, a long time ago as a child I lived in southeastern Wisconsin. We lived on the rural farmland where the number of animals far out numbered the people. In the early 1970's the local power companies decided they needed some nuclear power plants to beef up the local electrical power grid. The initial idea was that one of these plants would be built across the street from my parents home.

My father became sort of an activist against nuclear power and by 1972 was busy with other locals putting up signs, protesting, and so on against having this plant built. (One of my contributions was "No Nukes is Good Nukes.") As a geek child I became interested in the details of how these things worked, what the issues where and so on.

My interest was also fueled by a high school friend who's father worked at the now defunct Zion nuclear plant in Zion Illinois. We were able to spend time at the utilities test nuclear site, see the computers, examine and venture inside their small test reactor, and so on. A geek child's dream...

From all of this a few things were crystal clear:

- Nuclear power, while efficient and non-polluting as it operates, was a big mess in terms of creating fuel, managing fuel, maintenance and handling spent fuel.

- Nuclear power was best done with traditional plant designs that us water for coolants. Exotic nuclear systems were nothing but trouble and a black hole of engineering for the unknown.

- The technology was so complex that there would be a variety of unintended consequences.

And this was the early 1970's. And since then there have been a variety of minor safety issues (Karen Silkwood, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl)...

So now the Chinese are going to build molten salt thorium reactors. This is a new and untested technology.

What's interesting to me is the fact that these reactors involve some of the most ugly, nasty and dangerous chemicals on earth: fluorides, uranium hexaflouride gas, thorium, and in much larger proportions than traditional nuclear systems. And this particular reactor type uses all sorts of exotic versions of these chemicals and new, untested and interesting ways as well as requires a lot of pre- and post-processing of the fuel (think large complex nuclear processing facilities - the kind Silkwood blew the whistle on - but in a country where you just commit suicide after they found out you've been poisoning the animal food for the last couple of years with melamine.)

So off they go on a twenty year plan to "develop" this technology. Reading the link above its clear that some of there reasons for this are to alleviate their perception as a polluting country, particularly relative to greenhouse gases.

Which takes us back to my original point.

The Zion plant from my childhood sits abandoned today - large pools of 30 years of radioactive waste sitting right next to the shores of lake Michigan (which is busy eroding the shore right near the plant). The plant itself is large and ugly and takes up acres of land - land which can never be used again - at least not in my lifetime or the lifetime of my grandchildren.

The 1970's promise of a nuclear power bonanza for the region has been replaced with a traditional coal fired plant near my childhood home belching steam into the sky day and night. (This way we have power to surf the internet, text and use our cellphone while driving our hybrid cars to the organic food store.)

And the Zion plant has as waste fuel rods, chemicals, parts and coolant stored on site. (There is no place to move them to - no one wants nuclear waste in their backyard - so it sits in Zion's backyard...?)

The Chinese plants will have God-knows what sort of bizarre and horrific waste chemicals that will require as yet undeveloped chemical processing technologies to prepare, manage and store. And as we know the Chinese are somewhat less fastidious about making sure that the right chemicals are used for the right things manufacturing-wise...

No, I think the Chinese are simply ~~caught up~~ lost in the world "green" rhetoric.

Leaving the rest of us to suffer with the unintended consequences of our actions for centuries.

Don't believe me?

Just as the people of Chernobyl...

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Conclusions...)

2011-02-01T11:51:00.000-05:00

In my last several posts on this topic I have addressed many aspects of the burgeoning e-cigarette business. So let me summarize my thoughts:

The demonization of smokers is an activity as insidious and evil as any other racially-based activity. There exist studies to indicate that smokers have various genetic predispositions to smoking and nicotine hence targeting them as a group is wrong. (And yes this is like what the Nazi's did to the Jews - particularly because society as a whole goes along with it with a wink and a nod because the government portrays smokers and smoking as unclean.)

Smokers are people like everyone else. They have rights which cannot be violated because they make others uncomfortable.

The exact same arguments where used by the Nazi's as an excuse to round up Jews.

And no, smoking laws that eliminate smoking from private enterprise are wrong. Wrong because taking away the rights of the business is no better than taking away rights because of skin color or gender or anything else.

E-cigarettes have nothing to do with smoking and its associated medical side show of misery. E-cigarettes function no differently than vaporizers and coffee pots. Both heat liquids containing chemicals, both give off vapors you can breath, both address specific mental and physical cravings.

Personally I believe that they should not be called e-cigarettes because doing so associates them with the historical demonization of smokers.

So why do it?

I have noticed that in social situations most people are so used to the classic "smoking cues" that if you pretend like the e-cigarette is a pen or pencil virtually no one notices what you are doing with it - even in the homes of virulent anti-smoking Nazi's. People today are accustomed to devices with lights so they don't attract attention - particularly if they are not orange.

People seem to accept it - sort of like seeing a joint for the first time at a party - "Oh, that's interesting!" "How does it work." "Can I try it!"

So in the best interest of success it would seem that its best for e-cigarettes not to be cigarettes at all - but rather vaporizers.

This will make it very, very hard to legislate exactly what the difference is between a vaporizer I might give my child as part of a breathing treatment and an e-cigarette.

Nicotine is not evil. Its a drug, like most naturally occurring substances, that comes from a plant. It occurs in eggplant and tomatoes as well as tobacoo. It is not well studied except as part of smoking.

However, most anit-smoking Nazi's simply apply the evils of inhaling smoke to nicotine.

They should not be given a pass on this.

The government promotes all sorts of other dangerous behavior so long as its "socially acceptable." For example, safe sex. "Safe sex" spreads disease and creates children. Birth control is never 100% effective. They promote the latest "health craze" like Lipitor and statin drugs, antibiotics, and so forth even though there is ample evidence that these substances are not helpful and very, very often do much more harm than good.

But because they are in bed with the drug companies these facts are ignored.

Like a heroin addict government is addicted to cigarette taxes. If you do not believe this conduct the following thought experiment. "Every quits smoking today." What happens? Tens or hundreds of thousands who make a living because of tobacco become unemployed. The local 7-11's go bankrupt or become unprofitable. Thousands of FDA and academic anti-smoking Nazi's loose their jobs. States lose tens of millions a month in revenue - revenue that props up bad pension and other decisions. People stop going to places that accept smokers. Millions gain weight and become obese - encountering numerous and serious health issues as they do so.

All of this cuts off the stream of cigarette, employment and excise tax revenue leaving states, already bankrupt, in worse shape than ever.

They turn to the federal government for aid - but its already over extended and fails to help...

The truth is the government (federal, state, and local) requires tobacco revenue, sales and businesses in order to function. Take that away and they will go bust.

Yet...

They say they want us all to stop smoking...

Given this scenario do you think they really want to lose their jobs? Go bankrupt? Have nothing to study?

Of course not.

And what about the moral implications of this?

If smoking is so unclean and evil how could anyone justify making a living from it?

Particularly if they, as their living, claim its evil and unclean.

No, smoking and her friends are like the prostitutes that visit the judges or police chief's office after hours - they are all corrupt.

E-cigarette technology comes from outside the USA. This is very, very bad because it gives the FDA the entire force of the US government to use against it. Honestly, I think that e-cigarette companies should set up shop in Mexico and give Mexicans crossing the boarder illegally huge bags of e-cigarette materials to carry (for pay of course) into the country.

This would solve the problem since the US government has no real concern about stopping this sort of illegal entry to the US.

Of course the real problem is that ridiculous laws here make developing technology to help smokers something can only be done in another country - thanks Mr. FDA for looking out for your charges here in the US.

Children will use them! Can you please give me a break. The FDA is happy to give condoms to kids - with mere paper instructions in the box. Do the condoms always work? No. Are they reliable birth control? No. Does little Suzy remember to take her birth control pills every day? No. And what are the risks of those pills long term? Are they good for you? If so, why to the packages have so many warnings on them?

Then there is the nonsense of "it entices children"... So does pot. So does drinking. So do most things that adults do that children cannot.

Anyone every been to a giant kids party for 18 and under where tobacco companies are giving out cigarettes? No, me either... Guess we'll have to wait for the vaping companies to do the same - that way the law enforcement community will have something to work with.

How about just saying "no".

Its time for the industry to setup a trade association and start beating the bushes in Washington DC.

Its time to have some hearings on capitol hill where vapers can sit in front of congressmen, like Henry Waxman, puffing away on their personal vaporizers while they explain why congress should leave the industry the hell alone...

This will all come to a head when some toddler or little kid grabs a bottle of nicotine juice, drinks it and dies. This kid will become the poster child for the "vaping is evil" campaign. Posters in every convenience store, dire online warnings, and so on. But it will be a ruse.

Every vaper must claim that they are using the device to "help them quit." Not to actually quit, but the help them. Then explain to everyone that making the devices illegal will cause them to have to smoke again.

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Part III)

2011-01-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

One of the posters reading this noted that nicotine is a neurotoxin. This is the sort of thing I am talking about. If you make the definition of neurotoxicity "anything that affects the nervous system" (as described here) then yes, nicotine is a neurotoxin, just like love, chocolate and caffeine.

Nicotine is probably one of the most widely used drugs on earth - particularly when you consider its alternate forms (things into which it is converted or is part of) such as Vitamin B3 (niacin).

(For those that are interested the E-cigarette forum thread is here.)

First off, Vitamin B3 is nicotinic acid (created commercially by literally treating nicotine with nitric acid) - also known as niacin. Humans, unlike some animals, cannot manufacture Vitamin B3 on their own so they must get it from their diets.

B3 is required for health. You cannot live without it.

Pure nicotine, on the other hand, is naturally present in eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and a whole host of other foods. So, unless you avoid these types of food, you are exposed to nicotine on almost a daily basis. (Though it is present in these foods the levels are generally much lower than the levels in cigarettes. Eggplant has the most - about 10% of what might be in a cigarette. The levels in other plants are about 10% that of eggplant.)

(I suppose that if you believe that nicotine is a neurotoxin then your mother's admonishment to "eat your vegetables" is tantamount to a conspiracy to kill you...!!)

In your body about 80% of the nicotine is converted to continine which is excreted via the urinary system.

So nicotine is closely related to Vitamin B3 that occurs naturally in things we eat.

As to what dangers nicotine present to a human (short of consuming too much) things are much less clear. While there are a lot of studies about nicotine and smoking there are not a lot about what something like an e-cigarette might do as far as basically delivering nicotine only to your lungs.

So what you see written about studies and so forth related to nicotine are vary often linked to tobacco use. In fact, there is very little published about nicotine alone - and what their is published you must read very carefully to tease out the issues related to nicotine versus those that are tobacco related.

The bottom line here, as I see it, and how this relates to e-cigarettes in general, is that "science" has done very little to study nicotine on its own, probably about as much as is done for caffeine. Since its associated with tobacco it is just generally lumped into the "evil cigarette and tobacco" category and forgotten.

There are lots of silly sites like this claiming that foods of one sort or another are bad for you - but I think you have to be very careful when looking at this. Personally I have come to believe that smoking is very likely done to address some sort of dietary deficiency.

Now, I am not a doctor so what I am telling you here is purely opinion.

First off, as I have documented in this blog, I have discovered that I, a person who is relatively healthy (or at least so I thought), is malnourished in today's USA. What I mean by this is that my diet, though it consists of a variety of things does very little to address what my body really needs. This is due to many things as I have also written about here.

So one of the first things that I have to question is, relative to all this study of nicotine and excluding any tobacco studies, are these studies looking at healthy people in the first place. And by healthy I mean people who are receiving proper nutrition.

More to the point, if you were properly nourished in the first place would you be smoking? And, if you were properly nourished, would nicotine harm you more than love or a cup of java?

While you might scoff at this you really need to do some research before forming any sort of serious opinion. For example, as I have documented here relative to Iodine I would say that probably 96% of everyone in the US is Iodine deficient.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with smoking?

Well, for one thing the symptoms of Iodine deficiency are many of the very same reasons people talk about as reasons for smoking - feelings of depression, tiredness, that sort of thing (see "Where for art thou Iodine"). Now, having addressed my own personal Iodine deficiency I have to say that the fact that medical "science" and the FDA ignore proper nutrition is the real crime.

And by crime I mean crime.

The FDA is supposed to help make sure that we citizens are healthy through monitoring and controlling issues related to foods and drugs. The problem is that, as far as I can see (and again there are blog posts here to this effect) they simply don't care about things that don't involve good press for them and money. Sure they spend lots of time making sure that Lipitor is available to kids - but as far as making sure the citizens of the country have enough Iodine in their diet they do nothing.

(Which is worse for your kid - smoking, e-cigarettes, or Lipitor?)

And that's a crime at the level of genocide.

So what we have here is a government that simply ignores the true health of its people working very hard on things, like Lipitor, that are really simply treating the symptoms of the people's underlying dietary deficiencies and doing nothing to correct the true problems, e.g., approving bromides in bread versus Iodine.

Given this you have a class of people, smokers, who are struggling with health issues. The FDA, despite a vast collection of evidence that people's feelings about themselves (their self worth, worries about self, etc.) is more dangerous to their health than food, diet or lifestyle, works hard to demonize their smoking habit - thus directly contributing to they feeling of low self worth.

This demonization of smoking creates an untold negative mental affect on the smokers view of themselves. A negative view compounded by malnourishment caused by the FDAs lack of action.

Now we have e-cigarettes - in fact not cigarettes at all as they involve nothing that burns. I think the first mistake is to even call them e-cigarettes. They are vaporizers - nothing more.

These devices serve to eliminate what is wrong with smoking - the smoke and burning - leaving only nicotine - a naturally occurring chemical found in many foods.

And what does the FDA do?

Attempt to make using these devices a problem.

(As a side note I find that most people don't even recognize an e-cigarette at all. Because it does not smell or burn people simply don't notice it at all unless you try to make it look like you are smoking. I think this is a very interesting psychological aspect to all of this.)

The truth is that the FDA is full of people who "used to work in industry" and, just like its total lack of attention to genetically modified and industrialized foods (because its staff came from that industry), e-cigarettes pose a threat to the well being of those its oversees.

The real problem is the FDA, the states, and the government in general is that they profit mightily from smokers. (Do you really think the billions won by the states in the tobacco wars is being saved for your medical care as a smoker later in life?)

Only a government could do such a thing. When the government runs a gambling casino they excuse themselves by displaying the 1-800-GAMBLING phone number at the bottom of the ad "in case you need help".

The hypocrisy of this is insane...

So far then I am saying (to summarize):

- The demonization of smokers is like all other racial profiling.

- Nicotine and e-cigarettes have nothing to do with smoking and its medical side show of misery.

- The government, with things like Lipitor, is just like a tobacco company pawning off bad things on unsuspecting victims.

- The government profits from this.

So how do e-cigarettes survive in this maelstrom of misery...?

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Part II)

2011-01-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

Juliet - Death by a Love Addiction (Ban it for the children!)

So we have clearly established that there is a bias against smokers - a significant, government sponsored, and perhaps racially based bias that says smoking is evil, wrong, and unclean.

And we also know that smoking as a nicotine deliver device is "bad." But what exactly is the problem with nicotine?

Well, the US Surgeon General's report (PDF here) spends a lot of time talking (pages 103 - 110) about nicotine addiction and addictive behavior but no time talking about the effects of nicotine addiction itself other than smoking. (You can read about the DSM symptoms for addiction in the report.) So, without any sort of practical comparison, i.e., what is nicotine addiction in the absence of smoking, the report provides virtually no information on the effect of nicotine on the body. On page 183 the report concludes about nicotine:

Nicotine is the key chemical compound that causes and sustains the powerful addicting effects of commercial tobacco products.

Now, it does NOT list side effects other than the addiction itself and the need for getting your "fix" each day. In fact, it implies that the tobacco product, i.e., cigarettes, are the problem. Without smoking, in fact, there would appear to be no more problems with nicotine than, say caffeine. In fact, caffeine is close behind nicotine in terms of gaining status as an addiction just like heroin and cocaine.

And there are studies such as this that indicate that inhaling nicotine vapors (without smoke) does not cause tumors or cancer like smoking.

In fact, the study showed, the only side effect was weight loss.

(Perhaps nicotine would help with the obesity epidemic...? In fact, if we banned cigarettes and everyone that smoked dies of obesity instead are we better off? Think about it... Is dying in bed from being overweight better than dying in bed because you smoked too much? Actually both can cause heart disease so the death might actually be due to the same cause.)

So let's compare nicotine with something like, say, Lipitor. (You can read about Lipitor's official side effects here. Of course, there are many other problems people report but they are mostly ignored.)

- Muscle problems.

- Kidney failure.

- Liver problems.

Somehow you don't find these serious issues with nicotine. (Of course in sufficient quantity it is a poison and is used as an insecticide in other parts of the world. But then, too much of anything, like Lipitor or electricity or water, is also a bad thing.)

There are many, many commercial drugs with far worse side effects, in fact fatal, dangerous side effects, that the FDA allows doctors to prescribe every day. No one is concerned (unless of course they are impacted by such a side effect). No one cares. These medicines are socially acceptable and deaths and debilitation from them are also socially acceptable.

Why is this?

Well, for one thing ads for these kinds of drugs now appear on popular TV and radio shows. Long ago, when cigarette ads were still shown through these media outlets the side effects of cigarettes were considered socially acceptable. Today, Lipitor can cause your liver to fail and, because as a society, we see the ads for this all the time (and we believe the foolish "cholesterol is bad" Nazi propaganda that goes along with it) Lipitor-based liver failure is a socially acceptable outcome.

(I have written extensively about the entire cholesterol "magical thinking" conspiracy here if you are interested.)

That's right, just like driving 65 MPH which reliably kills measurably more people than 55 MPH driving faster is socially acceptable and a socially acceptable way to risk you life. No one complains. No one cries. Its merely a simple fact of life they humans accept, live and die with every day.

Addictive behavior is part of the human condition.

Have we all forgotten this?

Human's do stupid things all the time. They find comfort in ritual, fantasy, and addiction.

Love, for example, is also a demonstrable chemical addiction (see this): "Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction."

So where's the FDA on this love thing?

Where the the anti-love Nazi's?

If love is an addiction isn't it unclean just like nicotine?
Sometimes its even fatal, just ask Juliet...

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Part I)

2011-01-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

Anne Frank - From Wikipedia - Did she smoke?

I have been very busy and so have only been updating the Lone Wolf blog for the last few weeks.

Recently, though, I have been involved in a very interesting and unique process. Several close relatives have been switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes. And, what is surprising to me, is how much illogical and foolish nonsense is involved in the "myth of the evil cigarette". To the point that it involves something like an e-cigarette which does not burn anything at all. How is such a think "smoking" in any rational sense? How is it a nicotine delivery device any different than, say, an eggplant, which is full of nicotine? How is something natural like niacin (nicotinic acid or vitamin B3) bad for you?

I call it a "myth" because most of what people seem to believe is not based on any actual science at all but is in fact based on what I will call "politically-based pseudo science". What is fascinating is that this pseudo science is no more modern or reliable than Hatiian Voodou yet modern people cling to it as if their very lives depend on it. (Perhaps its because as a nation our burgeoning scientific ignorance is accelerating at a remarkable rate, at least according to this.)

As an advocate of logic the pseudo science of "the evils of cigarette smoking" makes a very interesting tale...

(I am an advocate of the libertarian perspective on all of this - if you don't like it go away and leave me alone and don't take my rights away because of what you don't like. There are many other dangerous activities and diseases but since they are politically correct science looks for cures and aids to make sufferers live longer - funny how you don't see that with smoking... Is it morally "better" to create a medication to help an Aids or Hepatitis C sufferer than a smoker?)

The history of this begins in the 1950's as observations about what happened to smokers were turned into epidemiological studies. I have written here before about this kind of study (magical thinking) and how they work.

In point of fact no one reports the number of smokers who die from cancer as a percentage of smokers, i.e., if 100 people smoke how many will die. The answer, unfortunately for the anti-smoking Nazi's is that only about 10% or so are actually killed by cancer directly (er, as "directly" as can be claimed) as a result of smoking, i.e., 10 of the 100 will die of cancer (see this). So the propaganda machine turns this around and always talks about how many people die from lung cancer - which tells you nothing about the actual risk of smoking.

According to this only 1 in 4 smokers will develop progressive and incurable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

And most interestingly and more important there are many new genetic studies that point to all sorts of other genetic links between cancer and smoking such as this in Scientific American.

So my first point in the e-cigarette saga is that smoking is a problem related to being a "social outcast". Its certainly less dangerous than many things, everyone regardless of whether they smoke or not will still die, and there are many more unpleasant ways to die than via lung cancer, COPD, or other smoking related illnesses. (One study I would like to see is what does it cost to die. I would also like to see studies that remove the elderly from the classic types of studies, i.e., what do younger people die from that is not usual. As I have pointed out here in the past death certificates have only one box for a "cause" - and that is also a problem with all of this.)

So at any rate the ratcheted-up anti-smoking Nazi goose-stepping is all based on the fact that a majority of people don't like smokers. Surprisingly even heavy pot smokers have complained to me that cigarettes "bother" them - as if that made any kind of sense at all. They (the cigarette smokers) are "unclean" - to borrow from a more ~~infamous~~ famous historical perspective.

So the bottom line from the e-cigarette perspective is that its the "thought that counts": you're on your way to the concentration camp if you look like you belong there - life will be better for the rest of us (even the heavy pot smokers) without you...

Of course you think that I am some sort of anti-smoking extremist - which I am not. (I am merely a logician applying consistent rules across the boundaries of time to expose "pseudo science" for what it is: nonsense.)

Simply read the link above from the Scientific American - perhaps the smoker sitting next to you has a genetic variation leading them to smoke in the first place.

So how, in the eyes of a Nazi, is that any different than the genetics of Judaism, of Mishchling?

And given a demonstrated genetic component to smoking how is "hating smoking" any different than the evils of racial profiling? Is a cigarette hanging out of someone's mouth any different than someone wearing a burka or turban?

Its not... its just plain old guilt by genetic predisposition.

While you many not like this, or me for saying it, you will not be able to convince me I am wrong because I am not.

E-cigarettes (which, again, don't even burn anything and hence are not related to smoking at all other than by appearance) have a big hole to dig out of...

Chinese Mothers: No Catering Allowed.

2011-01-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

Amy Chua - Harvard Professor, Author, and Chinese Mom

As I have written before I am married to Anthropological Mom.

Over the weekend I saw an article in the WSJ: Why Chinese Mothers are Superior. The author, Amy Chua, describes her anthropological child rearing methods:

- No sleepovers, parties, camp, TV, computer games, getting less than an A, and so on.

- Insulting and/or belittling their kids when they deserve it.

- Use what by today's Western standards would be considered abusive physical or verbal coercion.

- Expecting their child to excel.

Not that long ago this was the standard model for child rearing in the USA as well - for example, when I was a child. Our parents in those days were not nearly as strict in terms of some areas - we could, for example, watch TV after our chores were completed - but for the most part these rules stood.

If I had a penny for every time a childhood friend said "man, I can't do that, if my old man found out..." I would be a billionaire.

In my day the "old man" meant business.

If you lived on the farm as many of my friends did you spent your life working on the farm until you were old enough to leave (16, 17, 18 - depended on the kid's maturity level), get married or become one of the old man's partners. No one cared if you didn't like it because if you didn't do your jobs and chores the family would starve - and it would all be on your head.

If you misbehaved and he found out you got a "beating". The nature of a "beating" varied but it was not pleasant and was often added to anything dished out at school.

You weren't expected to be number one in the class or get all A's, but you were required to get "good grades" - again this varied by circumstances.

When you screwed up in front of the old man you were likely a "%$@## idiot" or a "dumb @##". The old man was unafraid to express his true opinion in your presence.

Unlike Amy Chua the "old man" never sat around making you learn the song on the piano. If he was paying for lessons you damn well better take them and seriously. It didn't matter as much to him what became of your piano skills afterward - so long as you followed the program and took the spending of his hard earned money seriously.

There were no sleepovers in those days unless you were a girl - and then it was still rare. You might have some friends over on a birthday, but again that was a rare event.

The old man didn't care much about your self esteem - that was your job. You knew where you fit into the world based on what you were and what you had offered to you. No one spent much time worry about having things - no one had things like computers, video games, and the like. The old man made sure you had a ball and glove, or whatever was appropriate for your sport. You had three squares, a bed, school, and chores.

You learned to get along with bullies or you got beat. Bullies were different in those days because there was still honor - if you whipped the bully he acknowledged it and gave you respect. If you lost you were welcome to try again any time.

The bully didn't detract from you self esteem - he was a challenge to self improvement. Your self esteem was intact no matter what happened unless you trashed it by running from a fight, ratting out your best pal, and so forth.

Today's children are so confused about themselves and their self esteem that they cannot deal with reality - reality like the fact that that there are and always will be bullies. While adults can pretend they don't exist the child is smart enough to see that they do.

I wonder what this confusion does for the child's self esteem?

The Chinese Mother story is really the same story of what the US was like in the 1950's and 1960's - which was probably like everywhere else in the world in terms of child raising.

Here in the USA we have given up our adult lives to become children. No one wants to make little Johnny "feel bad" about himself so we, as they used to say, "cater" to him. Now, like Chinese Mothers, no one should be "catering" to anybody - particularly children.

Just last night my friend used the expression about his dog. "Those damn kids cater to that dog by letting it in and out all the time so pretty soon the dog expects to be let in and out on its own schedule."

Thank God that some people still get it.

Without "catering" we all know our place - we may not like it - but at least we know what it is.

Once the "catering" begins all bets are off - your destiny is no longer set by you but by the "caterer" - who ever that may be.

Take my friend's dog for example, the dog is actually training the kids when to let it in and out.

Now who is in charge? The kids or the dog?

And so it has gone on since the 1970's when whiny adult children set out to "change the world" and "make it a beautiful place". Sadly today's modern Western society is today nothing but "catering". Catering to every conceivable special interest group, minority, majority, interest, whim, religion, lack of religion, you name it.

Is the world now a better place than it was in 1970?

It is for the Chinese Moms.

Their kids are succeeding where ours are now failing and falling behind.

So much for "changing the world" - making our selves second rate and mediocre - taking ourselves from a position of leadership to "has beens".

But at least we can feel good about ourselves as we slide relentlessly from our current world of mediocrity to complete abysmal failure as a culture and society.

And sure, a lot of Asian and Indian cultures stress the same principles and hard work as we once did. But we also had creativity which the "old man" was never concerned about. If you wanted it bad enough - what ever it was - you had to convince him. He didn't cater to your ideas and dreams but he would respect them if they earned and deserved it. Of course this is evidenced by the fact that in the olden days you "grew up and left home" because you needed to prove yourself - unlike today where you simply "never grow up or leave home".

And one more thing. Amy Chua is not writing this article to ask for your forgiveness or to cleanse her soul for past wrongs against her children. Chinese Moms will continue to expect their children to excel without concern of their Western self esteem.

Does this mean their children will always be the smartest children or the most creative?

Its hard to say.

The Chinese culture has been around for 5,000 year or so, about twenty five times longer than ours here in the US and about ten times longer than most European cultures - twice as long as western culture in general.

Freedom and creativity can buy you a lot - look at the progress made here in the west during the last two hundred or so years.

But we're still a flash in the pan compared to most Asian cultures.

I think Amy Chua just doesn't want us to drop the ball.

Making a Front Door (Part I)

2011-01-11T12:24:00.000-05:00

No, I did not make this door - its for illustration only.

Now that the holidays are over its time to finish up some projects around the house.

A major issue has been the fact that we still do not have a front door for our addition we added two years ago. With the slowing of the economy it didn't seem prudent to buy the one we wanted given that we had the materials to make one. Sadly of lot of other projects came up in the mean time which left us with a big, insulated, patched hole to fill.

So the goal here is a 3' 0 68 1-3/4" sold oak front door with two side lites on the side. (Let me decode the door talk: 3' 0 means three feet (36" inches) wide, 68 means 6' 8" high, side lites are windows - not lights you turn on and off.)

The plan is to create the door first, then the frame, with a spot for the door and lights, then the lights.

The image above shows the basic idea - though this is not our actual design. The door itself will be made using mortise and tenon joints.

The mortises will be made in the stiles for the door. The stiles are the long, vertical strips of wood running up and down on the left and right of the door (see picture and diagram below). The tenon will be made in the rails which are the cross pieces. Mortise and tenons are used because the door will be exposed on one side to the elements and subject to a certain amount of heating and cooling which will result in the wood expanding and contracting. Things like glue-only assembly tend to fail in this sort of situation.

Below is a diagram of what components make up a door.

This is very old technology to be sure.

Our idea is to make the front door from the barn wood we have left over from our barn tear down. So, rather than run down to the lumber yard and purchase the proper sized boards for this project we will instead make them.

Yes, you read correctly, we will be making oak boards.

Given the thickness we need for this door we will need to start with 2 1/4" think "rough cut' oak. Rough cut means that the boards are cut down from raw timber stock. In our case we have saved the oak beams from the old barn - so instead of starting with logs we will start with beams. We will plane the boards down to the finish size of 1 3/4".

(As it turns out all of this is a remarkably "green," recycling sort of a thing to do. No logging will occur, no sawmill will be involved, etc.)

Unlike timber old barn beans have some advantages and some problems. On the advantage side they are easy to manage - no limbs to remove, already in at least somewhat of a convenient size, already been drying out for the last 150 years or so and so forth. On the down side there are nails. Wood working equipment does not like metal and so all the metal has to be removed from barn beams. Unfortunately, since the beams are part of a structure assembled in part with hammer and nails this can be a lot of work.

So, before doing any "rough cutting" we have to remove all of the nails. To do this we need some plain old hand tools. A mallet, chisels (and large screw drivers acting as chisels) and a one-handed adze - which I made out of something I found at Home Depot or Lowes.

The problem with the nails is that they rust off at the surface leaving only, at best, rusty remains flush with the surface. To get these out you have to dig down around them removing wood until there is enough of the remaining nail exposed to pull out with a set of dikes or a wonder bar.

Once exposed you can usually get the nail out.

So after a hour or so of work we have our barn beam stripped of all the obvious nails.

Now at this point its important to realize that A) the beam is long enough and B) its thick enough. Otherwise going through all this work might be a big frustrating. So, to be sure, we can get at least one 2 1/2" cut out of this and its almost 90-some inches long - more than adequate for what we need.

To make the rough cuts we will use a chain saw.

(To be continued. This will all take some time so there will be infrequent updates as various milestones are reached.)

Tobacco/Cocaine Bleedout...

2011-01-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

We spend an awful lot of money on stupid things in this country and its really hard to even imagine why.

This came to mind the other day when I was writing about the FDA and smoking. In 2010 the FDA will spend $200 million USD on "to continue to implement the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Preventing youth from using tobacco and helping Americans quit, promoting public understanding of the harmful constituents of tobacco products, developing the foundation of science for regulating tobacco, and regulating tobacco to reduce the toll of tobacco-related disease, disability and mortality are tobacco program priorities for FY 2011." This out of a total of $4 billion USD budget.

So if one imagines that cocaine as an "industry" does about $100 billion USD in revenue each year I have wonder why I have not seen one, not one, FDA warning about cocaine products here in the good old USA.

No, I'm not talking about the bump you get down at local bar (apparently no one complains about that).

I'm talking tea (like the kind you make with hot water) containing coca leaves. The kind you can buy at Amazon.com. The kind that will get you busted in a drug test. For example, this kind of "Coca Tea" sold directly on-line here (I went all the way to checkout just to make sure I was not on the Bolivian or Colombian Amazon.com).

So what is up with this and the FDA? I really don't get it.

Cocaine is a Schedule I Controlled Substance. Yet there seems to be nothing going on with it related to the FDA save for the banning of a drink called "cocaine" (see this) - a drink that did not actually contain any cocaine (yes, this is really like Alice in Wonderland).

Clearly cocaine is nearly as big, if not bigger, than smoking.

And we are told, and have been since 1913 or so, the cocaine is bad; and since the 1950's that smoking is bad.

We know this.

So why spend $200 million dollars a year on smoking prevention but still allow us to drink cocaine tea?

Isn't a little tobacco like a little cocaine?

Apparently not, at least by the FDA. Tobacco is FAR WORSE.

(Only ex-hippy, liberal, wacky nut jobs in the government would think this.)

I think this is like the $20,000 USD vet bills we run up (see this) giving little Fluffy an MRI, surgery, and blood tests.

Why, you might ask?

Because sometimes you get so focused on something, like your pet (or smoking), you start to miss out on the bigger picture (like the massive US cocaine addiction).

Wouldn't it be better to spend $20,000 (or $200 million) on something else?

Is my money going to make that much of a difference?

And, most importantly, are there smarter things I might be doing instead...

LIKE SPENDING THE $200 MILLON ON PREVENTING KIDS FROM USING COCAINE?

You see, I think we are just busy trading one problem for another.

When I was a kid in eighth grade your friends' older brother could get a six pack of beer somewhere without too much trouble and you could hang out, shoot the shit and drink it. No harm and no foul.

Then the federal government came along and made kids having a beer a horrific crime by threatening states that if they didn't make it a horrific crime they would have some (5% or so) of their highway funds cut.

And it worked... Except little Johnny and little Suzy are strung out on crack, coke, meth, oxy's, and pot.

You see - they were going to experiment regardless of the FDA's laws - a few beers - a cop catching them - running away through the bushes - that sort of thing made you grow up. I know I grew up when my best high school friends sister was killed when I was 15. She was in eighth grade when it happened. My friend was never the same.

The problem is that today 16% or more of all drivers on strung out on drugs (see this). Only about 2% have a blood alcohol greater than the common legal limit of .08. The alcohol drivers "over the limit" are down about 50% since the 1970's...

In 1976 my friends sister was the exception, not the rule.

So you see, the "Don't Drink Till Your 21" program working, right?

At least the government thinks it is because they don't have to care about what else little Johnny might be doing instead...

We all get tobacco is bad.

We all get that its "evil" and "foul" and "violates your rights".

We all tolerate the rights of bar and business owners loosing the right to entertain customers using legal products.

We all tolerate smokers having to stand out in the cold and rain so as not to "harm" everyone else.

While the FDA can proudly point out all the progress that's been made against smoking and alcohol WHO IS GOING TO TAKE CREDIT FOR THE VAST INCREASE IN HARD DRUG USAGE?

You an bet it won't be the FDA and anti-smoking bigots.

E-Cigarettes

2011-01-06T12:17:00.000-05:00

Over on the Lone Wolf blog I posted about e-cigarettes. You can read there about what they are and how they work.

What interests me here is the reaction to these devices.

Now first off let's be clear. There is no burning of tobacco - no smoke. Instead nicotine infused steam or water vapor is created inside the e-cigarette and that's what you breath.

This has been studied in New Zealand (read this). The report Summary says: "It is very safe relative to cigarettes, and also safe in absolute terms on all measurements we have applied."

As for the US you can download the full PDF here from the Surgeon General's website. This is a long, tedious read about the hazards of breathing combustible materials. Even the nicotine addiction section is tied to this. I would imagine that no one is surprised to read that breathing smoke is bad. Everyone knows this: smokers and non-smokers alike. Unfortunately the government has spent a lot of money and time discovering and validating the obvious.

One imagines that, for example, firefighters would find this an important read because most of what is discussed about smoke and breathing smoke is generally true. Apparently studying the effects on smoke on those people chronically exposed as part of their job is less important. (As anyone who burns common paper household trash can tell you there is far, far worse involved than mere smoke.)

Then there is the FDA. They have attempted and failed to have shipments of these products to the US banned or stopped at the boarder. The FDA contends these are "drug" devices and must be subject to extreme regulation and control by the FDA (as opposed to, say, hypodermic needles, which you can buy by the dozen's in any drug store).

The problem here is really very simple. All of this is about two things: money and control.

No one believes that smoking is good for you.

However, smoker's are addicted to two elements of smoking: the "hit" of the smoke from the drag and the nicotine. E-cigarettes offer both - the vapor as the "hit" as well as the nicotine.

Nicotine is, in any significant quantity, a dangerous chemical. In most of the rest of the world its used as an insecticide. In small quantities, like those found in both tobacco and cigarettes, its dangers are much less clear.

A quick check of Wikipedia indicates many common elements between nicotine and, say, caffeine. Both are alkaloids, both affect mood, both are consumed world wide in enormous quantities, both are mildly addictive to some degree, and on and on.

Sales of cigarettes in the US for 2005 was some 378 billion cigarettes which comes out to $180 billion dollars US at a retail price of $5/pack - which is probably around one percent (1%) of the US economy. Another 1% of the economy covers the cost of treating smoking related health issues.

There are claims that "lack of productivity" caused by smoking costs around $100 billion USD per year but I think that number needs to be compared to the reality of eliminating cigarettes and any associated productivity losses associated with that to be meaningful.

The reason e-cigarettes are so popular is that cigarette prices are highly inflated by taxes. Cigarettes in other countries where taxes do not play as much of a role is significantly less. US states like New York can garner as much as $5 - $7 dollars a pack in taxes.

With e-cigarettes you can happily vape away for about $100 a year without paying any US taxes. In a state like New York that probably means about $5,000 USD less a year per smoker in state tax revenue. Given New York's tens of billions in budget shortfall you can see one of the reasons government is so interested in stopping e-cigarettes (200,000 smokers = $1 billion in annual cigarette taxes lost).

Then there is the control aspect.

The FDA believes that its role is to ban not only smoking but also the concept of smoking, i.e., its not good enough to control what you do, but you cannot be allowed to even want to smoke. (Read the Surgeon General's report if you don't believe this).

The problem here is two fold. First there is tax revenue and corresponding money spent on smoking remedies. While on the one hand the government claims to want to ban smoking banning smoking successfully will strangle many state budgets because, as hard as it is to imagine, all those big dollar tobacco settlements won over the last decades are not sitting in banks waiting to pay for the cost of smoking related illnesses. No, like social security, the states have long since spent that money and rely on direct tax collection of tobacco taxes to survive.

Second the FDA needs to control tobacco in order to manage the tobacco market relative to its big-tobacco friends in the industry (after all, their collective $180 billion dollar market is in significant danger if e-cigarettes go off the existing "tobacco control range").

Secondly, without a crusade, like tobacco, there is less for the FDA to do. With less to do budgets shrink (just look at the hundreds of government funded studies in the Surgeon General's report). So, though Congress told the FDA it can regulate but not ban tobacco, the FDA struggles to make itself relevant on the e-cigarette front.

All this said let's compare cigarettes to other "drug related" industries.

I would estimate that about 1,000 metric tons of cocaine is produced annual. A metric ton is 1,000 x 1,000 grams (1,000 kilograms) or one million grams. With a street price of $100 a gram that $100 million dollars per metric ton (more if the cocaine is cut). Given 1,000 metric tons that's about $100 billion USD in manufactures cocaine sales - probably two or more times that retail on the street.

Now in the US a 100 billion dollar company is going to employ at least 50,000 workers - probably many more. So one imagines that the same relationship must be true for cocaine. Yet while there are lot of small scale arrests there are relatively few large-scale arrests (maybe 5,000 per year for trafficking - but I am having a hard time figuring this out).

At any rate while the FDA would happily shut down any US tobacco company at a moments notice for some trivial reason or other they apparently cannot manage to get their hands around the illegal drug trade's throat no matter how hard they try (I wonder if this is because government is full of baby boomer dopers who really don't want to see recreational drug use actually eliminated?)

Now if you add in cannabis, heroin, meth, etc. and other legal drugs used illicitly you will see that these industries employ a lot of people and are very, very large (like on the order of Mobil-Exxon for each type of drug).

The point of all this is that "clamping down" in terms of the FDA means at least a $100 billion dollars per year in annual sales - so clamping down on e-cigarettes (or cigarettes in general) would probably (actually) be a huge boon for the market. Not to mention it would cut $100 billion out of state cigarette sales taxes.

The bottom line is that the FDA is grasping at straws: trying to get the cat back into the bag.

But I think its too late. I have heard, but cannot confirm, as many as 30K people are converting per week to e-cigarettes (I wonder if this is because the FDA told them smoking was bad for them?)

Bottom line for me?

- E-cigarettes are far less dangerous than smoking regular cigarettes.

- Government and big tobacco are going to work very hard to protect their slice of the revenue and control pie.

- The FDA and state tobacco tax collections are going to go head-to-head for you cigarette tax dollars - its unclear to me who will win this battle.

- Banning e-cigarettes in hypocritical nonsense if you believe smoking regular cigarettes is bad.

- The FDA controlling tobacco and/or e-cigarettes to much will simply yield yet another giant criminal industry on the order of Exxon-Mobile.

- FDA regulation = means to tax.

- No one really knows what things like ionophores or genetic engineering might be doing to us and our food supply - but killing off smoking is apparently far more important to the FDA than stopping, or even studying, something that the entire general population has A) no control over, B) is not analyzed in anywhere as much, and C) is in virtually every food product we consume.

At the end of the day illegal drugs, tobacco, and alcohol probably make up a very large portion of the economy - on the order of health care at one sixth.

Perhaps the FDA should simply hire tobacco company execs to work there - after all they do hire big food execs - and magically there is not investigation or problem with genetic engineering or commercial chemicals with very little safety study.

Right or wrong smoking what people choose to do with their money.

(Again, I think that big government workers are liberally minded and see tobacco as evil and smokers are dull thugs unable and unwilling to think for themselves. On the other hand, they see things like pot and so forth as enlightened recreational activities when properly used - after all, that's what they were told in the 1960's. As I said - its what people choose to do with their money.)

But big nanny government knows you are too stupid to take care of yourself so they plan to do it for you.

Personally I think that all the tobacco settlement money states sued for should be required by law (or lawsuit) to be held aside for future tobacco health costs. If the states cannot do this they are simply hypocritical liars who are out to ~~take your money~~..., erh, ah, profit from your smoking habit.

Its a good thing we have exercised morality from our modern social conscience - otherwise someone might notice what's going on that think it was, gasp, wrong...

Animal Drugs

2011-01-04T17:27:00.000-05:00

I have always been curious about animals and drugs - particular farm animals.

I recently happened upon an article that included this handy chart above. In 2009 80% of all antibiotics when into animals - that's about 28 million pounds of chemicals.

In that same year humans only consumed 7 million pounds of the same drugs.

While perusing this list I cam upon ionophores. Next to tetracycline ionophores are the second most common compound used in animal feed. Now I've been around a while and most of the rest of the things on the list I have at least heard of before - but not ionophores.

Every hear of them?

No, I thought not.

So just what are these compounds?

Ionophores are compounds that affect how substances pass through the celluar membranes of microbes. So, for example, some might block the passage of sodium ions through a cell membrane. If the microbe requires sodium to live then the ionophore will cause it to die because it is unable to process sodium ions.

So specific ionophores are specific to kinds of ions. And specific ions are used by particular bacteria, for example, in the gut of cattle.

Use of ionophores in animal feed can also cause cattle to produce less methane by changing how they digest their food and how that food is absorbed into their bodies. And, more importantly, according to this "feeding of ionophores to cattle decreases the feed needed for growth and increases feed efficiency." (These sorts of statements always bring to mind the old adag "you can't get something for nothing.")

The actual effect is that these compounds delay the processing of the food consumed until after the stomach leaving the work to be done by the intestines instead. These compounds are also apparently only safe for a small number of mammals, e.g., cattle and chickens. Their use is detrimental to horses, dogs, and other common farm animals.

Ionophores are not antibiotics per se hence the FDA does require meat sold from animals feed with ionophores to be labeled as containing antibiotics.

Ionophores are not used for humans do to their potent cardiovascular effects (see this). I cannot find a lot of detail on exactly why but it seems that these compounds can damage cardiac and skeletal muscles.

Unfortunately ionophores are now found in our water and soil (see this article) - most likely through run-off and waste from large big-agra farming operations. Again, this does not seem to get much study, though with that much of this being used you would like to think it was completely harmless to humans.

Of course, big agra doesn't want you to have to worry about ionophores and are working hard to remove use of these compounds from meat product labeling.

Ionophores do also create resistant bacteria - though not in the same way as with penicillin and other traditional antibiotics - but it takes much longer.

In any case - more food (no pun intended) for thought...

Characterizing Flu and Colds

2011-01-03T15:21:00.000-05:00

I read a lot of blogs and information about flu and colds. One thing that I notice is that the discussion of symptoms is always "flat" relative to time, i.e., you will see "runny nose, vomiting, diarrhea, coughing," as if they all arrive and leave at once.

Personally (as well as for people I know, and, in fact for everyone I know) the symptoms don't fall out of the sky "all at once" - they have a sequence.

Personally I experience these in a definite order and with a definite time progression. I see this with others as well and in fact its often possible to decide if you have the same flu as someone else by discussing the progression. For example, one year a friend said, "Oh I've got it now: first its the sore throat for a week, then the cold for a week, then the earache for a week" and by God he was right! I had each of these symptoms, albeit very mildly, exactly in that order and for more or less the same amount of time for each.

There is also some specific aspects of symptoms I find for colds and flu.

For colds I generally only have a mildly runny nose and perhaps a day or two of mild fever. Nothing that stops me from doing anything but just enough so that I know its there.

Flu is more interesting. Generally I find a very specific sequence of events. First there is usually a day or two of gastrointestinal upset - for me very mild usually. Then there is probably a lag day or two. Then usually I detect some sort of post nasal drip which increases over a day or two. Prior to me practicing sinus flushing things were usually more unpleasant after that: a stuffed up set of sinuses, a sore throat for a couple of days, fever, the post nasal drip would drip some miserable crud into my lungs, then the cough would start. Generally first with a "tight" chest followed by a progressively worse cough over a series of days. Usually a worsening fever was involved. Then there would be weeks of "post flu" recovery - coughing for a week or so, some throat crud often involving a day of laryngitis, and a lingering (usually a month to six weeks) of sinus infection misery.

Post iodine supplementation and sinus flushing the course of the flu is now much different. There is the same basic sequencing but the effects are very mild - generally never involving more than daily discomfort but still not really limiting anything I do. The cough, sore throat and sinus infection phases are basically gone so long as I keep up with the sinus flushing.

So no where do I ever see anything related to the sequence of events. Certainly I know that other adults experience similar sequences of events but modern medicine seems to be completely ignorant of this progression.

What I have found critical to keeping from suffering is to apply the sinus flushing early on and regularly. This seems to completely eliminate the sore throat phase, it keeps the sinuses from getting a serious infection (blood and yellow mucus), and seems to eliminate the cough - though with a bad flu I can still feel it progress into my chest somewhat - but its manageable and while I may voluntarily cough to eliminate mucus I don't suffer from "a cough".

For flu I tend to need a day or two of sage tea to help the sinus flushing. Usually I use this (home grown sage dried, crushed, and placed into a "tea ball" then steeped in hot water for 5-10 minutes) if and when I feel things heading for my chest. Prior to sinus flushing I needed a lot more sage tea but once I started with sinus flushing I find it only really helps with the "chest" aspect.

So why am I writing this?

For one thing I think that the type of flu is probably very definitely tied to the sequence of symptoms - not the just the fact that you have them but with the order in which they appear as well as their length. No where do I see medical sites talking about this - yet no one I know ever gets "all" the symptoms at one time.

For another I think that its critical to keep the flu from going from your "head to your chest". Sinus flushing and sage tea do this for me. (Colds, on the other hand, never seem to try for your chest and stay only "in your head". Colds also never seem to produce the "green, yellow, and bloody" mucus - instead causing white or clear mucus. Colds never have gastric and sinus infection elements either.)

For me flu always tries to attack your chest and subsequently give you a sinus infection. Like clockwork with a flu after its mostly gone suddenly my teeth and face will start to hurt telling me its going for the sinuses. A couple of additional sinus flushes are critical at this point and completely kill off the sinus problems.

So what do I think?

I think that what we call "cold and flu" today is really made up of two parts:

First colds are simple viruses that cause head-only symptoms: runny nose, fever. Beyond these basic symptoms I think that other infection elements (the second part) come into play - particularly in the sinuses.

Flu, on the other hand, involves a clear sequence of specific events in a specific order: gastric issues, nasal drip, plugged sinuses, move to the chest, cough, sinus infection.

I will claim that with proper treatment (iodine, sinus flush) that flu will take about twiece as long to run its course as a cold but still not cause significant problems unless you do not use effective (iodine, sinus flush) treatment in which case it will run on for weeks or months.

I think that a properly timed attack is key for flu - particularly during the head to chest transition.

I believe that the iodine and flush kill off bacteria that attempt to take advantage of your weakened immune system.

I believe that proper iodine supplementation helps and that you can increase this during a flu or cold to shorten its life (I went from two drops a day of Lugol's to four during the worst of it).

I believe that the ridiculous over-prescription of antibiotics for flu create far, far stronger strains of these bacteria and that modern medicine is making the problem of flu much worse than it would otherwise be. Peroxide and iodine are fatal to bacteria for reasons much different than antibiotics and are therefore more effective. (But since a bottle of Lugol's Iodine is $10 USD and a bottle of peroxide costs about $1.75 USD you will not see much happening in modern medicine to make use of it - particularly if you can do all this at home without a doctor.)

I think that flu should be characterized by sequences of symptoms over time so people can identify them and compare what they have to what the CDC and others are claiming are out there. Of course everyone is different, but I am becoming suspicious that these viruses have very specific sequences of attack that are easy to identify.

Most of what is available from doctors, pharmacies and over-the-counter only address symptoms. Flu and colds are viruses and only anti-viral medications will attack them directly.

No doctor or pharmacist that I know has ever questioned anything else regarding the flu like I have here nor do I believe that they ever will - as there is no business in it for them.

I think that if an idiot does not know how to wash his or her own hands (and needs a sign or video for instruction) its obvious that the same idiot will happily spread flu and cold viruses around like there is no tomorrow. Hence all the "wash your hands" nonsense is just that. Do you think the cook at home or out and about never sneezes?

No, I think that this silliness is the result of the fact that most people have weakened immune systems.

Palin, Genetic Engineering, and Big Business

2010-12-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

I while back I wrote Genetic Engineering: It's what's for Dinner. I discussed the Roundup Ready seed products from Monsanto and how they were in everyday use. I explicitly covered the details of how it was done as well as referenced the patents filed by Monsanto.

Of particular interest here is that during the creation of "Roundup Ready" seeds Monsanto extracts a large portion of DNA from the life forms used to develop a tolerance to glyphosate. Claim #4 of the US Patent US Patent 4,535,060 says "A DNA sequence of less than 5 Kb having a structural gene coding for a glyphosate resistant 5-enolpyruvyl-3-phosphoshikimate synthetase."

This morning I read this opinion piece (link) in the WSJ: Ag Department Uproots Science. The particular quote that interests me "the Roundup Ready crop [in this case alfalfa] menaces the purity of nearby organic fields, potentially cross-pollinating and threatening the livelihood of organic farmers."

The WSJ article complains that "sound science" is being ignored while "activists" set the agenda for what is approved or not approved by the USDA.

Sadly I think the WSJ is a bit late in its assessment of "sound science" - perhaps 30 years too late.

The first "Roundup Ready" patent dates from the mid 1980's. Since that time a significant amount of additional information wabout what might exactly be in the "less than 5Kb" of DNA used to create the Roundup Ready crops has been unearthed:

- Wired "Early Reports from the 'Dark Matter' of the Genome"

- Which leads you to "ENCODE: More Genomic Empowerment"

- Which covers these many papers.

The papers address the function of what was considered "non-coding junk" (see Wikipedia) in DNA - the spaces between the actual DNA elements which encoded for proteins (introns).

Thirty years ago splicing DNA a la Monsanto and Roundup Ready did constitute "good science". At that time the only function thought to be carried in the spliced genes was the protein encoding portion. The introns were useless junk left by evolution - sort of like an old attic full of quaint and useless artifacts.

Today much more is now known about that that "good science" involves. Specifically the ENCODE papers discuss the venerable Fruit Fly, its genes and (from Wired) "2,000 previously unknown genes" and "more than 100,000 new elements, or molecules that aren’t genes but may still have function in the genome."

So much for useless junk.

So what is 5Kb of DNA contains not only the protens for glyphosate resistance but also other, unknown things - probably quite a lot of unknown things.

The "activists" complain that the Roundup Ready pollen is being spread beyond the Monsanto crops as I covered in my original post. At this point I have to say that the WSJ needs to check further in to modern science - perhaps they are less than "cutting edge".

Science has progressed since the 1980's.

On the same page as the "Ag Department" (yes, I am reading the "hard copy") article we find "Palin's Food Fight". This piece contains a discussion of Mrs. Palin's comments on her TV reality show regarding "S'mores" and "Michelle Obama". Palin specifically says, with regard to serving her children s'mores: "This is to honor Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert."

Michelle Obama, like Sarah Palin, has recently emphasized "personal responsibility" is choosing what to eat.

The problem here is that based on my previous comments "choosing what to eat" is no longer a black and white choice like it once was.

And that's my point.

On the same page where the WSJ is crying foul about "activists" and genetically modified food it is also discussing "personal responsibility" and selecting what to eat. We now consume foods with artificially embedded genetic material which we do not understand. So how do we choose wisely here?

And that's a problem.

The "good science" on GM foods is old. What is being done to our food is clearly, based on the recent research, not so simple as merely transferring a protein coding genes from A to B. More than just a gene, in fact a lot more, comes along for the ride in what used to be considered "junk DNA".

Consider 98% of human genes do not encode for proteins.

Which means that even if we sequence the entire genome of a human we are still missing 98% of what's being coded - and of that 98% we apparently know about zero regarding what it does. And it apparently does a lot according to ENCODE.

So what do the Roundup Ready GM introns copied into the GM seeds do? (No one knows.)

Did Monsanto get all the right introns copied? (No one knows.)

Do they understand what these introns do? (More than likely not.)

Is it a good idea to spread these modified genes around not knowing what they do? (No.)

I don't think that these points make me a crackpot activist.

I think that handing kiddies a lunch box full of big ag bioengineering without knowing what all the introns do does make anyone who supports it a crackpot.

Or perhaps, crackpot is too kind of a word.

Perhaps without full and complete understanding GM modifications like Roundup Ready could be dangerous in some unknown way. (Given the large percentage of introns in genes relative to protein encoding I think makes this even more dangerous.)

Humanity as a whole has not done a very good job with that sort of thing, e.g., thalidomide, Celebrex and all the other wondrous creations withdrawn from market. Weren't they all "approved" at some point only to later discover that the approval was perhaps granted to hastily?

The genetic changes being made are more complex than simple drugs you swallow and will therefore likely take much long to express their true meaning.

And drugs don't permanently and uncontrollably alter the genetic nature of our environment.

We'll Be On Holiday...

2010-12-22T11:22:00.002-05:00

Over the next two weeks with a lighter posting schedule....

Stink Bug Remedy

2010-12-21T16:15:00.000-05:00

If you live on the east or west coast you've probably seem them and worse, have them in your house.

We have them here in western Pennsylvania.

The brown marmorated stink bugs (BMSB) are probably a recent guests - first found in Penssylvania in Allentown around 1998. The bug is a true bug and part of the insect family Pentatomidae. Its Latin name is Halyomorpha halys. The rumor is that they arrived in containers from Asia.

These bugs are true agricultural pests in their homeland of China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. However, they are not dangerous to humans and do not damage structures or reproduce inside. There are numerous species of these bugs, many common to Africa, India as well as Asia.

Here I have seen them on fruit trees and, according to this, they will attack other crops as well. Regional fruits and vegetables subject to Halyomorpha halys attack include apples, mulberries, blackberry, sweet corn, field corn, soybeans, tomatoes, lima beans, green peppers and peaches. Damage to fruits looks like this. It's called "cat facing" and renders the fruit unfit for sale as "fresh".

Here in Pennsylvania their life cycle is probably one generation per year (perhaps more if its warm, maybe to two or three max). In Asia where its warm they probably have four to six generations per year.

To prevent a "stink bug" problem its best to make sure they can't get inside. Right.

So now that they are in your house what do you do?

Basically there aren't many options. You can spray for them but that might leave you with a killing fields of stink bugs which will attract yet more bugs to eat the carcasses.

So while I've been busy fixing up my new powder room, working and writing blog posts my better half, unnoticed, has be cleverly developing a "stink bug" final solution for our house. We had quite a few over the summer and now, even when the temperature pops up to 25 F or better then emerge to cling to the windows, fly around, and generally cause problems.

So today I noticed that one of the larger spider plants had been moved over to the kitchen table. Near by is a small soup can. I don't pay much attention until she calls me over.

"Look at this" she says proudly thrusting the can under my nose.

"What's that?" I say.

"Look!"

Sure enough there are dozens of dead stink bugs in the can floating belly up. I think back. Yup, she was over there fiddling with that plant and can for the last couple of days.

"They love my spider plant," she says.

Sure enough its covered with them. Lurking about under the leaves. So I watch. Evey once and a while she goes over and picks off any new arrivals off the plant and drops them in the soup can.

(Which is filled with the water.)

Now that I think about it there are far fewer around (I do realize its winter but until the spider plant was pulled out onto the dining room table as a trap there were still quite a few flying around when it warmed up even a few degrees).

So why is this working?

The spider plant, or Chlorophytum comosum, is a native of South Africa, according to Wikipedia. We've had them in our home on and off for decades. So a little research turns up this link: Stink bugs are a South African delicacy collected by women from plants at dawn, washed, boiled and eaten. No doubt our little friends feel right at home in the spider plants.

In any case it seems the stink bug and the spider plant are old friends.

Now that its dinner time I guess I'd better check to see of the soup can is empty...

P.S. - She claims that Dawn is mixed into the water as well to help the bugs on to their next lives.

Products for Sale...

2010-12-21T13:43:00.002-05:00

Here at the Lone Wolf & Just-Got-Lucky we don't just work on software or blog about random stuff.

Over the last nine months or so I have been working on some ideas for some "old barn" inspired cabinetry. I have been debating about what to do with this and I have decided to offer for sale a line of custom cabinets, counter and sink tops.

On our property we had an old barn. It was built in the 1850's and was a "Dutch" style. There are a lot of these in the neighborhood where we live. It was getting a bit weathered and there seemed no point in doing a lot of work on it since we did not plan to continue using it as a barn. So in 2006 we knocked it down.

We decided to use the parts of it in an addition we planned to build to our home. The goal was to preserve the design and "nature" of the barn while at the same time bringing it into a modern home. (We had looking into making the barn a house but decided there were too many problems.)

Here is an example of what the counter and sink tops look like. The counter top is joined, hand-matched oak splits. Each is about 1" and matched with its neighbor. The top is basically a custom marine-style finish of tung oil and spar varnish. The hardware was selected to resemble the colors you would find in vintage 1850's metal. (The rest of the powder room is not complete as can be seen from the missing trim.)

The base is made from the siding from the old barn we took down on our property. The wood here is untreated siding that has been exposed to the elements for the last 150 or so years. The flooring here is tile matched to the style of the base.

Here is another view of the sink top. I was a bit worried about joining the top and sink but it worked out okay.

There is still a "skirt" that fits between the underside of the top and the base. I will post a picture of this when my wife completes it. It will be woven wood strips. There is also a back splash that is not yet complete.

The goal in creating this was two fold - create something that would work at its intended purpose as well as be a pleasing art work that brought the old barn into a modern house.

The goal here is to sell something that people would be proud and pleased to have in their homes. Most of my life involves building things of one sort or another targeted to specific, one time uses and this is really no different.

Ideally potential customers will have hardware (like the Kohler commercial were the wife plops down a faucet and asks the architect to build a house around it) and I will create the rest.

Though this is inspired by the barn I have no compunction about creating other types of cabinetry. My dad, an architect, was an actual student of Frank Lloyd Wright so I am well versed in all sorts of other types of design.

More on this to come over the next couple of weeks...

Barbie Porn

2010-12-20T18:03:00.000-05:00

One of the most disturbing things in the modern age is the "what if" crime. For example, Mattel (or whoever makes Barbie these days), produces a Barbie doll with a small video camera inside. The result of this is that the FBI issues a warning document (described here) claiming that "law enforcement is encouraged to be aware of unconventional avenues for possible production and possession of child pornography, such as the Barbie Video Girl."

(Unlike the the Amazon porn guy documented here I think "child porn" production should be a death penalty case - there would be much less that way...)

Now as far as it goes this FBI document is fine.

I just wonder why they missed the whole grade school/middle school sexting thing. Clearly this is just as bad as any Barbie camera doll - but apparently there isn't much call for parents and law enforcement to be careful about what kids are doing with their phones. Certainly its a problem.

Clearly any cell phone or video device can be used in this sort of crime - but no one is concerned until Barbie does it.

I see a few fundamental problems here.

First off I find it troubling that kids in grade or middle school, or even high school for that matter, need phones, let alone phones with cameras in them. Given the "porn star mentality" of most prime-time TV shows (documented here) its little wonder that kids' hormones direct them to activities that, 20 years ago, simply would not have been possible.

Now personally I don't blame the kids. Adults are required to buy the phones and 99.9% of the time pay for the phones. So clearly its their fault to begin with. Yet somehow, when some highschool kids are involved in "sexting" (see this story) charges are brought against the kids.

Now I ask what about the parents? Aren't they required for the kid to have a cellphone in the first place. Isn't using a phone something that requires responsibility?

While the kids violate the letter of the law (with very serious consequences) the various statutes they violate were not, according Patrick Artur, a Philadelphia defense attorney, designed for "sexting". Their primary use was to stop "dirty old men in rain coats".

So the FBI is concerned about "what if" some perv gets hold of a Barbie camera while, right underneath their noses, kids are manufacturing porn at a pace to rival commercial porn houses: 1 in 5 kids post nude pictures of themselves on cell phones - 1 in 5. So if there's, say 15 million kids in high school (grades 9 -12) you're looking at millions of kids producing child porn as defined by the law.

So I ask "what if" that's a problem? All this kiddie porn on cellphones.

In today's age of "its not my fault" how does this go on?

Personally I think its a question of adult responsibility abdication.

In the olden days your dad had a hunting rifle. You didn't touch it without permission let alone take it out or to school. There was an entire societal infrastructure around learning to use it safely and carefully and "becoming a man" as you graduated to being able to hunt with dad and his friends. There were no school shootings in those days because society created a means to control something dangerous.

Today there is no such societal governor on our kids behavior.

The reason is simple and sad: everyone is too busy. They are too busy working extra hard to afford cell phones for their kids - all the while not realizing what the kiddies are up to with it. (Though there is no doubt in my mind that a significant number of parents don't care whether the kids are sexting or not - some Modern Mon's probably think its cool and are jealous.)

Now I argue with my better half about this. One perspective is "if its wrong and you do it, you're punished". While I agree with this from the perspective of the "olden days" I am no so sure when modern technology like a video camera cellphone is released "into the wild".

I believe that children are just that, children, and offering them an unchecked Pandora's box of sexual delights at age 12 is crime.

But, you might argue, its not a crime, its a phone. They need it to call me when they get home from school so I know they are safe.

Right. Safe. Safe at home manufacturing child porn after school because they are bored.

In my childhood there was (and still is) the concept of "the attractive nuisance". Some guy would setup a trampoline next to a cliff side. The kiddies would show up, play on the trampoline until someone went sailing over the edge. Bingo, the trampoline owner was at fault. (This is why all pools have fences today.)

Why?

The assumption under the law was that, as an "owner" of the trampoline there came responsibility.

This needs to be applied to the wondrous new technologies that are being shoved down the throats of ten year old by modern society.

The legal system needs to wake up and realize that its the parents that own the phones - not the kids. The kids are not allowed to buy them unless they are eighteen.

But no, cell phones make a wonderful babysitting tool for Modern Mom so no one wants to rock the boat with talk of Modern Mom also having to be responsible for what is done with her property. "What if" mom and dad were responsible for what the kid did... just like in the olden days?

No, the only real pornography here is watching society debauch kids in the name of convenience and corporate profits.

HFCS: Spawn of Satan?

2010-12-17T15:57:00.000-05:00

I wrote here yesterday about High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and nutrition, health and diet. Its clear to me that HFCS along with sugar are contributing to the obesity of people around the world.

But what's contributing HFCS to our food supply in the first place? Why do we even need this product?

Well let's take a look...

Before there was HFCS there was sugar. So let's start with that. Some research led me to this article about the history (written in the 1990's) of sugar prices in the US. You can read more about the details, which are quite interesting, but the bottom line seems to be summed up by this one sentence: "U.S. sugar prices have been as high as or higher than world prices for 44 of the last 45 years." The point of the article is that sugar tariffs are imposed to ensure that cheap foreign sugar does not easily enter the US. The tariffs come and go over time but when they are present they drive up the cost of sugar significantly.

The basic system here is and was to ensure that US sugar growers, who have a nice lobbying effort, also have a nice market. By restricting foreign imports consumers and businesses pay a premium to use sugar. US consumers pay a heavy multiple for sugar over the world price (maybe 4x or 5x).

Of course, from a health perspective, too much sucrose, which is what US-produced sugar is, is in my opinion just as bad a food product as anything else.

Eventually all of this price manipulation and sugar price pressure led big purchasers of sugar, e.g., Coca Cola, to switch from sugar for the products to HFCS. This switch, in the 1980's, created a market for HFCS which was quite significant.

While tariffs on importing cheap world sugar don't cost the US government very much they cost the US consumer heavily each year - some estimates go as high as many tens of billions of dollars each year.

Now we have to look at US corn production (see this PDF for backup). In 2009 the US, which produces at least 40% of all corn on earth, produced 334 million metric tons of corn. Interestingly this is about 26% of all crops grown in the US. Of all this corn produced 42% is used for animal feed and other residual uses and about 32% goes into ethanol production. A paltry 3.5% of all this corn is used to produce HFCS.

Unlike sugar the US Government pays out a lot in various "corn subsidies". For the last fourteen years ending in 2009 (according to this) over five billion USD a year. For this $5 billion USD of taxpayer investment we get a corn crop worth about $48 billion USD (in 2009). About 40 times as much corn is planted each year as sugar producing crops (cane and beets).

So if you take the 48 billion USD corn crop and you take out the 3.5% used for HFCS you have a market of about 1.7 billion USD for corn supplied to HFCS producers and about $175 million USD in subsidies (proportionally) are used to support that market. From this about 19.5 billion pounds of HFCS (dry) are produced each year - though demand is presently falling.

Of this 19.5 or so billion bounds of HFCS produced most goes into soft drinks - and again the category here is falling, i.e., consumption of soft drinks is in decline.

Given all of these facts is where does "HFCS is evil" fit in?

Well, for one thing is a product designed to counter the US Government's sugar price manipulation. Without the US Government manipulating sugar prices there would probably be no HFCS.

We know that its just fructose and glucose - like sucrose without the bond holding the two together - but still natural sweeteners on their own. Sure they were created from corn, but sugar is created from sugar cane or beets, so it isn't really any different.

HFCS is a tiny fraction of US corn production (3.5%) and corn subsidies. (Ethanol is another story.) To me this seems much more like a product created in response to the sugar price manipulations rather than anything bad or evil in and of itself. There is and was a surplus of US corn, the sugar prices remained high relative to the cost of gearing up HFCS and there you have it.

The alternative to HFCS, sugar, is just as bad nutritionally.

The bottom line is that HFCS is just another type of sugar being pumped into the US food consumption. While there are subsidies and so forth on the corn side and price manipulations on the sugar side the US Government is probably just doing what it has always done - skewing the market based on lobbying.

The real HFCS is evil created by us - the stupid US consumer.

In 2000 we consumed approximately 53 gallons of soft drinks per year (about a gallon per week). By 2008 this decreased to a mere 47 gallons per year. During this same time the proportion of "diet" drinks increased substantially (but that's another health story). During this entire time we continued to consume about 140 pounds of sweetener per year. On the other hand, during the same period, our consumption of bottled water went from about 17 gallons/year to about 31.

We simply consume too much sweets. Its not the fault of industry, of some evil HFCS corn-growing conspiracy, it us... If we lived in Australia, as I mentioned last time, HFCS would not exist and we would be faced with the reality of our over-consumption of sweets:

Imagine 140 pounds (the average US consumption of sweetener per year) divided by 52 weeks equals almost 3 pounds of sweetener per week - close to 1/3 of a pound of sugar and HFCS per day.

Is it any wonder we are fat?

Personally I eat close to zero each day if I can - though I likely consume some extra if we do not eat at home (though I don't eat desert, drink sweetened drinks, etc.). I cannot even imagine eating that much sweet crap each day.

No, I think all the HFCS "crisis" is merely a blame-based buggaboo fabrication by an aging, grossly overweight population groping around for someting to blame on decades of excess in the eating department. Speculating on how things got to this state is probably fodder for more posts.

Personally I recall realizing around 1982 that I could no longer drink a soft drink without feeling ill afterward and haven't had any to speak of (unless there is absolutely nothing else) since. I used to each more sweets and carbohydrates but, as I got older, I realized that I felt less and less well after eating them and eventually I stopped entirely save for a small amount of chocolate I eat every day which curbs any outstanding desire for sweets.

Well, at least I know that HFCS is no better or worse a buggaboo than big industry and big government.

Hopefully enough people will ignore it long enough and it will just go away.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

2010-12-16T17:13:00.000-05:00

We've all heard about the evils of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) - its the cause of Type 2 diabetes and nearly everything else bad like obesity.

But what's the real story...?

Before we can talk about HFCS we have to understand something about sugars. Sugar is not what you have on the kitchen table - "sugar" as we use the term here means something very specific. Sugars are actually a class of things called "saccharides" and saccharides are carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are compounds made of carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H) where there is a two to one (2:1) ration of hydrogen to oxygen. There are four kinds of carbohydrates: monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides. Our concern here will be with monosaccharides and disaccharides because these two groups are components of what we commonly call "sugar".

Monosaccharides are the most basic form of carbohydrate. Monosaccharides make up the the simplest form of sugar. They are usually colorless, water-soluble, and crystalline solids. The most important monosaccharide is glucose.

Glucose is critical to life because it is the product of either photosynthesis or cell respiration and it provides energy to living cells. Starches and cellulose are composed of glucose. Glucose is also called D-glucose, grape sugar and dextrose. Its chemical structure is C₆H₁₂O₆. The exact details of this are not important here.

As I discussed in another posts the presence of glucose in the blood is reduced as cells in your body consume glucose for energy when insulin is released by your pancreas.

Fructose is the second monosaccharide we are concerned with. Fructose, or fruit sugar, is commonly found in fruit, honey, and a variety of other natural sources. Its chemical structure is C₆H₁₂O₆, just like, glucose, but the atoms are arranged in a different structure. What's important here is that your body treats fructose differently from glucose because the atoms have a different structure.

Finally, we are concerned with sucrose. Sucrose is what we call "table sugar" and its what's in the sugar bowl. It is made up of one molecule of glucose joined to one molecule of fructose. Fructose is a disaccharide - "di" meaning two sugars.

Given all of this we can now talk about HFCS in a meaningful way.

HFCS was created in 1957 and commercialized in the lat 1960's by Dr. Y. Takasaki at the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Japan. Since that time HFCS has steadily replaced sucrose in commercial foods.

Today HFCS is implicated in everything bad: obesity and diabetes primarily. But is that a bum wrap?

To answer this we have to look at how human bodies process mono- and disaccharides.

Glucose is basically absorbed directly into the blood though the small intestines by something called SGLUT-1 (see this at bottom). This is why consuming glucose gives that instant "sugar high". What's important here is that the glucose moves from the digested food in the intestines into the blood stream directly - there pathway is basically automatic. This is unlike the transmission by GLUT-4 of glucose in the blood into cells in response to insulin. There is no "governor" on the SGLUT-1 process - the more glucose you consume the more your blood glucose will increase.

Glucose is stored in your liver and the pancreas monitors your blood glucose level. If it increases insulin is released so that you body will take up the glucose. If it decreases the pancreas tells your liver to release more glucose. (Something interesting that I cannot find is what happens if you push too much glucose into your cells, how much energy can they store??)

Fructose is processed differently. Fructose by itself is handled by GLUT-2 and GLUT-5 and is transported into your body such that it passes directly to the liver. Your liver is the only part of your body that can process fructose - unlike glucose which nearly every cell can process. In the case sucrose (with one glucose and one fructose) processing occurs in parallel for both, i.e., the bond between the two is split and both are more readily absorbed (see this).

Too much fructose can cause liver disease because the liver prioritizes the conversion of fructose to glycogen above all other functions. According to this "the livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."

So fructose alone is bad for the liver and consuming too much fructose regularly will destroy it just like drinking too much.

On to HFCS...

HFCS is made up of fructose and glucose in varying proportions based on taste. So for Coca Cola, as an example, which uses HFCS, the two (glucose and fructose) are mixed to provide the same perceived taste as sucrose (which was used prior to the 1970's). In general HFCS is at least 45% fructose all the way up to 90% fructose.

So what about doctors saying that too much fruit is bad because of the fructose? Well, if we examine, for example, the fructose in pineapple we see its about 1% of the pineapple. According to this two apples have as much fructose as one can of soda. What no one seems to understand is that in the case of the pineapple 99% of the pineapple is "other things for your body to digest". So these doctors are basically idiots - raw fruit is good for you.

Now let's consider soft drinks as an example of manufactured food.

Each ounce of soft drink contains about 30 cc's of liquid so a 12 ounce drink (one can of soda) would be 360 cc's of liquid water or 360 grams of water. In that water might be up to 30 grams of fructose according to this. (In 360 grams of pineapple there would be approximately 3.6 grams of fructose which is almost 1/10th the fructose by weight of what's in a can of soda. The precision may be off somewhat here because of how sugar dissolves and so forth but you get the idea.)

Now when you eat pineapple you get lots of other good things for your body to digest along with the fructose.

With the soft drink you get nothing but water.

Now one more piece of interesting data is that there is an obesity epidemic in Australia just link in the US - but they don't use nearly as much HFCS (see comment at bottom, there are other sources as well if you Google them).

I think this last point is key - no HFCS in Australia but a blossoming obesity and Type 2 diabetes - at rates very close to the US rates.

Many doctors and others are saying that its the HFCS that's bad. My guess though, based on all this, is that too much mono- and disaccharides are bad - period. Whether they were pure glucose or fructose in HFCSs the result of too much is bad.

Further the form of sugar does not matter beyond fructose causing liver damage as well as other problems such as obesity.

So what do I think after all this research?

The bottom line is that too much sugar in any form is bad period. HFCS is no worse than purse cane sugar because cane sugar is sucrose which is 50% fructose and 50% glucose.

Its simply all bad.

HFCS (as well as sucrose or glucose or fructose alone or in combination in other countries) is in virtually everything we eat if we don't follow something like the "caveman diet": meat, fish, eggs, fruit, vegetables, non-toxic oils (olive, fish, coconut, etc.), nuts, and seeds.

Personally I think that HFCS are nothing to be concerned with unless you are eating it - in which case A) you are a fool and B) it will eventually kill you.

HFCS is just a tool for us to kill ourselves with something besides sugar. Perhaps its a government conspiracy because there are huge subsidies that make corn cheap. But beyond that its shear stupidity on the part of the citizens of the USA.

If you must consume HFCS (or any other kind of sugar in any amount other than a teaspoon or two) I way say eat it with a lot of celery or meat or fish or nuts or seeds to offset the direct impact of total sugar, i.e., give your body something to digest with it besides water or nothing.

I don't eat HFCS or sugar other than in coffee or on cereal.

You shouldn't either...

Lawyers and Salt...

2010-12-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

We probably all have them. Lawyers on TV, radio and the internet advertising how they will get money for you because of an accident or injury.

Did you ever think about what sort of pollution and environmental harm this might be causing?

Let's take a look at the use of salt for ice.

I chose this because there are related reasons homes, businesses and governments use way too much salt.

Today if a bank or other institution owns property you will typically see commercial salting operations hitting their streets, roads, and sidewalks with a heavy dose of salt right after even a tiny amount of snow. Why is this?

More than likely A) someone has sued them or someone they know in the recent past because of a slip, a fall or other accident, B) their insurance company (if they are a private busines) requires them to over salt these roads and sidewalks in order to prevent the possibility of accidents and subsequent suites, C) they have leases or other contracts requiring them to do this to protect their business partners, lessors, or other commercial interests.

If you're a government you over salt to prevent accidents - not because, as a government, your responsible for how people drive, but because you fear legal recourse for lawyers for accidents or deaths.

(Here's a link to this very topic.)

And what about all sorts of safety equipment, activities, fences, walls, and other lawsuit-driven safety nonsense you see every day?

Labels on ladders telling you they can tip over.

Labels on buckets and pails telling you a child might drown in them.

Too many street lights, lighted signs, and on and on and on.

Again, all of this costs our environment in terms of wasted electricity, wasted travel, wasted materials, wasted resources.

But, you say, these notices are important! They save lives! What would we do on slippery roads!

Well, let's see.

In the past there was much less salt usage, for example. The consequences of this were that people who were doing the driving were responsible for traveling safely on icy roads. Today its the borough, city or state who is responsible that you drive safely - thanks to lawsuits.

In the past if you fell of a ladder is was considered your fault - you should have been more careful because you knew ladders could tip over. Not today - ladders tipping over is a wondrous experience for some - again thanks to lawsuits.

Responsibility for peoples behavior now rests with others and this is simply not fair and its ruining our country from an environmental standpoint.

I think its time that people stop and consider the consequences of this sort of nonsense. Salt is polluting our drinking water. But rather than simply accept that we are responsible for our own driving we instead slough this off to government.

How about simply putting up a sign that says "You Are Responsible for Your Own Driving on Icy Roads" and leaving the salt home.

Mercury In Your Mouth...

2010-12-14T15:48:00.000-05:00

We all have them: amalgam fillings. And some people think they are toxic and highly dangerous.

But are they?

You can find a lot of material on the web related to this topic - the vast majority to me seems to indicate that amalgam fillings are poisoning you. But there are some problems with the arguments for widespread mercury poisoning form amalgam fillings.

(This war was already fought in the 1840's and 50's just after the use of amalgam was brought to the US from France. Initially it was considered quackery by the established dentists (American Society of Dental Surgeons) who hammered "hot gold" into the tooth cavity. Eventually amalgam won out and was endorsed by the American Dental Society in 1850.)

What's most interesting to me are these facts:

Amalgam fillings have been in constant use for at least 150 years. During this time not only do the recipients of amalgam filling have exposure to some level of mercury, but so do the dental providers installing these fillings.

Mercury is supposedly linked to autism and vaccines - yet autism has increased while use of amalgam filling has decreased during the last 30 or so years.

Amalgam fillings offer a degree of active suppression of further decay once installed.

There are a lot of pro and con studies related to this that are summarized here.

So what's the truth here?

First of all mercury is clearly bad for you and there is no minimum dose considered safe. Mercury is fat soluble and once ingested is enters the body and organs it a way that makes removing it difficult. Mercury easily passes the blood/brain barrier and can enter the brain to cause mental impairment. It also can easily pass via breast milk from mother to child.

No one disagrees on this.

Then there is the amalgam itself:

Modern dental amalgam consist of (from Wikipedia):

> 40% silver (Ag)
< 32% tin (Sn)
< 30% copper (Cu)
< 2% zinc (Zn)
< 3% mercury (Hg)

For a filling of amalgam weighing one gram there would be about 30 mg (or 30,000 ug) of Mercury.

Now consider that you are not eating the filling - its installed in your mouth where it may live for 50 years. So consider the following from that perspective:

According to the EPA (from this) "[The] EPA's methylmercury reference dose is .1 micrograms/kg body weight per day. In July 2000, the National Academy of Sciences found the EPA's reference dose as "scientifically justifiable" for protecting most Americans."

For a 200 pound man (approx. 90 kg) 90kg x .1 ug/kg = 9 ug of mercury per day or 63 ug of mercury per week. (1 ug is one millionth of a gram.)

The WHO reports (mentioned here) that people inhale mercury from amalgam fillings at a daily rate of 3 to 17 ug per day.

Thimeresol in some vaccines for chldren (given an average western vaccine regiment) means a does of 25 ug/vaccine for at least a dozen vaccines.

Your diet probably includes at least 15 ug of mercury per day without eating anything special (like fish).

I doubt there would be much disagreement on these facts and the conclusion from them is Mercury, at a rate of probably 8 - 30 ug's, enters your body daily from a variety of sources if you have amalgam fillings. It also leaves your body daily at some measurable rate.

What is disputed is what, if any, effect the inhaled or injected mercury has on an individual. (There is a corresponding argument for dental professionals exposed to mercury but we are not focusing on that here.)

Here there is very, very little agreement.

Both those for and against amalgam vaccines claim the other side is using quackery instead of science to support their position: The "Amalgam is Toxic" Quackery (also here) and The "Amalgam is Not Toxic" Quackery.

The FDA and the American Dental Society believe and say (as recently as 2008) that amalgam fillings are safe and that there isn't any scientific reason to ban or otherwise alter their usage.

The bottom line for me here has to be the "history"...

A century and a half of continuous usage (and dental hygiene today is not what it was 50 years ago, i.e., more amalgam fillings then than today where only about 50% of fillings are amalgam) tells me that its likely that though fillings out-gas mercury (along with any that you might ingest with dental work) you are probably still "safe" from mercury - whatever that means. Since we ingest some mercury every day its likely our bodies can, to a certain extent, handle it.

There is also a hysterical element to the "Anti-Amalgamists" - claiming various "cures" for a large variety of vague problems solved only by having all of their fillings replaced. Certainly there are documented allergies to amalgam - but they are very few. This side is not well documented and populated mostly by anecdotal claims of healing - I need more than this and more than studies telling me that mercury passes through me on a daily basis.

Personally I don't plan to have my amalgam fillings ripped out anytime soon...

But then I always live dangerously.

Genetic Engineering: Its what's for Dinner

2010-12-13T13:27:00.000-05:00

For many years consumers have been consuming soybean oil from genetically engineered plants.

Certainly I had no idea this was going on until I came upon some articles about how a company called Monsanto was able to patten genetically engineered soybean plants.

Before the 1980's a pesticide called glyphosate had been used to kill weeds. Glyphosate interferes with the plants ability to produce certain amino acids. While a good pesticide (at least relatively speaking) it was not helpful on crops.

In the 1980's when Monsanto filed for US Patent 4,535,060. This patent describes how to create a soybean plant that includes a special genetic modification that prevents glyphosate from interfering with the plants metabolism.

How they did this is not too hard to understand. Basically they found some bacteria that could tolerate glyphosate. Generation after generation they slowing increased the glyphosate in the medium where the bacteria where growing until the bacteria reached a certain level of tolerance. This tolerance for glyphosate is expressed genetically in a specific piece of the bacteria's genetic code.

At that point the "tolerance genetic code" was removed from the bacteria and placed into the soybean plant. The resulting soybean plants and corresponding seeds produced by those plants were glyphosate tolerant, that is, glyphosate would not kill them.

By the mid 1990's Monsanto sold these seeds (along with, one presumes) glyphosate weed killer as "Roundup Ready" soybeans. Roundup Ready means that Roundup (glyphosate) could be sprayed on the fields with these soybeans and the weeds would die but the soybeans would not.

The Monsanto patents (there are more than I listed (US 4,940,835, US 6,013,863, as well as others) cover the the actual life form of these genetically modified soybeans.

Monsanto, by the mid 1990's, created a business where these seeds were sold by contract to farmers under the condition that they could not replant any seeds (soybeans) harvested from the field - the assumption being that the plants were reproducing Monsanto's patented seeds and to harvest and keep them was to violate Monsanto's patents.

One of the many problems with all of this is that these plants freely interact biologically with non-Monsanto soybeans, i.e., the birds and bees mix the genetics in the usual way between Monsanto and non-Monsanto plants. Thus if you had non-Monsanto soybeans growing next to a neighbor with Monsanto soybeans you automatically were in violation of Monsanto's patents if even on soybean plant in your fields reproduced their patented genetic modifications.

You can imagine that this created great misery for farmers and huge profits for Monsanto. In particular, the art of harvesting soybean seeds, has been lost. Prior to this invention most farmers replanted seeds year to year. Seeds in those days came from university breeding programs or seed companies which had not intellectual property interests in the seeds or plants.

There are documentaries, (Food, Inc. is one), that outlines how Monsanto uses private investigators and a network of facilities to locate and those suspected of "stealing" Monsanto's intellectual property - either directly by replanting seeds (which you are not allowed to do contractually if you buy the seeds) or indirectly by having your fields cross-pollenated inadvertently.

What piqued my interest in this is that recently Monsanto tried to claim that soybean meal, containing some fragments of their intellectual genetic property, were also protected by their patent.

All of this is troubling at many levels:

For one, we really don't have any idea what affect this modified soybean is having on us. Its been around for about 15 years or so and the oil, plants and seeds are used in virtually everything we eat.

For another, following this logic one could create a retro-virus containing some patented DNA, release it into the world, and claim ownership of anything thus infected. Imagine a genetically modified HIV doing just this.

Owning life seems to me to be inherently wrong. Monsanto, though they created the soybean plants and seeds that were glyhposate-resistant did not create the plants in the first place yet effectively claim benefits with all plants that breed with them.

Claiming ownership of offspring has some of its own issues. Fortunately the original patents did a poor job of being specific about "owning offspring" and thus created some legal ins for those fighting this.

These products create a legal paradise for Monsanto when plants cross-breed by accident. This web site offers some insight into the defenses used by one Canadian farmer who won his case against Monsanto.

Unfortunately this is not limited to soybeans. The patents cover all manner of plants: rapeseed (canola), corn and many others.

This situation has caused much anguish at many levels - for governments, farmers, and consumers and there is a loud cry to have the laws changed so this cannot occur.

The first Monsanto patents of this type expire in 2014 or so and Monsanto has claimed that people with these GM seeds will be free to save and reuse them.

Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately), there has been an increase in glyphosate-resistant weeds.

I for one am changing my life to consume non-GM plants and plant products. Its sad that we have done this to ourselves in the first place and even sadder that no one for the most part knows that its even going on...

Living a Peanut Free Lifestyle

2010-12-10T15:41:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned a few posts ago one of my grandchildren has a peanut allergy.

Now coming from an engineering-oriented background I am always fascinated by what I observe on the medical science side. As a software engineer I am always interested in certainty and details because over the years I have learned that its very easy to fool yourself into believing something that is not true.

I have spent a number of years thinking about just how much information is enough to have a high degree of certainty. Now this concept already exists in statistics and for statistical certainty we can talk about the likelihood that something is true given some observed evidence in a number of ways. But that's not what I am interested in.

In software it is often the case that we have all the information about something, i.e., the complete set of programs and data, and our interest is in finding out why something is not doing what we expect. You can call this "debugging". I put A and B into the computer and expect to get C out but instead I get D. This, of course, is not just limited to software but any sort of system where you have all the information.

Now you usually cannot have all the information about something as complex as a software system in your head all at once. For example, think of the machinery of a clock: all the gears and levers ticking away. Now imagine that you are looking at the insides of the clock through a small hole - small relative to the clock insides. Given what you can see about the insides of the clock what can you know about how it works? As the hole gets bigger and bigger more and more of the clock is revealed until finally you see the entire working.

This is sort of like statistical certainty up until you see the whole picture: then one presumes to have the entire, actual picture which makes figuring things out easy.

So lets talk about peanut allergies and my grandson.

Several months ago my daughter and grandson where at my house. As part of whatever was going on she decided to give him part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now he's a year old and prior to this point he had never exhibited any sort of allergies with regard to food.

As he ate his sandwich he started to break out in hives or bumps. My daughter immediately called the doctor who suggested giving him benadryl. She gave him some (this is one of the few drugs we actually keep around the house - specifically for this type of thing) and the bumps and hives slowly disappeared.

Immediately the hue and cry began that he was allergic to peanuts.

Being me I though: not so fast. While it would certainly seem like this is true I thought it was worth a little further thought and investigation. The first thing I realized was that he we eating a 12 grain bread that I eat that has a large number of various nuts and odd things a child would not normally eat.

So in started to investigate the label but I was too late. "Its a peanut allergy" my daughter declared.

First thing the next day she called the doctor to schedule an allergy test but they told her that benadryl does not leave his body for several days and to wait.

Long story short there where never conclusive test results identifying peanuts as the direct cause (at least that I recall) but the doctor said, in effect, "it must be a peanut allergy".

Now it turns out that this is quite a problem for people (peanut allergies) and from my perspective I always like certainty as in a conclusive test of some sort that verifies this. But that, as I recall, was not what happened.

I am also troubled by the fact that up until that particular sandwich the little guy ate just but everything - or at least put it in his mouth. It seemed unlikely that he would never have encountered something with peanuts before this. (Now to be fair we fed our children "table food" from fairly early on. Not so our daughter who followed the modern medical advice of staving off "table food" until much older.)

The consequences of this are two-fold: one is that the food supply must constantly be checked for peanuts and the other is that my daughter keeps an EpiPen with my grandson at all time.

Fast forward to today. My daughters daycare facility discovers that my grandson is "peanut allergic" and that there is an EpiPen in the bag she leaves with him. This caused a huge problem. The daycare owner told my daughter that "insurance does not allow us to administer the EpiPen".

My daughter freaked out, asked if they would instead just watch him die of anaplylaxis, and promptly changed him to a daycare (as in the next day) that would be willing to do this.

(Now to have a daycare in my state you must have Red Cross training which I believe covers exactly this. So it would be an issue of lawyers; though one imagines that administering an EpiPen incorrectly and killing a child would not be nearly as bad as doing nothing or calling an ambulance and watching the child die in the process of waiting for it to arrive.)

In any case he is now in the new daycare with a staff that has EpiPen training. He will remain there until the situation is straightened out at the original daycare (which involves my daughter signing a notarized release AND training the staff on the use of the EpiPen).

In the meantime she was at the doctor's office for her other son and somehow this topic arose.

The doctor asked "Isn't your house and daycare peanut free?"

My daughter did not know what to say... Certainly some peanut-containing items where there because other people in the house at them. No peanut-free daycare centers are available as far as she can see.

My daughter thought about this for a while and reasoned as follows:

1) If she expunged all possible forms of peanuts from the house her child could safely grab anything at any time and put it in his mouth without fear of consequences.

2) Could she really rely on others, like the daycare or guests in her home, to be 100% infallible is this regard?

3) This would teach her son to expect that peanuts never occurred in his environment and therefore learn caution was not necessary.

What would you do?

ADD and ADHD

2010-12-09T16:04:00.000-05:00

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had small children.

Like most parents of today we had a child that was unable to sit still in school: constantly moving, talking and disrupting everyone in the classroom. Now this was probably about 1980 and things like ADHD and ADD were still not well known. In those days ADHD/ADD was not like it is today or in the intervening years. In fact, we had a second child in school many years later that also suffered from the same problems.

In my day it was my problem to address these issues with my children.

There was no internet to search for clues, nothing much to do but take the crap from the school about how your child was a "problem". In the 1980's there were only books to read - at the library or bookstore - to help you sort things out.

Today things are far different.

ADHD/ADD and its drug-based treatments are now a top lifestyle choices of parents and teachers - primarily designed to make the teachers and parents lives flow smoothly and efficiently on a day-to-day basis.

What has changed over the last thirty or so years?

When I was a child in school in the 1960's things were far different than today. I went to a small Catholic school administered and taught by nuns. The nuns lived in large house behind the playground and teaching children was basically all they did. I definitely recall other children with what would today be called ADHD and ADD: they constantly fidgeted, talked and otherwise disrupted the classroom.

However, unlike today, the nuns applied strict discipline, sometimes physical, sometimes not, but always effective.

The first step in addressing ADHD/ADD is to ensure that there is adequate discipline involved with raising the child. Its quite possible that lack of discipline can easily be confused with ADHD/ADD. As a parent its actually fairly easy to tell if a child has the ability to properly concentrate. Does the child every exhibit proper learning behavior, i.e., do they ever concentrate, do they ever sit still, do they ever pay attention? (Of course the parent must be able to perform these tasks in a substantial way - otherwise how will they know if their child has a problem.)

If the answer is "yes they do", e.g., while playing a game, while watching TV, while spending time doing something they like to do, then my opinion is that the child is not ill and instead merely reacting to a lack of discipline in their life when asked to do something they don't like to do. Let's not forget these are children and they are going to behave that way given no supervision. Unless they learn that certain behaviors are unacceptable at certain times they will never be properly behaved.

Adequate discipline - now exactly what is that? When I was a child adequate discipline involved behaving in a situationally appropriate manner as required by adults. Adults during my childhood understood what it meant to be a child and knew the difference between when adequate discipline should be enforced and when not. Typically there was an understanding that, as a child, you were expected to a large degree to "play by yourself" and to "entertain yourself". Lack of proper behavior involved consequences that, though they varied from family to family, were never pleasant.

Today children have been taught that unpleasant consequences generally mean they are being abused or in some other way harmed. Today adults seem to believe that their personal comfort and convenience are a priority over the needs of their children. Today schools and child care facilities have become replacements for parental responsibility. Today children are taught that its is the job of the adults in their lives to entertain them.

So personally I find it very hard to tell if its the attention span of the child that has dwindled to unacceptable levels or if the adults are merely exhibiting child-like expectations that their children will somehow exhibit more responsibility than them with respect to their proper behavior.

If proper and adequate separation and definition of adult and child behavior has been arranged its then possible to examine the next aspect of ADD/ADHD: diet.

Most parents today consider things like chicken nuggets, french fries, candy, and sugary foods, cereals, and drinks as proper foods. Unfortunately these things have a variety of highly negative effects on the human body and the human body.

First and foremost today's adults with children must understand that the human body was not designed to consume these foods. The insanely high levels of salt, sugar (if you are lucky), high fructose corn syrup, and toxic oils can trigger all sorts of negative physical reactions. This is caused by two things I have written about previously: high blood glucose and toxic oils that corrupt the bodies ability to take up that glucose from the blood stream.

If a child is loaded with these chemicals day after day and subsequently expected to control his or her behavior the outcome is not very likely to be successful. The symptoms of eating these foods long term include the exact symptoms of ADHD and ADD.

Finally there is nutrition, i.e., what nutritional elements the diet brings to the body. Most people today in the US are deficient in Iodine and other vitamins. Lifestyles that are too busy to focus on proper diet also fail to provide children with proper nutrition. Nutritional deficiencies can cause all kinds of long term problems. Candy vitamins and other nutritional aids do nothing to make sure the vitamins are properly absorbed by the child's body.

So why is ADHD/ADD so common today?

1) There is no proper expectation of discipline by adults of children. Children today are tools of the adult lifestyle: no recess, 32 hours of TV per week, the expectation that non-parental caregivers are adequate for the child's needs (as covered in prior posts such as this one).

2) The children are literally being poisoned by their diets: rapid obesity, high sugar and corn syrup-based foods, and toxic oils; not to mention water laden with hormones and other problematic chemicals.

3) The children are nutritionally deficient. The nutrients and elements in their diets they need to learn, to exhibit proper discipline, to grow and develop are missing.

4) Today's parents, doctors and teach have themselves more than likely been raised with these very problems leaving them ill-equipped to deal with their own lives let alone the lives of their children.

5) Adults raised to believe that medications, drugs and pills are the best lifestyle choices for themselves are likely to believe this is also true for their children.

6) Today's adults are taught to listen to other adults (teachers, care givers, medical professionals) and not children - after all, what do children know? Yet the role of parents for the last two hundred thousand years or so has been nothing but parents listening and reacting to their children in order to guide them to adulthood in an all-to-dangerous world.

In assessing these points you will quickly see that the problem with ADHD and ADD is one that can clearly be placed on the shoulders of society and parents. Children are not in a position to learn discipline on their own, to select a properly nutritious diet on their own, to supersede their parents level of self control and responsibility, nor to distinguish between true medical treatment and relying on pills and drugs as crutches.

Nothing here that I am saying is new, or, for me, even interesting any more.

There are hundreds if not thousands of web sites, books and health professionals that understand the true causes of ADD and ADHD and what can be done about it.

Finally I offer this video. (I think the problem is not just that of the "educational system" as described in the video but in fact must be applied to the full society instead, i.e., is what our society is doing to our children the right thing.)

Whether you agree with it or not this video illustrates that there are many different ways to perceive the problem of ADHD/ADD in society today and many ideas of what might be done about it...

ADHD & A Spoon Full Of Sugar

2010-12-08T15:51:00.001-05:00

I am writing this as part of my own Cod Liver Oil journey which began today. I recently purchased a liter of Carlson's Cod Liver Oil to replace my daily intake of Walmart Norwegian Salmon Oil. (People often ask for specifics so I am listing this here to save the aggravation of repeating it fifty times. Remember I am a random geek and not a doctor or nutritionist - so please see your doctor or do your own research before taking CLO.)

I chose it for a couple of reasons: One is that the one I purchased provides information on purity, particularly the testing for heavy elements like mercury. Another is that it is probably more effective that what I had been taking. Third is that it provides natural Vitamin A and D.

(Some CLO has the natural vitamins removed only to be replaced by much higher doses of manufactured vitamins. As long as the ratio of Vitamin A to D is 10:1 or less this is probably not the case - at least from a reputable manufacturer.)

Prior to the 1950's children were religiously dosed with Cod Liver Oil (CLO) on a daily basis to prevent rickets. Rickets, for those old enough to remember, is a softening of the bones in children that can cause deformities and other problems. Cod liver oil, which is high in vitamin D, was administered to prevent this.

I found this old ad somewhere on Google from "The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal" published in 1874:

This appeared as part of the following advertisement:

Interestingly we see Iodo-Ferrated Cod Liver oil. Iodo-Ferrated means that ferrum iodatum (iron iodide) has been added to the oil. I cannot find a lot of modern information in the US about iron iodide prior to the 1800's but it would appear to be a good source of iodine, among other things. It is still sold today and it appears to be used in other countries - but primarily as a purely homeopathic treatment.

Interestingly it would appear that what I have been writing about in this blog, namely Vitamin D and Iodine, was on the minds of doctors in the 1800's.

So I have to ask myself why were they offering this to patients?

One reason is that rickets was a common affliction and Cod Liver Oil's Vitamin D content did much to address this. However, why all these other versions - and particularly why Iodine?

Iodine was "officially" discovered in 1811-1813 (the date varies depending on the source). It was known prior to that but no one knew exactly what it was, i.e., was it a mineral or element. It was a controlled substance for a while and considered to be a stimulant.

Lugol's solution was probably the most well known use of iodine (from wikipedia) first made in 1829, is a solution of elemental iodine and potassium iodide in water, named after the French physician J.G.A. Lugol. Lugol's iodine solution is often used as an antiseptic and disinfectant, for emergency disinfection of drinking water, and as a reagent for starch detection in routine laboratory and medical tests. It was common in the biology class for testing for the presence of starch.

Ultimately, around 1924, it was added to salt (making the Iodized Salt you can buy today) to reduce iodine deficiencies found in the Great Lakes region of the US. So its likely Iodine was added to Cod Liver Oil because of its wondrous though not understood effects.

One thing clear is, that much like today, there was a "wild west" atmosphere in the 1800's regarding "getting rich" from things like dietary supplements. Financial issues and profit both then and now heavily influence peoples actions and choices.

On the iodine front I am gradually increasing my intake of Lugol's 2.2% to 3-4 drops per week. I have notice some interesting personal results. One is that I am using my "high beams" much less at night - my night vision seems to have significantly improved over the last few weeks. I noticed this a while back when driving home late at night. Normally I would have to use my high beams most of the way but no longer.

I can anecdotally report some other interesting things:

One is my daughter - Iodine seems to have made her much more energetic and, God forbid, almost "perky" - a dramatic and rapid improvement. Needless to say this was not her prior condition (which was a more Goth-like one of quiet repose and grumpiness).

She herself claims to sleep much better as well. She also provides some to her children as a supplement and reports, which I can confirm, additional profound effects: reduction in anxiety and reduced ADHD-like behavior among the ones I also have observed.

Googling "ADHD iodine" yields a number of interesting results.

I plan to write about this more as the experiment unfolds...

Peanut Allergies

2010-12-07T15:57:00.000-05:00

I have been researching peanut allergies recently. A new family member has been diagnosed with a "peanut allergy" and there are some interesting new consequences.

For one thing, the child is no longer allowed to be at certain care facilities because the allergy requires mom and dad to supply an "epi pen". The insurance companies insuring these facilities don't allow workers there to administer "epi pens" in case of an allergic reaction. So children with allergies are no longer allowed there. (Aren't lawyers wonderful...)

So if you have a severe peanut allergy and you eat a peanut what happens?

The worst case scenario is that you suffer from anaphylaxis. From the Mayo Clinic: "Anaphylaxis is a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. It can occur within seconds or minutes of exposure to something you're allergic to, such as the venom from a bee sting or a peanut."

Anaphylactic shock (AS) works is like this: The first time you encounter something (a "sensitizing" dose) that will subsequently trigger AS your immune system becomes keyed to that substance. A subsequent exposure (a "shocking" dose) to the keyed substance triggers a whole body allergic reaction.

Your body contains something called mastocytes (mast cells). These are specialized cells that contain granules (basically pockets of chemicals inside the cells) of heparin and histamine. Heparin is a powerful anti-coagulant with an unclear role in anaphylatic shock. Histamine released into the body triggers an inflammation response. The effect of histamine is to increase the permeability of capillaries to white blood cells. White blood cells can then attack pathogens in parts of your body where there may be infection.

While mast cells role is primarily for body defense against pathogens, an allergen can trigger these mast cells to release histamine, heparin and antigens by degranulation.

When the response by the mast cells overwhelms the circulatory system the result is anaphylactic shock. That is the allergic response is so great that your cardiovascular system is unable to adequately deliver nutrients or oxygen to your cells. Simple "shock", on the other hand, is the cardiovascular system, for reasons other than allergens, failing to deliver nutrients or oxygen, i.e., as with a serious injury.

The EpiPen contains epinephrine, which is another name for adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hormone and an neurotransmitter that increases heart rate, dilates air passages, and generally prepares the body for "fight or flight". The use of the EpiPen immediately reduces the symptoms of anaphylaxis by countering the effect of the mast cells releasing histamine, heparin, and other substances.

Now, has there been an increase in peanut allergies over the last few decades?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

Until about 1990 there had been a slow and unexplained increase in peanut allergies documented by physicians and medicine. After 1990 there was a literal explosion of peanut allergies well documented by school, ER, and other government and health officials. Today two to three percent (2% - 3%) of all children in western societies have serious peanut allergies.

So what caused this change?

To answer this we have to look at the history of mass allergies and medically induced allergies.

(The following description of events is not proven but I find it more satisfying than maternal peanut consumption during pregnancy and breast feeding - also not proven. It also follows along with my discussions of toxic oils being introduced over the last 100 years and the development of Type II diabetes. Besides, the Chinese are big consumers of peanuts and the allergy is virtually unknown there as of 2001 (see link below).)

Starting in 1895 with the introduction of the diphtheria vaccination thousands of children were killed with what was called at the the time "serum sickness". Allergic reaction to the vaccines serum caused anaphylaxis on a mass scale.

A second wave of mass allergic reactions and analphylaxis related to food began in the 1930's with the introduction of cottonseed oil. This oils was used in vaccinations and distributed to manufacturers of various foods. This wave of anaphylaxis peaked in the 1940's and disappeared.

Cottonseed oil was replaced by peanut oil after World War II.

For the next thirty or so years traces of peanut proteins entered vaccinations until peanut allergies were first documented by S. A. Bock in 1974. Special mixtures of peanut oil and aluminum (Adjuvent 65) were used starting in the 1960's because they increased antibody production 13 times over regular vaccines.

Though manufacturers tried to remove peanut proteins from the peanut oils used in these vaccines they were not 100% successful and these proteins began to create a third wave of mass allergies.

The presence of peanut protien peaked with the PENTA vaccine used from 1988 through the 1990's after which the "outbreak" of peanut allergies began in earnest.

So the bottom line is simple - peanut protein and aluminum in vaccines.

Is vaccination why your child has a peanut allergy? A vaccine providing a "sensitizing dose"...

Certainly I do not know the answer. But please do your own research.

Your child's life may depend on it.

Stomach Acid: Required for Health

2010-12-06T16:31:00.000-05:00

I received a request from a family member to look into Xantac and the related class of "proton pump inhibitors" used for "acid reflux"...

First of all - some back ground. If you like to go to the doctors office and you're 50 years old or more than they've probably told you that you have acid reflux disease and you must take one of the many "acid reducers" on the market. Now, many of my relatives, in fact probably all over 50, are taking this medication as far as I can tell. Some have been on these medications for years.

But does everybody theses days have acid reflux?

How is this even possible?

No one I knew had problems like this when I was a kid. Sure grandma had a bottle of Pepto Bismo or Philips Milk of Magnesia in the bathroom - but it was generally not a lifestyle choice...

The first thing that I am going to talk about what stomach acid is and what does it do. Once we understand that it should be easy to see what the problems are and what these drugs do.

Stomach acid is one of several secretions produced by the stomach. The acidity has a PH of 1 - 2 (Hydrochloric acid 0.5%.) Sodium and potassium chloride are also produced along with various digestive enzymes and hormones. Stomach acid processes food into "chyme" which is basically semi-digested food ready for processing by the small intestines.

The stomach also produces pepsin. This is an enzyme that breaks down proteins into peptides in preparation for absorption by the small intestines.

Production of stomach acid is linked to cholecystokinin (CCK). CCK and secretin are produced in the stomach lining. CCK is a hormone that triggers the release of bile and pancreatic enzymes into the intestines for further breaking down chyme. Secretin triggers the pancreas to release a bicarbonate-rich liquid that plays a significant role in absorption of digested food by the small intestines.

Stomach acid also creates a significantly acidic environment for killing pathogens ingested along with the food and thus plays an important role in maintaining a healthy immune system.

The acid produced in the stomach also controls the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES). This is essentially a valve at the upper end of your stomach that controls release of food into your stomach and prevents reflux of gastric acid into your esophagus. Proper PH levels are required for the LES to operate - if acid levels are too low it will not close properly. There is a corresponding pyloric sphincter at the lower end of your stomach, also triggered by high acid levels, that release the chyme into your intestines.

It should be apparent from this discussion that stomach acid plays a crucial role in your digestive system. Further, unless acid levels reach certain required values the proper operation of your digestive system can be significantly inhibited.

So what do the common reflux drugs do to stomach acid?

There are three basic types of these drugs: antacids, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), and H2-receptor antagonists.

Antacids work by neutralizing (raising the PH) of acid in your stomach. These have been used for centuries and can have serious side effects if taken in excess. Their side effects include kidney stones, constipation, nausea, vomiting, mental changes, loss of appetite, and many more. Further taking antacids as calcium supplements has been shown to be ineffective because stomach acid is required to absorb the calcium. This has linked antacids to hip fractures and osteoporosis injuries in the elderly.

Proton pump inhibitors block the final stage of acid production in the stomach. PPIs can reduce stomach acid as much as 99%.

While generally well tolerated as medications PPI they can still cause headache, nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fatigue, and dizziness, rash, itch, flatulence, constipation, anxiety, and depression. Decreased vitamin B12 absorption may occur with long-term use.

H2-receptor antagonists block the action of histamine on acid producing parietal cells in the stomach, decreasing the production of acid.

These drugs can cause headache, tiredness, dizziness, confusion, diarrhea, constipation, rash, gynecomastia in males, loss of libido, and impotence.

So aside from the effect of the drug itself what effects do these drugs have on you by inhibiting or neutralizing your stomach acid?

First and foremost they do not treat the underlying cause of reflux, GERD, and similar problems.

Digestive problems can be caused by malfunction of the LES, abnormal nerve issues in the esophagus or stomach, stomach or esophagus muscle problems, and hernias. Clearly all of these require a qualified medical professional to diagnose as they are also relative uncommon. And clearly natural or non-medical treatments won't work if there is an underlying physical problem so it important to understand what's actually wrong.

Stress and environment may also be a causal issue along with lack of exercise and anything else that helps you to manage your stress effectively. While not a medical condition and there is no proven direct link anyone can attest to stress triggering digestive issues like vomiting, lack of appetite, and so forth.

Secondly, these drugs impair the ability of your digestive system to process food into nutrients. This may compound other medical problems, increase your stress, and so on. I have written here about nutrition at great length so taking these drugs may cause your otherwise proper nutritional habits to fail.

Third, these medications can cause your body to produce more gastrin - an hormone associated with acid production. When you stop taking these drugs you may actually have excess stomach acid because your gastrin level has increased in response to your prior drug use.

As I wrote about insulin and Type 1 diabetes conversion taking drugs to overproduce hormones is, to my mind, a bad idea.

Fourth, the reduction in stomach acid can lead to ingested pathogens passing into your body from food.

So if you suffer from acid reflux or one the associated maladies what do you do?

There are many choices available:

- A common one is to consume additional acid foods or supplements such as Apple Cider Vinegar. Though it seems counter-intuitive to what is advertised boosting the amount of acid in your stomach actually can improve the function of your digestive system.

- Another is to change your diet and/or sleeping habits. Eating immediately before bed, for example, can trigger reflux and indigestion.

- If you're suffering from stress, deal with it in some effective way, perhaps by exercising or otherwise addressing the root causes.

- Glutamine, licorice, and aloe vera have been used in a variety of cultures over the years to relieve digestive problems without blocking stomach acid.

The real problem here as I see it is that these drugs are a big pharma "golden goose": the most taken and most prescribed drugs world wide. But you have to ask yourself if there's been a significant increase in underlying causes to go along with this or are these drugs merely being used as a means to extract money for problems that could be addressed by simpler means that would not negatively impact your digestive system?

Most or all of my elderly relatives take these drugs - probably yours as well.

Do they all have serious medical conditions or is this merely a "lemming effect"?

After all, simply eating a large, heavy meal and then laying down will trigger acid reflux symptoms so its not like a simple behavior adjustments might be all that's needed. In today's world of "it's not my fault" its easier to take drugs than accept that perhaps a simple change of behavior will solve the problem.

Proper eating and diet cannot hurt you.

But I think these drugs can...

Lower Cholesterol = Memory Loss

2010-12-03T15:45:00.000-05:00

I have made disparaging comments on the medical establishment before in previous posts, particularly with regard to the elderly. This post will be no different.

I have been doing a lot of research on the effect of fats and oils in your diet as they relate to health. One of the most notorious supposed offenders is cholesterol. A class of drugs called statins, such as Lipitor and others, are prescribed along with a cholesterol-lowering diet under the rues of "reducing your risk of heart attack".

So let's be clear here first. From the Lipitor site (www.lipitor.com and this link specifically): "High cholesterol is a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. In fact, 80% of people who have had a heart attack have high cholesterol."

I have written here about the concept of risk factor before in "Cholesterol, Heart Disease and Magical Thinking". The marketing speak is utter nonsense because there is no demonstrative causal link between cholesterol and heart attack. The reason is that a risk factor is merely a correlation between two things, like saying 80% of children with animal bites have shoes on. Does a statement like that mean wearing shoes causes an animal bite or does it just happen to be coincidence that there is a correlation between the two.

My concern is that what's causing you to have the heart attack may also be causing you to have "high cholesterol".

So let's talk a bit about cholesterol. From this site: "Cholesterol is a fatty substance that is manufactured by our liver. It is an extremely important building block for many of our vital functions including our brains, eyes, nervous systems and sexual apparatus (both varieties)." From Wikipedia: "Cholesterol is a waxy steroid metabolite found in the cell membranes and transported in the blood plasma of all animals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes, where it is required to establish proper membrane permeability and fluidity." Its good that these are somewhat different. They say the same thing and, if you are interested, do you own research to identify just what cholesterol is.

What's key is that cholesterol is a fat and is not soluble in water. Its manufactured by the liver as well as entering the body via diet. Its transported to and from other parts of the body as follows (from the healthmattters link): "Cholesterol, being a fat, does not disolve in the blood stream which is mostly water. In order to be transported around in the blood, it must be carried by a Lipoprotein carrier which has an affinity for water. When it is being carried from the liver to the rest of the body, the Lipoprotein involved is LDL (low density Lipoprotein). When Cholesterol is being carried from the body back to the liver for recycling, the carrier is HDL (high density Lipoprotein)." More is going on than this but we are concerned here about this process because its how doctors decide to give you statins.

The common medical wisdom is that the LDL cholesterol is what builds up in your arteries and the higher you LDL number is the more "bad" cholesterol you have.

But there is another explanation.

The consumption of many types of manufactured and "unnatural" fats and oils can create a condition in your body call Hyperinsulinemia. As I described in my previous post Type 2 Diabetes "... manifests when insulin progressively loses its effectiveness in sweeping the blood glucose from the blood stream into the sixty seven trillion or so cells that constitute our bodies."

What happens is that the consumption of these oils (hydrogenated vegetable oil, margarine, etc.) fool the body's system for processing fat and oils. This happens because these manufactured fats and oils, while similar to healthy ones, do not support the transport of glucose through the walls of the cells like the natural version does. The effect of this is that when insulin appears in the blood to cause cells to consume glucose the cells do not consume enough. Hence the pancreas creates more insulin.

The result of this is that eventually the pancreas produces too much insulin or fails (conversion to Type 1 diabetes).

The fact that your cells are ignoring the insulin message leaves more glucose in your blood.

Diabetes is defined by this "high glucose" level in your blood - regardless of the cause. And this is key. Type 1 and 2, to my way of thinking, are two different problems. The manufacture of insulin in your pancreas is an unrelated function with respect to the absorption of glucose in response to insulin in your cells.

You may say this is nonsense, or that I am an ignorant fool. However, for anyone who questions this, and I encourage you to, please make sure any alternative explanation matches the history.

The classic diabetes diagnosis, i.e., too much glucose in the blood, occurred in about 0.0028% of the population around 1900. Today its as much as 50% of the country suffers from it.

What has changed in the last century?

I will argue that we no longer eat natural foods, specifically fats and oils.

Personally I have ordered my first bottles of Cod Liver Oil. I have been taking fish oil for the last five or so years so I think I have been on the right road. I am also working to eliminate the unnatural fats and oils from my diet. I believe that consuming wrong types of oils and fats have a definite impact on this.

But circling back to the title of this post, what does all this have to do with your memory and brain function and, specifically, memory loss?

Cholesterol is vital for brain function.

Reducing cholesterol in the blood apparently does direct harm to your brain along with studies to confirm this. If you're taking a statin to reduce the "bad" cholesterol in your diet consider this (from the link): "The LDL transports antioxidants, fat soluble nutrients and essential fatty acids to the brain for proper brain functioning. ... Cholesterol also promotes the growth of new brain cells and protects the integrity of the myelin sheath. The myelin sheath, essential for the proper function of the entire nervous system, covers the length of brain and nerve cells and is one fifth cholesterol. Low cholesterol levels make the myelin more vulnerable to breakdown and malfunction." - perhaps even Alzheimers?

If you're not taking fish oil pills or eating healthy fats and oils I would seriously consider it very soon - your mental health may depend on it.

The worst impact of statin drugs with regard to memory loss may be in the elderly.

Isn't research fun?

Leaving Digital Fingerprints...

2010-12-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

Another in my series at the Lone Wolf on digital privacy.

Cross posted here.

Type 2 is not Diabetes...

2010-12-02T14:52:00.000-05:00

I am always suspicious of things that have bogus definitions. Type 2 Diabetes is one of them.

Now even from the time of the ancient Greeks type 1 diabetes was a phenomena that understood. The term diabetes is related to the ancient Greek word for "siphon" - due to the problem of frequent urination associated with the disease.

First off, some very basic biology. Your body converts some of what you eat to glucose - which is a sugar - like the one on your table but not quite (same types and numbers of atoms put together differently). Glucose circulates through your body in your blood stream. Your cells need glucose for energy - they convert glucose to energy in order to function.

Insulin is like a messenger. The pancreas sends out insulin. When cells in your muscles and other body parts receive the insulin message they take glucose from your blood.

So to create a simple analogy you can think of glucose a the wheelbarrow full of feed in the barn wheeling from one animal to another fill up the food trough. Insulin is like the gate over the food trough - when its time to eat it sends a message to lift the gates over the troughs.

You can see a more complete picture of all this here along with some colorful graphics and pictures.

This is also a very gross oversimplification - but the traditional process of how glucose/insulin work in diabetes is not really the point of this post.

Type 1 is caused by the failure of the body to produce insulin (or enough insulin) as documented here. Insulin is produced in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. From Wikipedia: "Insulin is a hormone that is central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood, storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle" (underline by me). So, if you don't have insulin in your body from its normal source your body will not make use of the glucose placed in your bloodstream by your digestive system.

Now insulin does other things as well which you can read about at Wikipedia or elsewhere.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when cells cannot absorb glucose from the blood. Normally glucose triggers transporters proteins in the cell wall that move glucose from the blood into the cell. In type 2 diabetes this function fails because the cells sensitivity to insulin is reduced.

Now it seem pretty obvious that not producing insulin is quite different from not being sensitive to it. One is a lack of production The other a lack of response. So with our analogy type 1 is like there is no message to lift the gates and type 2 is like the gates don't work right.

The medical world calls these the same thing (Diabetes) because in both cases there is an elevated level of blood glucose.

Now in both cases some of the results are the same - namely the cells don't get glucose. But in type 1 the other function insulin performs in the brain and cardiovascular system are also disrupted. With type 2 insulin may be present and performing these other function correctly.

Type 2 gestational diabetes occurs in pregnant women.

Type 1 diabetes is a progressive autoimmune disease (see this) in which the insulin producing beta cells in the islets of langerhans portion of the pancreas are destroyed by the body's immune system. From the link: "It is unknown what first starts this cascade of immune events, but evidence suggests that both a genetic predisposition and environmental factors, such as a viral infection, are involved."

The portion of Type 2 diabetes that doesn't involve pancreatic problems instead involves glucose transporters in muscle and other body cells outside the pancreas. The transporter of interest is called GLUT4 which controls whether a cell can absorb glucose as well as how much. From this source I believe that, while certain races (African, Native American, etc.) have predispositions for fewer GLUT4 transports its very likely that our diet and nutrition is in total control of GLUT4 function. The missing dietary element is unsaturated fats and oils, Cis type w=3 unrefined, unsaturated oils, (fish oil, flax seed oil, others) as documented here.

So let's summarize what we have covered here:

1) Type 1 diabetes, involving autoimmune disease of the pancreas, causes the body not to produce insulin or to produce too little. The cause of this is unknown.

2) Type 2 (excluding all pancreatic kinds) involves GLUT4 transporters in cell located in muscles and other body parts. These transporters fail to move glucose from the blood into the cells.

3) High glucose from either #1 or #2 is bad.

4) (Most important) My conclusion is that #1 and #2 are two completely different things. Modern medicine is again treating the symptoms of each (and naming them) as if they were the same thing which they are not.

Others, I think, would also agree.

The bottom line is that obesity is not causing Type 2 diabetes.

A diet lacking in the proper Cis type w=3 unsaturated, unrefined fats and oils is. Similarly, that same diet is probably also causing obesity as we see it today. Manufactured oils for cooking were invented in the 1920's to replace traditional oils such as fish, flax, and hemp oils.

These manufactured oils are toxic.

Frankly writing this article was frightening to me. Clearly the entire Industrial/Government/Medical complex is far off the track - for what reasons I can only guess - and at great cost to you.

Personally I plan to acquire some guaranteed unrefined oils immediately and add them to my diet.

The healingmatters.com fats link (again here) is particularly disconcerting because it describes how triglycerides, cholesterol, and all these usual modern medical obesity and diabetes "suspects" are systematically and routinely contorted into false and misleading information.

Some other topics touched in this article:

Cooking: "When cooking with fats and oils it is important to do so in a manner that does not destroy them. Use only butter, Coconut oil and animal fat for cooking." and "Margarine, artificial shortenings, refined oils and all Hydrogenated edible products are long term toxic to the human metabolism".

Manufacturing Cooking Oils: "It is the high temperatures used in the refining process that ruins even previously good oils."

Cholesterol: "by excluding high Cholesterol foods from our diet, our liver simply makes more Cholesterol in an attempt to maintain a homeostasis (normal level) of Cholesterol in our blood stream."

If I had Type 2 diabetes I would certainly explore this research in great detail.

Google: The New Big Brother

2010-12-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

Cross posted from here.

Death by Vitamin D (and Doctors)

2010-12-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

My poor family is constantly under attack from the Medical/Pharma/Industrial complex.

This incident involves an older relative.

We were speaking a while back and I happened to mention that Vitamin D levels were important for older people. Unfortunately this triggered all manner of dangerous events.

First off this relative felt that though I may be following my on advice on this matter (I take no more than 10,000 units of Vitamin D a week - less than 2,000 IUs a day) he would not be able to go along with this without his doctors advice.

So rather than simply heed the advice of the FDA or anyone else who is even remotely current on this topic and simply take 600 to 1,000 units a day this person scheduled a trip to their Medicare doctor for a Vitamin D test. Now my own research tells me that the 25-hydroxy Vitamin D test (described here and also known as 25-OH vitamin D test or Calcidiol 25-hydroxycholecalciferol test) is the most accurate form of test you can have. This test has a "normal" range of 30 to 74 ng/ml. If the number is lower than 30 then you are considered Vitamin D deficient.

Now I worry about my relatives so I always make sure not to even remotely suggest anything that might be excessive, dangers, or anywhere outside normal ranges. I am not a doctor nor do I pretend to give medical advice. My goal is simply to educate friends and relatives about what is known about something, what is published, and what to watch out for.

In this case my concern would be for taking too much Vitamin D - this is called hypervitaminosis D.

So how would you avoid this?

First off, we need to understand what Vitamin D is. There are two forms of this vitamin: D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol) (see this for more details). Vitamin D is the only vitamin manufacture by the body and is produced when ultraviolet (UV/B) rays reach the skin. Both operate on the body in a number of areas necessary for life - hence you need Vitamin D to live. Vitamin D is a hormone and has a role in bone growth, calcium absorption, may play a significant role as an anti-cancer agent, and may decrease the risk of certain autoimmune diseases.

(Its important to note here that slathering sunscreen on kids before they play outside prevents their bodies from manufacturing this vitamin. Similarly sitting around inside as an adult also prevents it. Though estimates vary you probably need to be outside with uncovered face, legs, back and arms for at least 15 minutes a day twice a week for you body to produce enough natural Vitamin D. Do your own research on how much you need. Its also generally accepted that the time of year (summer vs. winter) matters as well as local weather conditions.)

Vitamin D can also be introduced into the body through foods. D3 typically comes from animal sources such as milk and fish. D2 from plant-based sources. Vitamin D is stored in your body in muscles and fat and is released as needed.

Until very recently the suggest daily dosage of Vitamin D was 600 IU for an older adult.

RDA standards for Vitamin D are in IUs (International Units). For Vitamin D 10 mcg = 400 IUs.

This means that the previously recommended dosage was 15 mcg = 600 IUs.

Now modern medicine suggests that you probably need 50 ng/mL of Vitamin D in your blood to be healthy.

And this is where the trouble for my relative begins.

Its easy for a doctor to order this test. Its hard to figure out what to do if the amount is low. So my relative had the test taken and a week or so later got a call from their doctor. The doctor said "you need 50,000 IUs of Vitamin D once a week".

I heard about this and was somewhat confused. The reason I was confused is that Vitamin D is toxic and too much is bad. On the other hand, if you are significantly deficient in Vitamin D you need large doses to restore the Vitamin D level in your body.

So how much Vitamin D is stored in your body? According to this site about 2,000,000 IUs. So if you are way short, say a million or more IUs, huge doses are not necessarily dangerous and will refill your deficit. On the other hand, if you are already "full restored" with the 2,000,000 or so IUs you should have a large dose can be toxic and result in hypervitaminosis D.

Here there is wide variation on what a toxic level is. Some say as low as 1,000 IUs per day, others 40,000 IUs. My guess is that around 1,000 to 2,000 units is probably where you need to be (yet another suggested dosing found here.) This probably should be reduced in the summer and increased over the course of winter as some sites suggest that your surplus of Vitamin D is depleted throughout fall, winter and spring until you are back outside in shorts.

It would seem that the only way to be certain is a test. There is a blood test as I mentioned which a doctor can perform or you can do yourself by mail.

At any rate my relative was concerned about the dosage level the doctor prescribed: 50,000 IUs seems high they said.

I agreed. So the relative went to the pharmacy and had a discussion with the pharmacist. No real results so he called his doctor back.

Low and behold - the doctor told the relative that "new standards" just came out and that a daily does of 1,000 IUs was just right. My poor relative was in total shock.

A drop of a multiple of 50.

Now as best I can see there is no new standard for Vitamin D other than the possible move from 400 IUs as the standard adult dosage to 800 IUs (do your own research here). In any case moving up to 50,000 IUs seems only warranted with a very low blood level (< 10 ng/mL).

The relative asked the doctor what his level was: 30 ng/mL - low normal.

A level at which Vitamin D could well be toxic - this relative is relatively small in body weight which, based on my research, would amplify the toxicity.

Why is modern medicine doing this to our elderly?

I think ignorance. Ignorance of basic nutrition and of basic human body function.

Nothing here I mention is that new or wonderful. Vitamin D has been known for decades and there is substantial research if you simply bother to follow it.

Laziness is also a factor. Someone asked me what to do about this and this post summarizes what I found. Preparing this post took a lot of time, effort and research. To me the results are not concrete and there seems to be no real consensus of what is right or wrong other than the general guidelines I list below.

Personally I will stick to my daily 1,500 IUs or so of D per day (I weigh about 200lbs). Though I don't think I am deficient I am not certain I have my full D supply in my body. With winter upon us I will stick with this until I am again outside working this spring.

Since there is no problem with Vitamin D created by sun exposure I don't think I am over doing it with 1,500 IUs per day. My guess is that once the internal Vitamin D supply is "full" excess is eliminated from the body in some fashion - otherwise we would all die of Vitamin D poisoning on the beach.

I need to do more research...

Data Mining your Medical History

2010-12-01T11:54:00.000-05:00

See my post here at Lone Wolf.

I Married Sarah Palin...

2010-11-30T15:14:00.000-05:00

The "faux" Sarah Palin and Todd

Yes... I married the real Sarah Palin. No, not the one you see on TV these days with her own reality show, the honest-to-God real Sarah Palin.

I met her at the local country fair in 1975 - hanging around with one of my geeky high school buddies. Her then boyfriend had not bothered to take her along with him to the fair so my friend had given her a ride (more than likely hoping for a subsequent date). I ended up giving her a ride home that night and, as they say, the rest is history.

We fell in love. I left her for months upon months to do what I needed to do to make a living. We lived, in love, far apart left with writing letters because calling on the phone cost too much money in those days. She wrote in French with X's and O's. Unfortunately the letters are long lost to time.

We still have a picture taken when I took her to her high school prom in 1976. It looks a lot like the one at the top of this post except we stand proudly in front of my father's bright blue Pacer. Sure, our hair is longer, but then it was probably almost ten years before the picture you see here. Our picture still lies somewhere in the living room at the bottom of a family album.

My Sarah Palin does everything the one you see on TV does and more: chops wood, skins and guts fish and game, hikes, climbs mountains, camps, cooks over an open fire, canoes, kayaks, rafts big white water, shoots, goes fishing, pitches a tent, you name it. She can do it alone or dragging along some or all of our four children. She's not big on hunting and cold though... so moose hunting is out. She doesn't jog and run either - that's my job.

We didn't have a reality show, though, like the fake (or maybe faux Sarah Palin) you see on TV. No, we did it with grit and guts because we loved doing it and each other. And, it was kind of funny, that there were others like us - out with their kids as well. So perhaps my Sarah Palin isn't the only real one.

Like the faux Sarah Palin my Sarah Palin belives in Faith, Family and Flag. We both do. Like the faux Palin we have endured years of chiding and ridicule for these beliefs. My Sarah called a "traitor to the sisterhood" for staying home with our children to raise them.

We spent many happy years camping, canoeing, and kayaking in the back woods of Pennsylvania and West Virgina with our children. We didn't have a big RV like the faux Sarah Palin. Instead we had a Dodge Colt Vista and later a large blue Dodge Caravan. We hauled camping gear, dogs, kayaks, canoes, supplies, and tents to the remote wilderness. We camped and hiked and swam in the wildwater (and no, the children were not washed away over the falls). When we out grew one vehicle we had to take two.

Unlike the faux Sarah Palin no one cared about what we did - even though it was exactly the same thing as the reality TV show. Of course, we didn't live in Alaska, but besides that. not much was different. I suppose our yuppie neighbors were glad we were gone - no happy screaming children disrupting their drunken, naked hot tub nights.

What's so remarkable is that anyone cares about all of this, and in particular the faux Palin. I suppose if they'd lived same life they'd have no interest...

I've been watching the TV show and I find it quite interesting - more for what is not said mostly.

I suppose most glaringly the women on the faux Sarah program actually respect the old man Todd. You don't see much arguing or backtalk with him on the show. After all this first dude won the Tesoro Iron Dog race four times, fishes commercially and drills oil and gas wells for a living. My guess is is that he delivers as the "man" in the family - on all levels - for which the women respect him. So, other than the the faux Palin talking about him here and there he's just a background fixture, kind of like Mt. McKinely.

I was interested to see how she handled her weaponry. This link is probably the most telling though she shoots an over-under shot gun instead of a rifle on the TV show. The link show her shooting what appears to be an M-16 style semi-automatic. No flinching. No whining. Steady aim. Ditto for the shot gun. You can also see her casually ejecting shells between pulls. Husband Todd can shoot and easily demonstrates his skill on the program - just like the real one.

My Sarah is somewhat less of a hunter so other than occasionally shooting and make sure ours our in good shape you won't find much interest in guns on her part - but don't confuse that with inability.

All in all I would say the faux Palin does a pretty good job of demonstrating what the real Sarah Palin is like...

Good thing no one cares about the real one.

Debtors Prison: Your Child's Legacy

2010-11-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

Debtor's Prison is alive today - click on this picture.

I read an article in USA Today last week that described how retirement debt will be a problem for the next generation. Basically it says that people in retirement are going into debt for a variety of reasons and simply don't care about the consequences.   After all, they will be dead soon, so why pay their bills? After they die their estates, if there are any, will be liquidated to pay off the consequences of their debts leaving the kiddies who plan to make it big with their inheritance nothing.

Sadly this seems to be an overwhelming common occurrence these days - leaving children the legacy of debt.

I started to wonder about this model when the first of my children wanted to go to college. It was expensive - probably about $5K a semester where she wanted to go. Figuring five years of college, depending on the major and screw ups, times $10K a year times five years leaves about $50K - not counting books, food, and other ancillaries.

Plugging these numbers into this website yields a monthly payment of around $600.00 US paying about $19K in interest over ten years. My child would be left with this debt. How you she get buy on this? You can't work at Wendy's and afford that payment...

But wait, you say, she won't need to work at Wendy's - she'll have a college degree!

You're a fool if you believe this - particularly in today's economy. Though my child graduated into the go-go economy of the post 9/11 housing boom finding a job was still not easy because education doesn't really count for all that much when compared to experience, credit worthiness, demonstrated work-based responsibility, and other similar things.

Fast forward to today - this particular child has a degree in biotechnology from a well recognized state university. After a couple of years of scratching around she finally got work making something like $40 - 50K a year all told in her field of study. A $600/month payment is nothing to sneeze at - especially if you are just a 22 year old kid without a job and without experience.

Where I live now that's at least a house payment.

Most end up refinancing these loans at least once, rolling them into housing loans and so forth; and these loans take over your life. I know many people in their 40's still saddled with these debts.

Now why, you might ask, would this be "my debt" my child is being left and not my child's debt?

There are several of reasons. First mom and dad are often involved in signing for a loan like this. Second, my generation (and my parents generation) created the expectation that to be successful in life you must have a college education (see this). Prior to the last 60-70 years most male children followed in their father's footsteps: construction, plumber, farming, etc.

I trained another child in one of my professions. (This one spent a little time in school - long enough to realize they were not really interested in it.) My cost for this training was negative, i.e., I made money on the deal. The child learned a trade and I benefited from that because though I paid them I paid them less than the prevailing wage. Today that child probably makes more money than me. No debt was involved - no government - no tax dollars. This child was able to follow thier passion and pursue their dream career.

The child I trained continually relates interesting stories to me about his peers graduated from college. How little they know, how little experience they have, how bad their work ethic is, how narrow their knowledge base is, how childish and inexperienced they are, and how much more experienced and qualified he is. Its fascinating to me because I did not set out to do this - I merely attempted to teach him a trade. However, its now apparent that giving him real customer responsibility at a young age taught him to be be a real grown up person long before his peers.

College today teaches less than high school did in my day (though it teaches much more about irresponsibility). And not just in the technical area - with one year of high school biology my wife was able to easily follow, understand and even critique everything my other child learned on her way to a biotechnology degree.

So why do many people pass the "debtor lifestyle" on to their children - credit cards, loans, houses and cars they cannot afford?

Personally I think its an "entitlement" mentality. People believe that they are entitled to an education, a car, a house, whatever they can borrow money to acquire.   I suppose its the same legacy of debt passed on to our country by the many baby boomers. (The "ends" justifies "means", as it were - debt is okay for education).

But if you really are entitled to something why is borrowing money involved?

And worse, at least from the perspective of education, what's being sold is less than a 1975 rural high school education.   Worse still, its become a lifestyle.

Placing my children into debt does not give them a better life than I had. While "giving their children a better life than they had" was the mantra of my parents generation it does not work in the world of today or with the baby boomer mentality. My parents did not suggest I should go into debt to have a better life than them - but apparently that's not the case today for the most part.

The problem we now all face is that we have "front loaded" our future with debt - probably 60-70 trillion dollars counting it all. Debt we cannot afford. Not just for our country as with unfunded social security and medical liability, but with personal debt (loans, credit cards, all the rest) as well. We have destroyed our the future of our children.

I have not done this but far to many others have based on misguided thoughts of entitlement and education and my children will be saddled with this burden.

I have also written here about retirement. Starting your child in a world were they are free from debt to pursue their dreams and interests is an investment in a future as an old man. Government and social security will not care about me in my twilight years - but my children will - especially if they have not been encumbered with the burden unnecessary debt for most of their lives.

Debtors prison is making a comeback...

I just hope you aren't planning to send you child there.

Happy Thanksgiving...

2010-11-23T11:06:00.002-05:00

We will be on vacation until Monday, November 29th.

The Winds of Healthcare Change..

2010-11-22T17:18:00.000-05:00

Recently Texas Governor Rick Perry said "we feel very comfortable that we could come up with a more equitable, a more efficient, and obviously a more cost-effective way to deliver health care" with respect to Medicaid.

So why is our "entitlement health care system" driving states toward bankruptcy?

The answer is both simple and complex.

One the simple side:

Medicare and Medicaid each cover at least 50 million people each - that's a total of 100 million people or so.
Medicare covers people over 65 - typically these people require more services than younger, healthier people.
Medicaid covers poor people who typically use hospital emergency rooms for primary coverage.

The complex side is that most or all of government run healthcare is full of "mandates". To understand mandates you first need to understand how the federal and state governments work together under the laws providing funding.

Medicaid is a program created and funded by the Federal government. The Federal government gives the states (like Pennsylvania) matching money for every Medicaid dollar spent as long as the dollars spent by the state match the program requirements. The part in the italics is the catch, as it were. The Federal government requires the states to do certain things under the "program".

The states only get the money after they have spent it, i.e., the Federal government reimburses the state after the state has spent its money on health care for people enrolled in its programs.

Medicare works differently. Institutions get payments in block amounts of money for specific things, like a doctors visit or a stay in a nursing home.

In the case of both systems there are many issues related to billing and payments. Fraud is easy because there is so much billing. Doctors usher patients through at the maximum rate allowed, i.e., there is no financial incentive to cure someone. The only financial incentive is to bill for services rendered - so as long as someone keeps coming back for the same problem you, as a doctor, do better, than if you cure them in one visit.

Then there are mandates. If your hospital or practice wishes to be paid by these programs (directly or indirectly) you must meet certain federal guidelines. For example, Medicaid is changing the "visitation rights" for hospital patients. Mandates can be simple things or complex and can cost the states nothing or a lot.

And here in lies the problem.

The federal government is coercing the states to behave in specific ways. The carrot and stick are reimbursements. If you want to see patients covered by these program you must follow the guidelines. If you don't follow the guidelines you cannot see eligible patients.

What's happening in Texas is that the state believes it can do better without the Federal government involved.

Right now this is just talk.

But serious talk.

My guess is that in a few years these federal systems for health care will start to fail because they are overly complex financially and medically. Those of use facing retirement in ten years will be left holding the bag as it were.

Flu Shots and Magical Thinking

2010-11-19T14:45:00.000-05:00

No, this is not me... (my hair isn't that gray)

Around 1976, when Gerald Ford was president, I was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Word came down from the press that we were all going to die of the Swine Flu so we had better all line up for our free vaccination. I was away at my first year of college. I remember being the student union and seeing a long line of folks lined up for their free flu shot that would save their lives.

To this day I can still see the line. It was long, it was slow moving. It reminded me of cattle lining up for slaughter. And, as it turned out my chances of harm from Swine Flu versus the flu shot itself were far less, zero in fact, because the only person to die in 1976 of Swine Flu was 19-year-old Pvt. David Lewis of Ashley Falls, Mass.

Each year my mother calls me and worries about getting a flu shot.

"What should I do" she asks.

We always talk about it though she always makes up her own mind.

"I'm not going to get it..." she tells me. She sees the long lines, the same as I saw 35 years ago, at the local drug store or in the lobby of the building where she lives. I think it scares her.

So what's the deal with flu anyway? Like 1976, 2009 was the year that H1N1 was going to wipe humanity off the face of the earth, just like the 1918 flu pandemic.

But is it true?

The first thing I did was track down the CDC (here in the US) and try to figure out what the hell it is that they do to track flu. The best I could come up with is this website: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/. Its sort of like a death-star command bridge of CDC flu data collection.

Its very interesting. They divide the year up into 52 weeks and publish a kind of run-on chart that shows types of flues and reports about numbers of cases. The most interesting char off the top was this one:

The basic idea here is this. The top black line is the "epidemic threshold". If the red line, representing the percent of all deaths due to pneumonia and influenza, crosses over the top black line one presumes there in an epidemic. The bottom black line is the baseline of flu deaths.

So around you see a big spike around the 10th week of 2008 - presumably a big epidemic - at least according to the chart.

Hold on... 2008? I don't recall anything about that. Do you?

Sure there was SARS - a dud - and that was 2005. Then there was H1N1 - but that was late 2009 (which you can see as a bump around the end of 2009).

Some Googling yields the CDC's report on the 2007-2008 flu season through May, 2008. It can be found here.

My, my. There is some interesting data here, er, well, the lack of data. No discussion of the epidemic listed on the chart. Nothing. There is some discussion on how all this flu stuff is not as exact as it might be and there is a discussion of the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Quoted from the link in part: "Interim results from a study carried out this season with the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin found overall vaccine effectiveness (VE) of 44% for the 2007-08 flu shot. This included VE of 58% effectiveness against the predominant influenza A (H3N2) viruses, but no effectiveness against influenza B viruses. No influenza A (H1N1) viruses were seen in the study population, so VE against these viruses could not be assessed. A higher VE against H3N2 viruses than against influenza B viruses was likely because the circulating H3N2 strains and H3N2 strain in the vaccine were closely related while the circulating B viruses were antigenically and genetically much different from the influenza B virus in the vaccine and there was little to no cross-reactivity. "

Seems like the data and charts don't match the conclusions here.

Now, I'm a reasonably smart guy. This stuff is a jumble of nonsense. None of it matches. And, of particular interest here, it seems like each year all the prior years web pages on results are replaced by the next years results, i.e., there is no year-to-year comparison of what's going on.

So an effectiveness rate of 44%, eh - whatever that means, and attempting to find this calculation on the CDC so far has left me empty handed. After some surfing I came up with this site.

This paints a somewhat (or, perhaps significantly) troubling picture of the macro case of "vaccine effectiveness". Results seem to range from cutting influenza-like symptoms 35% to a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality for the elderly to another study that "found no link between flu vaccination and a reduced risk of this illness." The author of the first study, not surprisingly, was none other than the CDC.

A bit later in this same article we learn that "Influenza only causes 5% of winter deaths at most" so a flue shot is unlikely to produce a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality. Further it claims that, for the elderly, a true epidemiological study would be unethical for various reasons (I wonder if its as unethical as sending them out to get a vaccine with, at best, a dubious benefit).

And finally, there's this comment "The seniors who are healthy and are able to go get a flu shot are less likely to get pneumonia or die. The benefits [of the influenza vaccine] are probably real but rather small..."

Seems to me that at best the effectiveness rate for this vaccine is about that of a placebo, at least for elderly patients. If you haven't heard of it the placebo effect is what happens when you give someone a pill and tell them the pill does something even though the pill is actually just a dummy. It turns out that in many cases up to about one third of the people experience the effect they were told about - even though the pill does nothing.

So effectively is the shot, at least for the elderly, just a placebo...?

(I am not so sure magical thinking, at least in the context of one's health, is not so far off the placebo effect.)

On the other hand, people experience real vaccine side effects - they are well documented. Any my mother is right to fear them.

So which is more dangerous?

A vaccine of dubious effectiveness or doing nothing at all?

Mother still apparently knows best...

Wherefore Art Thou, Oh Iodine?

2010-11-18T14:12:00.001-05:00

I am posting today to report on our progress at home related to the use of iodine supplements.

Recently my wife purchased a commercial Lugol's iodine solution: 5% of elemental iodine in a 10% solution of potassium iodide. This is a chemical preparation that has been made for a couple of hundred years. My guess is that each drop of a commercial 2.2% solution represents about 12.5 mg of iodine.

(I still need to do more research on this because too much iodine can cause thyrotoxicosis. It seems as though the symptoms of this are sort of "opposite" those of iodine deficiency so I think its unlikely the two could be confused.)

Commercial solutions must be less than 2.2% iodine lest they run afoul of government rules that limit certain substances that might be used in methamphetamine production. From what I can see this limit on iodine (at least iodine solutions) is nonsense as it relates to methamphetamine - supposedly its used to create HCl (using phosphorus, no less).

The Japanese consume iodine on the level of grams due to their seafood diets so it seems likely a few milligrams is not a concern.

This solution has changed her life dramatically in terms of energy, clearness of thought, and so on. This transformation was one I went through over the last five years or so (see "Five Years Ago..."). Again I am in "Flowers for Algernon".

So this transformation has left a question. Where has all the iodine that used to be added to our diets gone?

It turns out to be an interesting question with some interesting answers.

Prior to the early 1970's iodine supplementation in our diets had been in place since about 1924 or so when the Morton Salt Company introduced iodized salt. Similarly iodized salt was used in commercial baking.

I researching this I came upon a couple of articles. The first is a PDF here: "Bread Iodine Content and Thyroid Radioiodine Uptake: a Tale of Two Cities" This is an article written in a British NIH (National Institute of Health) publication in 1972. It seems to indicate that there is a problem with administering radioactive iodine thyroid tests if a patient is consuming iodine supplementation via baked goods.

Radioactive iodine tests are used to evaluate thyroid function. The patient ingests radioactive iodine and a scanner measures the radiation emitted by the thyroid in order to attempt to diagnose any problem (this is typically done if blood tests indicate a problem with thyroid hormones).

The second article "Normal Thyrodial Update of Iodine" (PDF here) talks about the regional variation in thyroid function as it relates to radio iodine uptake.

These articles seem to indicate two things: A) iodine absorption varies significantly by geographic location and B) too much iodine interferes with certain thyroid tests. Some internet posters claim this is the reason it was removed from baked goods as a supplement, but I don't think so.

Another article here indicates that "In 1948, Drs. Wolff and Chaikoff led a landmark study that determined that iodine can be harmful to the thyroid. While this is partially true, they were using only one part of the iodine element and not the whole mineral. If used correctly, iodine is very safe." The result of this was the reduction in the USDA daily Recommend Daily Allowance (RDA) of iodine to 150mcg.

This article indicates that 25mg (two drops of a lugol's solution - though no percentage is given) is good for two to three months to repair the bodies iodine deficiency and that, beyond that, 12.5 mg (one drop) is sufficient for maintenance).

Another article here shows that Australia, in 2008, believed that iodine deficiency was such a problem (though it does not indicate whether there ever was iodization or if there was why it was stopped and when) iodization of salt and/or other products should be introduced. Subsequent information seems to indirectly indicate that such a program has been implemented.

Then there is bromide. Bromide has been put into various food products as a replacement for iodine - bread in particular as well as flour.

Bromides affect some of the same receptors in the body that iodine affects. Bromide is not good for you. There is a long list of problems listed here - among them, not surprisingly, thyroid. A related theory is that if there is more bromide than iodine the bromide will "dominate" and cause problems. Related discussion revolves around detoxing from bromide before iodine will have its full effect as a supplement - but I am not certain I believe this.

Brazil has outlawed bromides.

So, why the banishment of iodine after all this?

My guess is cost and/or past medical incompetence.

I am think that not eating bread containing bromides would be good as well.

Cholesterol, Heart Disease and Magical Thinking

2010-11-17T15:45:00.000-05:00

We see the ads on TV all the time: your high cholesterol might be the cause of heart disease, heart attack, and, worst upon worst (at least if you're a guy), even erectile dysfunction.

Pretty scary stuff, isn't it?

But are the ads true?

There was a big study of CHD (Coronary Heart Disease) AMI events (heart attacks or Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI)) called INTERHEART. It followed some tens of thousands of cases and people over many years. The results identify risks associated with activities and tests.

Now this is where things become interesting.

The study identifies risk factors - now its very important to understand that a risk factor is not a predictor of something and not cause something. A prediction says that if I hold a hammer over my foot that it will hit my foot if I let go - I predict the result based on some information. A cause is different. For example, if I jump off the roof and break my leg the jump from the roof caused the broken leg (you can argue that the impact of my body on the ground and the fact that my leg took up all the force was really the cause, but at a macro level my leg broke because of the jump).

A risk factor merely represents the numerical chance something might happen based on examination of a large group. (Chance here is a number between zero and one, commonly shown as a percentage, i.e., .1 = 10%.) Sort of like saying 10% of the people at a baseball game buy hot dogs. We don't know which people will buy hot dogs but we can generally assume that for any given baseball game about 10% will buy hot dogs - everything else being equal (for example, there are no sales of hamburgers that day). This is why stadium vendors can buy just about the right amount of food so none is wasted and they don't run out.

In epidemiology risk factors are calculated as follows:

We take a statistically significant group of people (you can use common sense here - for something like heart disease you wouldn't study just five people - you'd study a large number). Just how large a number is not really important here, all we need to know is the number is large enough for statistical purposes.

We'll pretend in this post that 100 people are subjects in the study because math with 100 is relatively easy.

So let's say (we are making this up) that 20 people have AMI events of our 100 subjects. That's 20 / 100 = .20 = 20%. So we say that in general you have a 20% risk of an AMI event - based on our population (more on this in a bit).

Let's also say that 25 people in our example smoke (about like the percentage in the real world) and we'll pretend that 15 people in this smoking group have AMI events.

So the number of people that smoke and have an AMI event is 15, or 15 / 100 or .15 or 15% of the population.

If we divide the 15% (people who smoke and have an AMI event) by the 20% that just have an AMI event we get .75 or 75% risk factor that if I smoke I will have an AMI event.

Now, based on this, the billion (or trillion) dollar questions is this: Does our study show that smoking causes an AMI event?

The answer is clearly no. Our study does not determine the cause of anything. It merely multiplies some observed numbers together and computes something we call a risk factor.

And, in this case, was does that mean?

Actually nothing. I could now tell you, for example, that our 100 subjects all were born with serious congenital heart problems known to cause AMI events.

What would you think of my study example now?

What you are seeing is correlation. Correlation means, in this case, that when one thing happens there is an observed relationship with some other thing happening. A correlation is an observation.

Dogs make correlations: If I walk to the container holding the dog food they think I am going to feed them - so they stick close by. The dog mind predicts that I will feed them when I do this. But walking to the dog food container does not cause me to feed them. Similarly if I walk by the dog food container all the time and don't feed them the dogs will soon realize that their correlation is not useful and abandon it.

The INTERHEART study shows cholesterol is a risk factor in AMI events. (The ratio of HDL/LDL is used as well as another kind of cholesterol ratio - both provide about the same risk factor.)

Does this mean that cholesterol causes AMI events?

No, it does not. In fact, emphatically NO.

For all we know based on this study bad cholesterol ratios may also be a symptom of the same thing that actually causes AMI events.

And that's the problem.

Unfortunately, big pharma latches on to things like this study and makes the assumption that reducing the risk factor will make you healthier. Actually, they probably know its not true, but since making you think its true is not a crime...

That's why things like Lipitor make your good cholesterol go up and you bad cholesterol go down. The thinking is that reducing a risk factor for an AMI event makes your chance of having an AMI event smaller.

But that's nonsense because there is no causal relationship between the cholesterol ratios and AMI events.

And since there is no causal relationship its just what we might call "magical thinking" on your part, the part of your doctor, the part of big pharma. Magical thinking (according to the link) is "causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense. "

Wikipedia associates magical thinking with witch doctors and voodoo - but isn't it apropo here?

So there you are. Taking a medication linked to a problem you probably don't already have. Linked by magical thinking, and magical thinking alone to a drug that makes them big money.

And to top it all off - things like Liptor has nasty side effects!

Now one imagines that the maker of Liptor does not like to see things on this list in general nor does it like to see a long list. So my guess is that the manufacturer worked very hard to remove everything that's on the list due to magical thinking on the part of the consumer taking the drug.

Sadly the list is too long to put into this post - look here to see it.

So, at least as far as I can see, there is a real cause and effect related to these side effects: If you don't take Lipitor you wouldn't report them - just like if I didn't jump off the roof I wouldn't have a broken leg.

Sharks on Birth Control?

2010-11-16T11:55:00.001-05:00

In a recent post I linked to an article in National Geographic about significant concentrations estrogen in our waterways. (I came upon it researching what I thought was an "urban legend" on birth control hormones being found in open sea sharks...)

This is a phenomena that has been reliably measured for probably at least the last seven or eight years. It is considered by many to be a new and significant source of dangerous pollution in our waterways.

Some articles trumpet that this pollution is the result of modern birth control medications being excreted into sewers by the women who use them. But this may not be true. Other articles claim that birth control pill-related estrogen can only account for something on the order of 1% of the amount of estrogen currently being measured.

Digging deeper is seems clear that there are probably a small number of primary sources for this estrogen: farm run off, birth control pills, soy-related compounds, natural mammalian estrogen production, and natural sources.

Farm run off typically occurs when untreated animal waste makes its way into waterways. Animals such as cows naturally excrete estrogen - both males and females. However, concentrated feed can increase the amount of estrogen (as well as other hormones) excreted.

The amount of estrogen is also affected by how the run off is processed. Typically animal waste is not placed directly into waterways but instead makes its way there through ground water. Manure and waste is often spread on fields, for example, as fertilizer.

Soy-related compounds also involve estrogen. There is a lot of debate about this. Some say the soy products for humans are healthy (low saturated fats, positive effects on heart disease) and that soy is widely consumed in Asia. However, other argue that soy is only fit for human consumption after extensive fermenting and processing and that Asian eat very little. Some argue soy has a positive benefit for breast cancer, others a negative. In any case there seems a clear estrogen element in the human processing of soy. Perhaps this is also true for animals - soy is often a component in animal feed.

The question here is what is the impact of soy processing and consumption on the estrogen levels in waterways - on this I cannot find an answer. Fortunately its seems clear there is growing scientific interest in the over all problem so hopefully someone will address this aspect.

Animals naturally excrete estrogen - even male animals (and humans). Human males taking testosterone supplements can have elevated estrogen levels (see this). Female can have increased estrogen by taking birth control pills or estrogen supplements. Consumption of soy may also increase estrogen.

So certainly there are any number of sources for estrogen. But this does not help us much pinning down what sources are a problem.

We can, however, look back at the original article. It discusses various human activities related to food consumption, drug and pharmaceuticals which can be traced to waterways via sewage. For example, vanilla, sage and thyme all have seasonal cycles where their presence in Puget Sound varies according to the season. Similarly illegal drugs, perfumes, scents, and various pharmaceuticals all can be measured.

I would imagine it should be possible to compare the relative measurements of these non-estrogen compounds in sewage plants and extrapolate from that how much estrogen is being injected into waterways directly by humans versus what is occurring from animal and natural sources.

In any case estrogen in waterways is bad - which is why I am posting this.

To date there is direct evidence that even very minute concentrations (nanograms per liter) can cause problems with fish (or humans):

Feminization of fish and also here.

It is unclear what affects these compounds, whether spices, pain relievers, anti-psychotics, antibiotics or hormones have on fish or people. Since these compounds are typically found mixed together there may also be side effects.

Water filtration and the use of chlorine do not remove these compounds either. So, if you live downstream from a city its likely you're consuming their treasure trove of chemical compounds.

It seems like this problem is finally getting the attention of the EPA, but I would not hold my breath for them to take action. Fixes appear to be involved and expensive - either on the intake or outflow end - because traditional treatment systems are not designed to handle these compounds.

Though we are talking here about minute levels here: something like 12.5 mg per olympic size-pool their affects are still potentially significant.

There is also the issue that chemicals used to make plastic bottles can induce hormonal changes in those that consume the water - but more on this in another post.

Time to buy a good water filter I think.

Twilight: Youth in the Dark

2010-11-15T16:57:00.000-05:00

I found this article at the WSJ - its from last week: "Desire in the Twilight of Life".

How sad it is that people are so confused about life and love: "We prefer to think that older people are asexual, resigned to a certain loss of desire and vitality."

What do young people know about growing older? Not very much, I'm afraid, because, as should be totally obvious, they haven't had time experienced real life yet.

First and foremost I find it remarkably short sighted on the part of the author to imagine that people accustomed to engaging in any artistic activity, typically for decades, would be "resigned to a certain loss of desire". Its pretty clear this guy is around 40 from reading the article. Yet he is apparently an expert in the sex lives of ~~geezers~~ mature adults. (BTW, WSJ author, if you have any doubt whatsoever about what I am implying here I dare you see what fascinating results Google might bring...)

But don't worry, rather than making everyone squirm with discomfort at the mere thought of uncomfortable or titillating specifics I think its far more important instead to address the follies of this article with mature, metaphoric prose. You won't find any detailed, titillating imagery or descriptions below (so the kiddies can surf on to the next article - there won't be any jollies found here).

Picasso and Wright

Imagine Chicago without the "Chicago Picasso" - created in 1967 by the then 86 year old Pablo Picasso. From Wikipedia regarding his later years: "Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings."

Similarly, Frank Lloyd Wright, the prolific architect, designed the Guggenheim Museum of Modern art in his 90's.

While not everyone lives into their 90's its clear that great works are still possible at that age as these examples clearly exhibit. Perhaps these artists did not create as frequently as they did in their youth but the results of their later-life activities live on today, decades after their respective death as epic, even iconic, works.

Romeo and Juliet

Youthful love always captures hearts and minds - whether its Romeo and Juliet or Lancelot and Guinevere - because of its struggle for the ideal of love as well as for its purity.

But, as most mature adults come to realize, real life happens after the young lovers are together: either through tragic death, or through simply growing up. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet actually had lived - who would read about Juliet struggling to change diapers or pouting because Romeo was off at the bar late in the evening. No, I think the ideal of love best not address the all too often reality of these types of unions.

Certainly Juliet or Lancelot had parents and clearly the young lovers are the product of their union. But no one finds their parents lives romantic, ideal, pure or, for that matter, even remotely interesting. Yet without their parents, grandparents and great grandparents none of the young lovers would exist at all; and of course these not-so-famous ancestors presumably continued on with their lives well beyond the follies and errant tragedies of their offspring.

McCarney and Watts

Then there is the question of the artistry itself. Are the Picasso's or buildings of Wrights' later life any less remarkable than those created in their youth?

No.

And we need look no further than the realm of music for guidance.

Paul McCartney, the former Beatles member, recently performed at the local arena where I live. He's in his late 60's now - my friend saw him play - for some three hours without a break. And, of course, the arena was sold out - jammed with screaming fans for the entire show. But McCarney delivered.

Though I doubt he still practices and plays as much as he did in his youth he was, according to my friend, still able to "quite effectively close the deal" when he needed to. Does this mean he has less desire? Or merely more non-musical things to do (especially given wife #3)?

Similarly there's Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones - pushing 70 and still on stage with the rest of the boys for a good hour and half show at least.

The point of all this is the skill for art, musical performance and otherwise, obviously continues on well into late life, and, as any true artist will tell you, they can always still deliver.

The results are all around you if you just open your eyes.

So why are ~~old~~ mature folks and their perfectly normal lives look upon with such trepidation? Today's youth, Madison avenue and modern culture all share the blame I think. Kids think that Viagra is required for sex, and not just because you're old, either.

Things like the modern Viagra culture with its negative impact on men are merely products of this same modern marketing nonsense. And who could forget these ridiculous old geezers singing about Viagra (link here if you've got a strong stomach) or those idiots sitting at the beach in their bathtub's contemplating Cialis.

The negative impact of this culture on women is a story in and of itself: negative body images, weight and dieting, lotions and potions, plastic surgery, unrealistic bedroom expectations. Females smitten with internet imagery are now driving cosmentic vaginoplasty into position as one of the faster-growing elective female surgeries - even for teenage girls.

Fortunately for me, I am too old for all this.

Real art is lifelong and a commitment to art is just that, commitment.

Chemically and mechanically enhanced frauds need not apply (I mean no disrespect to my fallen comrades and those truly afflicted - my scorn is cast only at the imposters).

And to the WSJ article. It concludes "Changing our approach to the romantic lives of older Americans will not be easy."

Older Americans know something the article's author doesn't: how to live life outside the Madison Avenue marketing culture. (At 53 I escaped the bubble but I fear most of those a few years behind will not be so lucky.)

The only approach that needs to change is that of fools who don't understand the concept of maturity and aging.

No, the only twilight here is that of common sense.

We old farts have no need to explain ourselves to anyone.

Death by Conventional Medical Wisdom

2010-11-15T12:23:00.000-05:00

Conventional medicine is about labeling things: you have a sinus infection, you have cancer, you have Crohn's disease. Of lot of time is spent on classifying and labeling things.

Did you know that its often the cases that though two people might both have "breast cancer" the diseases and treatments that work for that disease might be totally different? In fact, businesses exist that apply an array of oncology drugs to a specific cancer just to see which ones have the most effect.

If two people with "breast cancer" don't react to the same drugs in the same way is their disease the same?

Some companies, such as Precision Therapeutics, test your cancer to specifically determine what drugs the cancer does react to. If "breast cancer" were a single disease or problem, this would not be necessary - the same treatment would work reliably all the time (think about putting iodine on an infected cut or splinting a broken bone).

Now consider this fact: The lifetime risk of breast cancer of those with the "breast cancer gene" or BRCA1 or 2 is presently 82 percent and increasing every year. Before 1940, the risk of getting cancer for those with the cancer gene was 24 percent. What changed? Our diet, lifestyle, and environment--both physically and emotionally. Might these factors be a better place to look for answers on how to address our cancer epidemic?

Think about this.

Diet, lifestyle, and environment are very broad subjects. Apparently responsible for increasing the chances of getting cancer three-fold over a proven base risk.

So what has changed in our lives over the last decades?

Diet - I have written about this before. I believe that we have become malnourished. We eat almost exclusively "manufactured" foods - food prepared in a factory as opposed to something we made ourselves from basic ingredients. I do not believe anyone knows or cares about whats in these foods nutritionally - as I described in "Are You Iodine Deficient?" I think the FDA is so consumed by approving the next blockbuster drug for big pharma they have forgotten about food - basic, simple food.

I think we eat a diet designed to do the wrong thing. "The 30-Day Low-Carb Diet Solution" By Michael R. Eades, Mary Dan Eade suggest that the USDA food pyramid is (or was, at least) identical to the nutritional program used to fatten hogs.

From this I found that it would appear they are correct: you have to find the various parts which is tricky but I basically believe this (thanks Tim!). So you diet, at least as far as the USDA guidelines are concerned, is going to fatten you up like a pig.

Lifestyle: Our lives are full of stress today. We take an enormous amount of drugs to make supposedly our lives better. We are inert.

Environment - Our environment is polluted at every level - inside our homes, our air, our water. If you do nothing else, read this about how polluted our water is. Forget air pollution, forget land fills. We are poising ourselves with our own personal pollution.

So what effect do these things have on cancer? The TEDMED conference, discussed here, suggests that most of what doctors do - classifying and labeling disease - is not effective. Further, the treatment models are not effective - we treat symptoms.

No one says, "Gee, I wonder why you got that cancer in the first place?" - at least the big pharma, Medicare, government complex doesn't.

Further, if you consider your body as a metaphor for a garden: For our garden to grow we need to make sure the weeds do not choke the plants. We can pull the weeds but they continue to come back. Without understanding why the weed appear in the first place or doing anything for the root cause of weeds we will always struggle with our garden.

The modern US medical process is equivalent to dumping gallons of weed-be-gone into the garden. While it eliminates the symptom of weeds, what does it do to the garden?

From the TEDMED link: "scientific literature іѕ abundant wіth evidence thаt diet, exercise, thουghtѕ, feelings, аnd environmental toxins аll influence thе initiation, growth аnd progression οf cancer. If a nutrient-poor diet full οf sugar, lack οf exercise, chronic stress, persistent pollutants, аnd heavy metals саn cause cancer, сουld іt bе thаt a nutrient-dense, plant-based diet, physical activity, changing thουghtѕ аnd reactions tο stress, аnd detoxification mіght treat thе garden іn whісh cancer grows?"

Our modern lives are doing everything wrong with regard to making us healthy. Treating symptoms. Creating too much stress. Poisoning ourselves.

I found some of this information at http://drhyman.com. I like this site and its well worth paying attention to (there is a link to it on the right-column of the blog).

In the next posts I plan to explore what our water is doing to us, more about the epidemic of iodine deficiency, more about treating your body as a system and cancer as a symptom.

I know that quite a few people read this blog and hopefully you will tell your friends about it.

Hopefully you are waking up to what's happening to you.

Our society and lifestyles are killing us.

We need to tell the FDA and the government that, rather than worry about whether Rodger Clemens using HGH, we should be worrying about why our sewage treatment systems are putting cocaine, heroin, estrogen, and God-knows-what-else into our drinking water.

We need to tell the FDA that our nutritional health should take priority over Lipitor.

We need to tell the FDA that there are links between ADHD and things like iodine deficiency.

We're not getting what we're paying for...

Are You Iodine Deficient...?

2010-11-12T12:15:00.001-05:00

About a month ago I wrote this about iodine.

The last thing I said in that post was that I would try the iodine painting on my self. So far its had no effect but I'll probably continue with it for the reasons I list below.

But that's not why I am posting again about iodine.

A friend of the family was talking to us about this and give the iodine painting a try. Low and behold many of the symptoms I had listed went away. But that's not all that went away: so did a serious case of snoring.

Snoring?

Yes, snoring. It turns out that a significant iodine deficiency causes your thyroid to swell. Swell to the point where it makes it difficult to breath while sleeping and simulates sleep apnea. A swollen thyroid (seen in the image at the top of this post) is symptom of a much more serious problem: goiter.

Based on this we've done some additional research on Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) and iodine.

First off, in the US at least, the primary delivery system for iodine is table salt. Table salt, or sodium chloride, is found in almost everyone's home. In the 1920's goiter was common in the US is areas without access to seafood in their diet, e.g., the great lakes region. The Morton Salt Company started to sell iodized salt in 1924 in the US.

Today we don't see anyone with goiter. But that doesn't mean we're getting enough iodine.

Again we could be talking about sub-clinical cases of diseases such goiter, e.g., the swollen thyroid and snoring. Sub-clinical means that its not enough of a disease to register in a standard medical test - but you still might have a problem. For example, if you need a score of 100 to have the problem but you only score 95. You may still suffer some symptoms even though technically you don't have the problem.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends 150 micrograms of iodine per day for both men and women.

A typical US diet might involve 3.5 grams (g) of salt per day (according to WebMD). I think this amount of salt is low. So for our purposes here we will generously say we get 5g of salt per day.

A single serving of iodized table salt (1g), according to this table (at bottom), contains 77mcg of iodine.

A table spoon of salt, or 5g, would contain about 385 micro grams (mcg) of iodine. More than the 150 mcg the FDA suggests.

(Note: 1 gram (g) = 1,000 milligrams (mg) = 1,000,000 micrograms (mcg).)

However, only 20% (one fifth) of all salt consumed is iodized so eating a tablespoon of iodized salt will still leave you iodine deficient (77 mcg is less than the 150mcg suggested by the FDA).

Now couple this with the fact that you should only eat something like 1.5g of salt for health reasons, e.g., high blood pressure, etc. and you get massive iodine deficiency within the population.

Now apparently some people need much more iodine than the 150 mcg per day, i.e., the relieving of various problems by taking iodine supplements. There is a detailed article here on the subject.

I have done a lot of reading and have found that probably 12mg is reasonable dose if you are deficient. This is a common dosage in some supplements that I have found. Some cultures, like the Japanese, consume much more iodine than this - up to several grams per day - because of their seafood-based diets.

In any case do your own research before taking any supplements.

Iodine deficiency is linked to many bad things: cancer of the breast and stomach, for pregnant woman lack of iodine can cause mental retardation, and of course goiter.

I think that table salt is a bad idea for iodine supplementation - too much table salt is bad for your heart and blood pressure and the amount they say you should consume, 1.5g per day, leaves you with under 20mcg of iodine - given that all of that salt was iodized.

There are also many discussions as to why this is not an issue at the FDA or drug companies.

This is very simple: iodine supplements are simple and cheap and they work.

No huge markups, no regulations, no requirements.

The Wonder of Modern Childhood

2010-11-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

When I was in grade school there were three recesses per day - this was in the late 1960's. There were two 20-minute recess periods in the morning and afternoon and one long one as part of lunch. Lunch and recess were combined so if you ate quickly you had more time outside. We had a long-running baseball game that lasted literally for years.

In addition to recess there was also gym class - which often continued the same baseball game or involved other things like basketball. (This was in the days before soccer became a prevalent school sport.)

All-in-all you probably had about 70 minutes of recess each day. All the younger children also had recess - though on the playground on the other side of the building.

If you caused problems for a teacher you lost your privilege to go out - which meant that your baseball position would be lost to someone of lesser competence than you - and you would look stupid. Everyone behaved.

Today there's only 15 minutes or so of recess, if that.

Schools have taken recess away to make room for prepping children for state mandated achievement tests and increasing test scores - punishing children for their failure to deliver educationally. So if the door to door school experience, with transportation, takes up 8 hours of the day, that would be 45 minutes of recess per 24 hour day (3 x 15 minutes for 3 x 8 hour days).

Now it would seem that inmates at jails and prisons have more rights to exercise than this - an hour or two if they are well behaved. From what little I can find prisoners have specific rights to exercise and, if your not in a supermax prison lockdown or solitary confinement, rights to be outside for that exercise.

Even dogs, at least in Pennsylvania, have more rights to exercise outdoors than this.

Then there's the issue of lockdown.

And we're not talking about a prison here. We're talking about grade school - kids in kindergarten. An entire culture has developed to deal with this phenomena including issues on how to behave, how to plan for lockdown, how to drill for lockdown and now to have daycare lockdown. Does this make kids safer? Only if you don't properly punish societies bad elements. Seems like another adult failure here as well.

So, no recess and lockdown coupled with the 5-6 hours a day of TV and video game time kids have each day pretty much leaves their lives in ~~the~~ ~~same~~ a worse state as a prisoner. That's right, a life worse than a common criminal.

If that's not bad enough, let's now mix in forced prescription drug (ab)use. ADHD medications being the prime example. If little Johnny is fidgety after being bolted down in his chair 12-15 hours a day there must be a problem, right?

Prisoners cannot be medicated unless its to kill them or there is a court order.

So now we start prescribing ~~speed~~, er, ADHD medications to keep little Johnny quiet (boys receive this medication anywhere from 2 - 4.5 times more than girls).

Now you'll say how necessary these drugs are for little Johnny. I say bullshit. Little Johnny is probably suffering from merely being a child, from eating a remarkable amount of food that's not only really bad for him nutritionally but also known to trigger ADHD/ADD type reactions (white flour, dyes, various food additives), and from the fact that he lives in an environment where most other children are over-medicated.

Thirty years ago we were given the "your child needs ADD medication" stream of crap from a school. Fixing their diet does wonders. But, no one, including the school psychologist, makes any money off this.

In the 1960's no one was on these drugs. Discipline was used - sometimes harshly - to keep miss-behavers in line. The nuns where I went to grade school used to borrow my belt to take my classmates to the "janitors closet". Everyone learned respect and behaved and actual learning occurred. Discipline causes wonders: spare the rod, spoil the child. No one uses discipline these days - it makes them feel bad.

I wonder how bad they will feel when little Johnny grows up to be a meth addicted?

Do these ADHD drugs make little Johnny actually feel better or sit still? Perhaps. But they also can cause him all of these side effects (the complete list is too long for this post so I am providing a summary from this link): vomiting, nausea, pain, headache, weight loss and anorexia, and psychosis.

If you consider things like Prozac as a necessary medication for behavior as well you always have suicide as well to consider. (Or perhaps little Johnny has good reason to be depressed because of the crappy life the adults around him have provided... I wonder?)

Little Johnny is smarter than you think and he realizes that he can catch a buzz off these drugs as well just taking them for school. A buzz being more fun than sitting like a zombie. And, since a doctor has prescribed them, why they must be safe as well as fun, right?

So in summary we have little Johnny being treated far worse than many prisoners or dogs: locked down, no exercise or physical activity to relieve his stress, drugged up the ass to keep him quiet.

There should be no surprised, then, that little Johnny is

overweight or obese,
okay with living in "lockdown",
okay with being treated worse than a prisoner or dog,
cannot think clearly or make decisions for himself,
thinks drugs are the solution to his problems,
cannot function without being "on something", and
thinking this is how life is supposed to be.

This is today's modern childhood, right?

Well, at least there aren't any more nuns taking kiddies to the janitors closet. No more kiddies thinking for themselves... Getting to leave grade school hooked on serious drugs... Being treated worse than a dog or prisoner...

Modern mom and dad think this is fine because they can do thier job each day without little Johnny's behavior interfering - no school calling, no visits to the office.

No, sorry to say, the problem is not with the children. Its with the ADULTS.

Are you COMPLETELY INSANE?

Little Johnny will be fine if you let him alone and remain a child until its time for him to grow up.

This may not fit your busy adult schedule.

When you force little Johnny to be an adult when he's 2 or 3 so you can selfishly run your life your way you want to you'll have no end of trouble from little Johnny in later life.

Mark my words.

姥捨て: Anthropological Retirement

2010-11-10T14:06:00.000-05:00

Ubasute - Carrying the elderly off to die on the mountain.

As I mentioned in "Modern Motherhood: A Prison?" humanity has been around in a way we can identify for nearly two hundred thousand years.

In that time the elderly have always been the minority in terms of numbers. Subsistence societies require members that are able to hunt, gather, find resources, rear children and so forth. Elderly are not necessarily able to do any of these things, yet they were revered in many cultures. (Though there are some instances, such as ancient Japan, where 姥捨て (Ubasute) caused the elderly that could not be supported to be carried off to die of exposure.)

Going forward from today in the US we will have the population of the elderly as the largest segment in society by number with 20% of society being in this category by 2030. This is in part because the total fertility rate (TFR) needed to maintain the populate, 2.1 children per family, has not been maintained in the US and, for that matter, the world.

If the TFR were above 2.1 then the population as a whole would be expanding with an ever increasing number of children. This type of society can be thought of as a pyramid, representing the age distribution within the population, with a large base of younger people at the bottom and an every decreasing number of older people reaching toward the top of the pyramid. However, with a TFR below 2.1 the pyramid becomes inverted with a large base of elderly at the top and the pyramid diminishing down to a small number of younger people at the bottom.

The later case, with the large elderly population at the top of the inverted pyramid, represent a very dangerous new frontier for the US, and perhaps the world.

If you google "societal collapse" you will find a large collection of resource-based discussions on how societies collapse - typically from over-consumption of resources, natural disasters, social problems, and so forth.

What interests me is the growing elderly population and how it impacts the distribution of resources within the US economy. For example, the "unfunded Medicare and Social Security" debt is approximately 46 trillion dollars. This amount is the amount funds the government will be required to pay out to those who become eligible to receive it going forward from today. That is, as more people reach retirement age and the elderly become the largest single segment of society the government will need to find 46 trillion dollars to meet its obligations under Medicare and Social Security.

The federal government is not required to track this number, nor even be concerned with it, because the federal budgeting process only considers current obligations, i.e., things its required to pay for in any given fiscal year. Future obligations, such as borrowing money for anything whether its a highway or Medicare, are only represented as current debt obligations. So, unlike you and I the federal government basically can borrow whatever it needs with no thought about the future debt so long as its able to pay its current debt obligations, i.e., make the payments on the debt it already has.

From a financial perspective this is certainly a wonderful way to go. Imagine a perfect credit score that allowed you to borrow money at will. Further, imagine that no bank would ever look at the money you had already borrowed but instead just looked to see if you've been making your payments.

This means that you can borrow money to make payments on existing debt.

This means that you can literally borrow money until there is no more.

This means you are a criminal.

This is a modern day version of what's called Ponzi scheme - basically the same system except that instead of borrowing money from banks the process is represented as an investment, much like Bernie Madoff, where early "investors" are paid with the capital (as opposed to the inventments earnings) of future investors.

In the case of the federal government taxation is effectively substituted for borrowing (though technically the government "borrows" money by selling treasury bills the bills are backed by the good faith of the government which intern collects needed revenue from taxes).

So lets compare my future as a retiree today with an anthropological man who lived before 1930 (I chose this date because before this time there was no concept of "social security" or "medicare" and the government was not engaging in the same criminal activities as it is now).

In the past the only financial investment I could make to support myself in retirement would be some sort of financial annuity. This is a program where, during my productive years, I would essentially put money into a fund (like a 401(k)) that I would draw from during retirement. I could also be a veteran and receive payments from the government.

Today as a retiree the US government promises to pay me based on my past payments into the social security system. Periodically I get a mailing that says how much I paid and what I might expect my benefit to be at retirement. (I say might because its carefully worded not to promise to pay me anything.)

Unfortunately it seems that with debt obligations in social security of trillions of dollars and the segment of society collecting social security expanding to the point of being a largest as compared with those that might pay into the system there is virtually no chance the obligations can be met.

Be this as it may I could also make payments in to a private retirement account in an attempt to secure my retirement future. However, I believe that its very likely the government of the US will next focus on taking over these 401(k) type savings accounts.

Whether you believe this or not is up to you - but you might want to think carefully about who's going to be ahead of you (literally and figuratively) grabbing for money before your retirement (say government union members) and now much of that retirement pie is going to actually be left before its your turn.

So if you are a prudent investor like me what are you to do? You must pay your taxes (though some have successfully argued no - specific arguments here as PDF). You're not going to see much, if anything from the already bankrupt social security system. Medicare, if it continues to exist, will not be able to afford to treat anyone, and, if they do, it will be with the lowest possible cost treatments.

Without the resources to pay as implicitly promised in your retirement the government will essentially be committing Ubasute. (From WikiPedia) "the custom allegedly performed in Japan in the distant past, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die, either by dehydration, starvation, or exposure. It "is the subject of legend, but [...] does not seem ever to have been a common custom". The practice was most common during times of drought and famine, and was sometimes mandated by feudal officials."

That's right. The government has taken your resources and left you an obligation that it will never fulfill. Your treatment in old age will be like that of the legends of ancient Japan - you will left to die. Of course it won't be called that, but others, who are more deserving to live, will be ahead of you in the line for resources and, of course, you won't want to make any trouble.

So what way is there for you to escape this otherwise certain death?

In the past you basically worked until either you couldn't due to some physical illness or other infirmity or you died. Beyond that there was not "social safety network" to support you save for one: your family.

In the past a family was large and those members that did survive to old age where respected and taken care of by the younger family members.

These are things that, so far, the government cannot take from you. While they can take things and money, they cannot take your family.

This is why I believe it is important to make, as Anthropological Man did, the ultimate investment in family - because any other investment, particularly as times get more difficult, will be seized by the government in the name of the common good.

So what is the ultimate save retirement model: Anthropological Retirement.

1) Work hard until you die.

2) Make your real investment your offspring.

This is also one reason why I rail against Modern Mom in my previous posts - because the familial results of Modern Mom are a bankrupt familial investment. Modern Daughter will not have the resources or time to invest in Modern Mom once she becomes aged.

Modern Mom will be the victim of Ubasute.

If Modern Mom has money, the modern daughter will survive, but Modern Mom will not unless the daughter has been taught the value of a familial investment. If not, the money will go to drugs, parties, toys, and other things of no value to Modern Mom.

Anthropological Mom

2010-11-09T17:08:00.001-05:00

I married one thirty-something years ago - little did I know.

I chased her until she caught me - I was 19, she 18 - old by historical standards.

She married someone who was responsible and could support her and her children: she was a clever girl.

She wanted children: I was clueless on the matter (except for how they might be created).

She never worked outside the home unless absolutely necessary.

She always had her finger on the pulse of the whole family: kids, parents, life.

She bore the laughter, ridicule and chiding of the modern moms for being so foolish.

We were poor so she couldn't dress like the modern moms or have what they had.

But our kids had all the love and support they wanted when they needed it - and still do.

They watch how we did it... they saw the process. It wasn't always pretty.

My liberal family clucked over the misery I would suffer for being so stupid as to marry so young.

Did we struggle? Did we cry? Was it hard? Did it hurt? Did we give up ourselves for us?

What do you think?

Times have changed... decades passed - but we're still here.

Modern mom no longer zips by in that fancy work car.

Our modern mom friends are divorced a time or two: lost to time.

The drugs, parties and alcohol have taken their toll.

Their children are lost too - on their own in the wilderness - its so hard to be modern.

All their modern daughters have their own babies now.

Modern means you don't need a man for anything but fun.

But that's okay, the daughters are free. Their mommies told them they would be.

Free to live at home with modern mom so modern mom can watch the baby while they go to bars.

Are they really free?

The daddies are lost to drugs, to self, to their children - they are cast off.

The daddies are free too - it would seem. From responsibility, and love, and caring.

We find the lost children along the side of the road now; we help them if we can.

And our own children have children of their own now.

Some are modern, some are not...

Tears fill our eyes as hundreds of thousands years of humanity and true freedom are cast off...

For a few modern slogans.

Modern Motherhood: A Prsion?

The consequences of retirement with Modern Mom.

The Soul of a New Disease

2010-11-09T13:05:00.000-05:00

The Soul of a New ~~Machine~~ Disease

I read this article today in the morning WSJ. (BTW - I really like this publication because its well sourced and for the most part accurate. Of course the downside is it is about "evil capitalism" of which big Pharma is a large, unsavory part.) Its about hypertension - no, not the kind than can break your starship's hyperdrive - the kind that means you have high blood pressure.

You probably know what blood pressure is - its the thing they measure when they put that contraption around your arm at the doctors office and pump up the air until your arm feels like its going to fall off. You can think of blood pressure like the pressure in your garden hose - except its inside your arteries instead of the hose. If the water pressure gets too high the hose can fail - rupturing, leaking or ballooning out. These types of hose failure correspond to arterial diseases caused by hypertension like strokes and aneurysms.

Up until about 10-15 years ago or so 120/80 was considered the gold standard of "normal" blood pressure. However, that's been changing during the last decade. These days 120/80 is now considered prehypertensive. This means that if this is your blood pressure then its likely your blood pressure will start to increase over time - especially if you have risk factors: smoking, obesity, etc.

But I don't like how these sorts of measurements change - there's some troubling aspects to it.

First of all reading these accounts of what's going on with hypertension is like reading this articles namesake: "The Soul of a New Machine" - a book about how a new computer was born, including all the trials and tribulations. Some one creating something out of nothing...

Second, and even more subjectively, if my blood pressure was always 120/80, even in childhood as a non-obese, highly active athlete, was I still prehypertensive?

On the other hand you can argue that its just medical science getting better and better at making you healthy, or is it?

Let's see what the article claims. First off there's this: "About a third of U.S. adults have hypertension, which leads to one in six deaths in the U.S. But at least the same number, and possibly as many as 37%, are prehypertensive." What this is saying is that 1/3 of adults in the US have hypertension and another 1/3 or more have prehypertension, i.e., are likely to develop hypertension. The 1 in 6 deaths figure is designed scare you and to show us we're all on the highway to hell - 1/3 ok, 1/3 in the queue for hypertension, 1/3 about to croak - implying 1/2 of the 1/3 of hypertension suffers will die (of course, in truth everyone will die - but more on that later).

A quick check of the CDC 2007 statistics on death in the US (found here, page 5) cast some doubt on these numbers. You will see about 1/4 of all deaths are heart related and about 1/12 or so are strokes. Further down on page 22 you will see that more 1/2 of all deaths occur after age 70 and that your probability of dying is remains under 10% until age 70 (page 26).

Page #9

Interestingly on page 9 you see that cardiovascular and stroke deaths are steadily decreasing and have been since 1958. The only types of death increasing are Alzhiemers, Parkinsons, kidney failure, and hypertension. But hypertension deaths are about 100 times less likely the heart disease or stroke. (Note that this chart is logarithmic and hence increase by times 10 (10x) for each major tick on the left.)

Hypertension is its own cause of death, at least according to the CDC. Yet somehow its entwined with heart disease and stroke in the original article and study. How one type of actual death leads to another is unclear here. Particularly since hypertension death has been its own category for some time. I think this study need more study (see "Does my Medication Really Work").

The article claims that lifestyle changes are key for treating hypertension. This is no surprise based on this and other articles I have written here. Yet no one at the federal government bothers to include exercise or nutrition in their guidelines for treating people of all ages: vitamins are not even part of food stamps.

The other issue here is that most people die in their elder years and often suffer from multiple diseases - yet there is only one check box on the death certificate for "cause of death".

Digging a bit deeper we find a WSJ blog article that discusses this in more detail (written by Katherine Hobson). Now we start to see what's going on...

Hypertension was designated as its own separate "disease" classification in 2003 - its unclear exactly what that means in this context, but no matter. Later on, about 2006, it was shown that specific existing heart drugs can be used to treat the hypertension. This history goes back much further than 2006 - all the way to here (1999).

And then we get to the money shot:

"In August of this year, an article in the British Medical Journal noted that in the wake of the new classification, prehypertension is emerging as a potential goldmine for drug companies, and pointed out that many physicians who were members of the committee have disclosed financial relationships to industry.

One of the committee members named in the article is George Bakris, director of the Hypertension Center at the University of Chicago, who has disclosed consulting arrangements with several drug companies. Bakris, for his part, tells the Health Blog that the committee’s decision had nothing to do with drug-company interests, and was meant to educate and empower patients."

I suspect this is just in time, too. The big pharma gravy train of cholesterol drugs is winding down. Drugs are patented for specific things and the patents on treating cholesterol with drugs are running out. So its probably no surprise that a new, related use appears conveniently on the horizon just in time to save big Pharma from financial ruin.

But hold on one minute. Everyone dies. And everyone gets to die of exactly one cause as we saw in the link to death certificates.

So lets consider this point. Everyone dies and gets to die of one thing. Hence I will argue there will always be one or two major causes of death because bureaucrats like forms with a small number of choices that are easy to fill out - similarly for the CDC that analyzes the data. So we can always write articles about "the major cause of death".

Your heart and pulmonary system works continuously throughout your life - wouldn't you expect something like this to fail first? Sure bad behavior and risk factors can cause early failure - but that's also true of anything else, like a car. Drive your car down along the rocky creek-bed for a few miles and it too will fail prematurely.

Then there's the profit motive. No one makes any money getting people to move around and eat right. You make money selling people drugs that they can take for a long time that have some marginal benefit that do not produce nasty or fatal side effects.

I will also posit a new motive: the societal bandwagon phenomena. With such emphasis on "heart disease" and its friends like cholesterol (or like global warming) pretty soon everything looks like the same kind of problem because research and funding follow the government money and produce results to, not surprisingly, produce even more studies and more funding. Its the same as the police treating everyone like a drug dealing criminal (hands on the steering wheel) even if you're not - so much of the same thing year in and out colors the perspective.

There is clear and undisputed evidence that proper nutrition and exercise get you the most bang for the buck - but as I said, no one makes money from that.

Bottom line - hold on to your wallet because the drum beat of hypertension as the new big "killer" will start to wind up.

2010-11-08T22:35:00.000-05:00

Retiringly Sick: The Medicare Lifestle Choice?

2010-11-08T17:03:00.000-05:00

Human Lungs Kept Alive Outside A Body -
Can we still bill Medicare?

Like an old science fiction movie where evil aliens keep captured astronauts alive for food the health system in the US keeps the old geezers alive and sick - sick so that the huge maw of US Medicare machine has some fresh meat to digest each day.

A recent study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicate that, in 2008, the U.S. spent 16 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare. At the same time Americans between 55 and 64 years of age were between a third and a half more likely to suffer from one or more of the diseases. Americans in this age group were twice as likely to contract diabetes (12.07 percent vs. 5.88 percent), and the cancer rate was a third higher in the U.S. (9.57 percent opposed to 5.48 percent). The study appears in the current issue of the journal Demography (from the link).

The US turns out to spend about twice as much as other countries on health care per capita. And we're a third or half as likely to be sick. So, as a tax payer, boomer and some day supposed retiree what am I going to get for my Social Security tax dollars? A longer and more miserable life. More disease than other countries and more time to enjoy it.

My mom is in her eighties now and on Medicare. All her friends are too. I hear the stories every day: drug addiction, wildly wrong medication doses, wacked out surgery mistakes, and all the rest.

No one, and I mean no one, does a single thing related to making these seniors more healthy - its all about billing medicare.

The Brits get it (from the link): It seems the policy priority for the U.S. should be on changing lifestyle and behavioral factors, according to the researchers. Diabetes rates are expected to climb due to the aging population and obesity pandemic in America. This means healthcare expenditures will only continue to climb and the healthcare system will undergo significant stress to keep an increasingly sick population alive.

And all we do is throw more logs onto the fire (more taxes, more bureaucracy, more nonsense) - not caring what we're getting out of the fire.

I suppose it makes some people feel good.

I call it the Medicare Lifestyle Choice. Behave in an unhealthy manner for years, decades. Then retire to yet more unhealthy living. Once the good Medicare doctors find you your appointment book will be jammed with visits for every conceivable aliment: skin problems, urinary problems, obesity, cardiac problems, and on and on.

Another aspect I discovered while my father was dying of alzheimers was that everyone wants you do die cheaply - I suppose so there will be more for them. "Oh no," they said to my mother, "don't give him that treatment, its too expensive..." It was hard for her. Her entire life was devoted to taking care of him - where's the dignity?

Their idea was to simply stop giving him food and water.

I wouldn't do that to my dog.

Then there's getting to and from the doctor visits - supposedly treatment is available with no way to get it. Endless prescriptions which conflict, even kill people - and no one to monitor it.

Rather than promote exercise, eating right, and taking vitamins its so much easier to simply wish for an already broken health care system to magically repair all of your ills.

Someone once told me: "Shit in one hand and wish in the other - see which one fills up first."

I believe my mother remains healthy and alive is because she avoids the medications and treatments - they always prescribe them but in the end she refuses. Some innate self preservation instinct I guess - or maybe its the side effect brochure listing, among dry mouth and frequent urination, death.

As I've said here before: all of this is TOTALLY INSANE.

My brother-in-law's experience with his parents says that Medicare loves you until you hit the maximum expenditure cap - then bye-bye treatment. He was able to create astonishing results - one doctor had never seen a stage 4 colon cancer patient live so long - simply by working with basic nutrition and supplements. No doctor he talked too understood this or even bothered to ask about what he was doing.

Apparently around the world other countries and cultures do a much better job with much less money - though they don't live as long as us they are healthier while still alive. This gives them more life to enjoy and less ridiculous misery at the hands of "care givers".

The reason we don't need more health care is the care we are getting is not healthy.

Someone needs to stand up and say that all of the government bureaucracy is not delivering health care. Its busy feeding itself at your expense - financially, emotionally, literally.

I have said here before I do not want to retire and nor do I want to live in the maw of the machine as it consumes me for its benefit.

We from the government, we're here to help.

Modern Motherhood: A Prison?

2010-11-08T12:48:00.002-05:00

Erica Jong of "Fear of Flying" fame has written an article at the WSJ claiming, in part, that modern motherhood is a "prison" for women.

Before addressing this article I think its best to first discuss the antithesis of modern motherhood, i.e., what was there before there was "modern motherhood". I don't know what this might be called, perhaps anthropological motherhood; it probably doesn't matter. For our purposes here let's define "modern motherhood" to have started around 1960 and represent the modern feminist ideal. We'll define anthropological motherhood as everything that came before.

Anthropological motherhood (AM) has been the common practice within humanity for all of its existence, which is at least 190,000 years according to this. I take this to mean conceiving, bearing, and rearing children, maintaining the home, preparing the food, gathering, growing, making clothes and shelter, and handling the social family elements.

During this time virtually every element of our modern world from agriculture, to fire, to war, to electricity, to writing, to books and printing, animal husbandry, and on and on was created, perfected and practiced - clearly by both men and women. Humanity also suffered as well as prospered during this time - with wars, slavery, plagues and famine. Women and men both suffered the agony of loss and joy of success.

Life expectancy was very short for most of these millenia, it was often brutal as well, and between 1/3 to 1/2 of all children born died before adulthood.

In the last several thousand or so years there have been may great wars and conquerors documented: Alexander the Great, Rome, Napolean, WW I and II. There have been also great uprisings such as the French Revolution and great invasions such as the hordes that destroyed Rome.

Yet concept that women are suffering and repressed in or because of their AM role in society is historically very new, especially, I think, when compared to their function and contributions in society.

The hand that rocks the cradle.

Yet as far as I know the "uprising of women" to protest their role in all this during during these last millenia has been virtually non-existent.

I recall the 1960's with its Feminine Mystique and the "burn your bra" movement. Women were told that their lives were nothing but repression and slavery to men, to housework, and to children. Their very being as well sexuality were repressed by these needless obligations. They were told they must move forward and away from this past into a new modern age where women and men would and could be equal.

At the time this made it sound to me like the "prison of motherhood" was the past: anthropological motherhood, the "old way" of doing things. Mother at home tending the fire, skinning the goat, feeding the children, cowering in the corner, while the brutish husband beat her and the children, demeaned her sexually, and repressed her very existence.

Yet if you think about the progress of society from stone age to 1960 you realize that it would not be possible for man (literally) alone to achieve or to achieve against or without the cooperation of women. Every step of the way a woman was required to do what the man could not: bear and raise the children, convert raw materials into food, shelder and clothes, and so on.

This progress of society clearly benefited both sexes as well though in different ways. The cruel and difficult reality of childbirth and infant mortality, the production of food, of clothing, of shelter, all have improved or been taken on by others steadily over the millenia.

Yet the break in the 1960's seems to offer women no credit for this prior hand in the creation of modern society - that their role and sacrifice has been only at the alter their traditional, repressed role in life.

After the 1960's tremendous progress with feminism and equality has been made with regard to escaping this supposed past prison.

So what's this WSJ article about then?

Why does Erica Jong suggest that this modern motherhood model is now itself a prison?

Perhaps women never really "escaped" the first prison?

Or did modern motherhood somehow create a new type of prison?

The answer to these questions is what I hope to address next.

So let's now look at modern motherhood: work, support, raise the family, cook, transport, negotiate, attend, educate. Certainly all the anthropological motherhood elements as well as working and supporting the family - mostly in partnership with a spouse and often as not, alone. And, in the case discussed in the article, not just cooking, but making baby food; not just raising the children, but literally carrying the infant everywhere. The MM mom must rely on herself to support this lifestyle.

How is this different the modern mom different from the anthropological mom? Well, for one thing, it would appear to be a lot more work and to take a lot more time each day to accomplish. Of course there are modern appliances to wash clothes and dishes, but those appliances cost money to own and operate. Children no longer stay at home, they must be transported to daycare or school - requiring a care and the attendant costs. Mom must go to work - typically leaving the children with others - to pay for the cost of this supposed freedom.

If the children become ill, mom must make arrangements for their care away from daycare, must take much of the responsibility to manage the logistics of support.

While anthropological mom also worked, whether sewing, pulling sinew in her teeth, or milking the cow, she did her work at home with her children (perhaps alone, or with her own mother). Most of the work was manual and done without machines (running water only being part of her life in the last century or two). Mom supervised every detail of what her children did, ate, wore, said and learned. The man or husband was required to support the anthropological mom and her lifestyle - either by hunting, fishing, cutting wood, or, in the last several centuries, having a "job".

I was born in a rural area during the later period of AM so I saw it and lived in it first hand. My great grandmother, who was in her eighties when I was born lived in the real anthropological motherhood role - without running water, without machines, without phones or electricity - doing the hard manual work women had done for millenia in rural Europe.

I also saw the rise and development of modern motherhood over the last several decades - it began in my childhood and reached its zenith at the end of the last century.

Today I see still see both types of motherhood side by side in my own home. My spouse lives the traditional anthropological role and has for 35 years. My children to a degree live in both worlds - some more modern than others. In fact, my spouse prefers this role - but that's another story.

So what about the the Erica Jong prison?

From my experience its simply the fact that modern mom must do all the work traditionally done by a both a man and a woman in the anthropological realm.

The freedom of modern motherhood leaves the responsibility of support squarely on the shoulders of the modern mom (modern dad being an antique accessory that's no longer required).

Erica Jong merely points out that this added responsibility of support is significant additional work for the woman - above and beyond the difficult and complex role of bearing and raising a child - work that women in society have taken away from men in their quest for equality. (Her own role in the creation of this new modern way yet another separate topic.)

She further points out that, due to a variety of emotional and guilt issues associated with the past rearing of children during the development of modern motherhood in society there is a backlash against the freedom modern motherhood represents. (A backlash in the sense that "my mom" went off to fulfill herself during "my childhood" so I will hover over my child so that my child does not feel like I did as a child - plug your own emotional context in here.) Hence, to really be a modern mom you must take on making baby food, making clothes, carrying the infant on your body everywhere, sleeping with the baby, even taking on debt - right along with everything else.

So yes, this does sound like a prison. A self made and perhaps inescapable one at that.

The next question is why?

(Continued with Anthprological Mom.)

Bioweapons in your Sinuses?

2010-11-07T09:21:00.000-05:00

I wrote this a while back about sinus flushing. I want to elaborate a bit more here.

Your sinuses are basically hollowed out, mucus lined structures inside your head. Their basic anatomy is as follows (from this): There are four pairs of paranasal sinuses, the frontal sinuses are located above the eyes, in the forehead bone. The maxillary sinuses (antra of Highmore) are located in the cheekbones, under the eyes. The ethmoid sinuses, also called ethmoid labyrinth are located between the eyes and the nose. The sphenoid sinuses are located in the center of the skull, behind the nose and the eyes.

The paranasal sinuses are hollow, air-filled cavities that are lined by a mucous membrane. The ethmoid and maxillary sinuses are present at birth. The frontal sinus develops about the second year of life and the sphenoid about the third year. Sometimes, the frontal sinuses do not develop.

The sinuses have small orifices (ostia) that open into recesses in the nasal cavities called meati. The meati are covered by the turbinates (also called conchae) which consist of bony shelves surrounded by erectile soft tissue. There are three turbinates and three corresponding meati in each nasal cavity (superior, middle and inferior).

This is the classic medical/anatomical stuff.

Then there is the not-so-common common sense stuff.

Sinuses are relatively dark, moist, and warm - around body temperature I would imagine but perhaps a bit cooler due to the air flow. Bacteria like to grow in this type of environment. This makes your sinuses like a bioreactor - the same kind of system as is used to grow things like Anthrax for bioweapons.

Normally the mucus membranes and cilia (tiny hairs) work to push invading bacteria, viruses and pollutants like dust and dirt out of your nose. Of course, the better your immune system the better this will work at keeping you free from colds and other illnesses that try and enter your body through these mucus membranes.

Your environment, particularly cold temperatures (but also things like swimming, exercise, etc.), can cause your sinuses to produce extra mucus thereby flushing themselves out. Certain foods like hot peppers can also cause your sinuses to flush out as well through extra mucus.

Your sinuses are also not readily accessible. Unlike, say your outer ear canal, if you get an infection in your sinuses they are not directly accessible, e.g., I can easily put something like alcohol into my ear to clear the infection. Your sinuses can also have physical blockages like polyps - which grow to block the sinus passages. The only real means for them to clear themselves is via mucus and cilia.

If you are healthy, your sinuses will naturally clear on their own and you won't suffer sinus infections.

But this is not always the case, is it?

Lets think about what happens when you get a cold as an example. A cold makes your sinuses irritated and swollen and they expand in size. When this happens the space for air and mucus flow within your sinuses is reduced. Secondly, your sinuses produce excess mucus. When this is combined with a reduced area inside your sinuses and reduced mucus flow you have an ideal environment in which bacteria will grow.

I also believe the infection is carried in the mucus - bacteria collect in your sinuses infecting them as well as the surrounding mucus - yielding "infected mucus". More on this in a bit...

You will find that many doctors and websites believe that swollen sinuses is the only thing causing the congestion - but I disagree.

When I start to get a cold or flu the first thing I notice is this increase in mucus. Usually this means that it runs down the back of my throat and makes my throat "scratchy" - almost like a sore throat but not quite. I can also tell this because I have a frequent urge to "clear" my throat as well.

If you can clear your sinuses, such as with sinus flushing, at this point, I have found that my sinuses never really get infected. They try, but if I flush them good 2 - 3 times a day (and, critically, always before bed) all I get is the cold - never a sinus infection.

Why is this? As far as I can see what is happening is that though mucus builds up and your sinuses swell the flushing makes the sinus environment very poor for bacteria. Since I use a peroxide solution I think that this basically kills off all the bacteria and viruses in my sinuses - hence no problems beyond the cold or flu itself.

(I have also flushed things out of my sinuses that are clearly not part of me. Basically gross chunks of infected mucus - strangely colored and chunky. Clearly these are not part of my sinuses.)

But what if you don't flush and, say, use antibiotics instead? First of all I think this is a problem because while the antibiotics might kill an infection in the sinus membranes, they really cannot effect things growing in the mucus itself (the mucus has no blood flow to bring the antibiotics to it). Since antibiotics are not 100% effective they kill the wimpy bacteria and leave the really virulent, nasty bacteria unharmed.

This is why I think sinus decongestants and antibiotics make your sinuses a bioreactor. You create a place where bacteria like to grow. You feed them, you keep them warm. Then periodically you poison the weak ones with antibiotics (the four or five courses of progressively stronger antibiotics you get over a couple of months with a bad sinus infection).

What do you think is left after this? Only the antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Which you then sneeze out onto others.

Antibiotics don't affect viruses (unless they kill their host bacteria) - so there is no point in prescribing them for colds (though many doctors do). My views on antibiotics are here. You can just imagine what I think of using them for something unnecessary like a cold.

Sinus decongestants are also bad because they dry out your sinuses. This subjects them to "cracking" - tiny open cracks in the surface - where bacteria in the mucus can enter the sinuses. The nasty infected mucus remains in place in your sinuses. To me conflicts with the idea that swollen sinuses are the only cause of congestion.

Personally I never use decongestants.

If infected mucus is allowed to drain down the back of your throat you can end up with bronchitis or pneumonia. (I've found that a quick test for this is to simply kneel down and put your head on the floor by bending over. If there's mucus running down the back of your throat it will stop because its pulled by gravity back up into your head.)

Before I discovered all this I used to suffer every year. First I'd get the cold or flu, then I'd get a sinus problem, then I'd wake up with a cough, then I'd suffer with a sinus infection for weeks. This would happen at least twice a year.

My policy now is that at the first sign of that "scratchy" throat or a stuffy nose I flush - 2 - 3 times per day and always before bed time. Since implementing this I have not had a single cough, sinus infection, or sore throat. I first wrote about this five years ago and its still working. Since then

I still get colds but they don't really do much,

I spend zero money on "over the counter" decongestants, Zicam, and that sort of thing,

I don't go to the doctor, and

I have not missed a day of work with a "cold" or the "flu".

I believe that flushing also mitigates flu symptoms to a large degree (I distinguish flu from colds because the mucus for flu is yellow. For colds its clear or, if it builds up or gets infected, green.) An important benefit of flushing for flu is the yellow mucus doesn't run down into your lungs.

So I think that though you sinuses swell with a cold or flu the real culprit is "infected mucus". I am sure that doctors will disagree with me. But all I can tell is you is that the theory works out in practice. Perhaps my assignment of cause is wrong - but it works. I am living proof.

I think that modern medical science is creating a severe problem in your sinuses with antibiotics and decongestants by making your sinuses into a weapons-grade bioreactor where incurable sinus infecting bacteria are grown and spread to others.

32 Hours...

2010-11-05T17:39:00.000-04:00

This article at the WSJ tells us that kids spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of the television:

"Preschoolers aged 2 to 5 spend an average of more than 32 hours in front of a TV screen each week, according to Nielsen. "

This is a few hours less than the average work week in the UK, Sweden, and various other European countries.

Our old friend Disney, according to the article, did a study of some 2,200 parents. They asked them what they most wanted for their kids.

The answer: "to be happy" - a big shift from five or 10 years ago when academic and cognitive skills topped parents' list.

Well, you can bet Disney will be working on fixing up their programming to remove any nasty competition or learning elements so that those 32 hours can be spent feeling happy.

In most professions it takes at least 10,000 hours to reach proficiency at something: as in practicing and playing 10,000 hours of music or baseball. With that much TV these kiddies will be professional TV watchers in a mere six years. That's right, they're on track to have 10,000 hours of TV in by, say, eight years old (or maybe seven depending on when mom and dad figure out that little Jr. will not bother them when the TV is on).

Now, informally I would say that at least fourteen minutes of each of those hours is filled with commercials. This is, of course, what Disney really cares about. The content of the programs merely being glue to hold little Jr down while the commercials play.

From yet another perspective: given 180 days of school in an "average" school year and a generously average 6.5 hour school day (let's assume that lunch, ~~recess~~ - that no longer exists, hall time, study hall, etc. are also educational time) that's almost 10 years of school - a sophomore in high school.

So these kiddies will have literally a lifetime of education in "being happy" by the time they are eight.

So, if both mommy and daddy work we can assume at least 9 hours in daycare. Add four or five hours of TV time to that and what to you get?

I don't know? Abandonment? No mommy or daddy for 13 or 14 hours day.

At least in the olden days when kids worked in a field picking cotton they got to at least work with their parents.

Apparently these kids don't deserve even that much.

In case you haven't figured this out yet - this is TOTALLY INSANE.

Why would you have kids if you never saw them?

And don't forget, we're talking 2 to 5 year old's here.

Oh, and for good measure none of the Disney programs targeted at this group will have villains or conflict. This seems like a good recipe for trouble later in life when real conflict and villains appear.

Absolutely no social skills to deal with them.

In the olden days everyone on the playground had to get along. Its how you learned social skills. Watching conflict-free nonsense TV programs teaches you nothing about social skills.

No, to me this is childhood abandonment. Read the wikipedia definition if you don't agree.

You will argue that the formal definition of childhood abandonment with "relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting it."

So let's be clear - if the parent is willing to cede the upbringing of a toddler to small child to others for 13 or 14 hours a day they will somehow recover that lost time later in life? They intend what? To cut the kids TV time later in life and spend time loving him?

No, the fact is that the parents will cede more and more of the time they should be spending with their child to others as the child gets older: school, TV, maybe sports.

And it only gets worse as the kids get older. Nearly 7 hours a day (including internet) with media entertainment per day after age 8.

Apparently by the time your are an adult, say 18, you start spending less time in front of the TV but by then its too late.

You've already lost your imagination, your ability to play, time to gain real social skill, and you've ceded creativity to others.

You've already been emotionally abandon by your family.

You may think I'm nuts but there is a tremendous amount of indirect evidence to support this:

Consider the increase in anti-depressant usage is young adults, teens and even small children.

Consider the ever decreasing age of drug use.

Consider obesity.

Consider...

Mandated Child Torture

2010-11-05T11:07:00.000-04:00

Today we have a post from Emma Weylin.

As you will see Emma can write quite well - but that was not always the case.

As Emma struggled in her early youth the the modern notion of learning to read, so now does her daughter. This reflects my own experience with "Title 1" reading when my own children were in school - and my experience was some 25 years ago.

But let's let Emma tell her story in her own words:

State Mandated Torture of Children?
Or School Mandated Torture to meet criteria set by the No Child Left Behind Legislation?

Evidence:

State Mandated Reading assessment for all children.

Child with verifiable anxiety disorder and learning disabilities.

Procedure:

Force child to participate in an assessment they know they will fail.

Here’s my story:

My eight-year-old has dyslexia and an anxiety disorder. This is a problem we’ve been working with the cyber school for the last two years. They know her problems. They understand she has special needs and are more than willing to accommodate them, even to the point of special private testing for the State Tests in March where what she knows gets thrown into a pool of statistical numbers for the government to assess if the school is performing adequately or not. (We won’t say that the state mandated curriculum teaches children to write and speak improper English and they think they can accurately assess what she’s learning or not learning, but that’s a subject for another post.)

So this “reading” assessment comes up. The first thing they do is schedule my time for me. Now remember this is a cyber school. The children are expected to participate in one pre-scheduled class a day. Fine, no problem, so the first strike against them with this event is an email notice that my child MUST attended a specific online class on a specific day and time only two days before the event. I have no problem with them calling me and scheduling as they have done in the past. I do have a problem with them deciding what I am going to do with my personal time above what I “agreed to” when signing my children up for this “school”.

Now, I was told my child cannot skip the assessment because it is used to determine the child’s reading level. I was forced into a meeting with the school at the beginning of the school year. I say forced because they called on a Friday just before everyone leaves the office for the weekend and demand I show up on Monday so that my child can partake in another assessment at their office. I’d dealt with the school the previous year about my child’s issues. I was told she has ODD or Oppositional Defiance Disorder. I told the school’s psychologist she was full of crap. My child had done everything the teacher asked her to do except read. The reason for this meeting last year was to assess the child’s ability to read at grade level. I told them she wasn’t going to read for the teacher and I told them why. The specific demand placed on my child was to read what she could. There wasn’t anything in those papers she could read. I know. I was in the room looking at the papers when she was asked to read them. The result was the child not reading and the psychologist (who had spent no time with my child) labeling her with ODD. This came after this psychologist attacked my child and told her (remember she has an anxiety disorder) that both I and her father were disappointed in her for not doing what the teacher told her to do. Thankfully my child isn’t stupid, though she has her disabilities. Before we left that morning I told my child that no matter how well or bad she did on the assessment it was ok as long as she was respectful of her teacher and did what she was told to the best of her ability. This quickly lead my child to determine the psychologist was lying to her and therefore not trustworthy. Way to help a child struggling to read!

Back to the main focus of this topic.

So we have this reading assessment that MUST be done to determine her reading level. My child is already enrolled in their Title 1 Reading and Math Programs as per the “No Child Left Behind” act. She meets with her special reading and math teacher once a week, which is an hour drive up to the office, and hour at the office and an hour back. The school already knows my child’s reading ability. The school knows about her anxiety disorder, especially when it comes to interacting with adults she’s never met before online or in their office. The school has witnessed firsthand the kind of stress my child is under in specific situations. So what do they do? They force her to take an assessment with a teacher she has not met in an online class room to read words above her reading level. This is done during a week in which her academic advisor and the principal are out so there is no way for us to talk with the only seeming rational people in the building about what my child is going to have to endure because of State Mandated Tests that will happen in March.

My child tried her best and read the few words she knew all while the teacher insisted (badgered her) she try to sound out words. Now, if this woman had known my child, she would know that when she gets confused or overwhelmed she “shuts down” and no progress is made. Instead, since this woman doesn’t know the child, she kept insisting the child keep trying to sound out words all while my child is in near hysterics because what she sees on the page looks like gibberish. FYI: the more stress a dyslexic experiences the more jumbled letters and numbers become. This goes on for fifteen minutes while the assessment is only supposed to take 2.

The result?

An assessment the school cannot use and would use (if they could have gotten an accurate assessment of the child) to place her in the Title 1 program of which she is already enrolled.

An anxiety attack on the part of my child.

Conclusion:

The child is seen at the school weekly to do one on one lessons with her Title 1 reading teacher. A woman my child has built a trusting relationship with over the last few months of school. Every other assessment is allowed to be administered by this woman in person. The child is up there weekly and will perform to the best of her ability for her.   Why was this changed midstream? I can only make guesses, but my current hypothesis is that the “brains” of the operation we gone so the whole system collapsed.

The psychologist didn’t want me labeling my child with something as horrific (I am assuming) as being dyslexic so that she could label with her with a disorder of her own choosing instead of using the symptoms the child exhibits.

Later I find out this school psychologist has her own “practice” outside of the school setting and “offered” we take our child there for an assessment.

Needless to say it didn’t happen. We found our own doctor who tells us the child has an anxiety disorder (which by surprise runs on both sides of the family!)

All of this in the name of the No Child Left Behind act which, according to what I have witnessed in my children’s class rooms, is not working. Those who excel get bored and frustrated easily while those who are confused and don’t understand don’t get the critical one on one time they need. Cyber School alleviates some of this as I am the one responsible for making sure they learn their lessons. There is an absurd focus on making sure every child know they are doing a WONDFUL JOB! Even if they missed every single question the teacher asks.

To be fair, I don’t really care what kinds of tests they issue and demand my youngest child take. She is capable and above grade level in almost all of her assessments.   She is your classic over achiever. The usual methods of school apply to her and she is learning the concepts with ease.

Still, in researching types of schooling I find Cyber School is the best. I don’t have to come up with lesson plans or have to try to figure out the convoluted wording of what the State requires a child to know, and I have control over what they are learning from compulsive hand washing to who the first president was. (Guess which one I emphasize.) The school supplies free material which is a wonderful bonus for family who want a better education but cannot afford other methods. The curriculum is advanced so if you have a child who does excel they aren’t too bored during class time, and once their school work for the day is complete they can get up and be a kid without being labeled with hyper activity. Public and private “brick and mortar” schools lack educational materials and purchase new metal detectors every few years to keep the children “safe.” Private schools have their own agenda and push their own concepts onto children and family. A true homeschooler who does daily lesson plans still has to deal with State crap and will be fined if they aren’t following their specified curriculum AND have their child dumped in a dangerous, drug infested school environment if they fail to show their child has “standard” knowledge for grade level. All around the education system sucks. Your best bet is to keep your children at home and participate in the new trend of Cyber Schools. You still have to deal with the crap, but the child has a better education and the unexpected side effect of being well behaved and respectful of adults and other authority figures.

Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_anxiety_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/pennsylvania_system_of_school_assessment_%28pssa%29/8757

We're All "On Drugs" Now...

2010-11-04T12:16:00.000-04:00

I came upon this article about a New Castle, PA couple that had their new-born child taken away because the woman failed an in-hospital drug test for opiates. (A Pennsylvania state law allows the hospital to drug test the maternal blood for the purpose of "protecting children.")

The woman's infant was taken away for five days.

The woman, however, was not a drug user. Not at all.

Her real crime? Eating rolls with poppy seeds.

That's right, eating food you buy at the local grocery store can cause you to have your child taken away. A Pennsylvania House Bill, 2760, that passed three years earlier allows hospitals to test a mother's blood to protect newborns - unfortunately no one bothered to consider that food might cause a false positive.

So I started to wonder about this. I had heard lots of "urban legend" type stuff about things like this. So I did a little research.

First off, in the case of poppy seeds its not the poppy seed itself that causes the problem. This is kind of interesting. The "opium poppy' is Papaver Somniferum and the seeds themselves contain no alkaloids (what opium and heroin are made of). So it makes sense that the seeds are used commercially for poppy seed bagels and other poppy seed treats like cakes.

The problem is that in processing the seeds the sap of the plant, which does contain the alkaloids, can end up on or coating the seeds - which is what can cause the false positive. Apparently in this case that's what happened. The levels of opioid tests that trigger positive have increased in the last 12 years or so but even still there can be problems as seen with this case.

So what about other types of false positives? I tracked down this website: PassYourDrugTest.com. There is a page there with a lot of information.

It turns out that each type of test, THC, opioids, etc., has long list of problematic, every day substances which can make you an instant criminal. The lists are quite long and I am only going to summarize the results here:

The worst offenders for Amphetamines and Ecstacy tests are things like Nyquil, various decongestants like Dimetapp, Contact, and Allerest.

For THC Advil, Nupren, and Motrin can cause false positives.

For opiate tests, our friend the poppy seed, along with any prescription pain killer, Dextromethorphan, or Nyquil.

For cocaine tests, watch out for Amoxicilin and tonic water.

There is also an extensive set of diseases that can cause false positive tests as well - primarily those of the kidney's and liver.

Okay, so let's say this can happen. How often does it happen?

It turns out there are two perspectives. That of the those providing the test and that of those falsely accused. From the link:

"Statistics vary widely on the likelihood of false positives, depending on the test and the lab. Civil libertarians say 5 percent is a conservative estimate. Medical experts acknowledge that false positives aren’t impossible. But they say urinalysis, the most common means of drug testing, has improved. The Iowa Methodist Medical Center laboratory’s testing is more than 99 percent reliable..."

So there's a margin of at least 4%.

But what does this mean? Well, let's say there's a police check point on the way home from the bar.

If your drunk you're probably in trouble. But potentially for more than just a DUI. What's the chance you consumed at least one of the substances that can cause a false positive that I listed above?

In researching this I also came upon something else. DUI checkpoints, for the most part, are not for DUIs. They are to catch other offenses - bench warrants, outstanding citations, and so forth. The ratio is about 11 non-DUI arrests for each DUI arrest.

In Pennsylvania in 2009 there were about 17,000 DUI arrests made by state troopers. While alcohol fatalities decreased from 161 the year before to 141, the number of drug related arrests at the point of the DUI stop went from 693 to 1,118.

The good news is that all of this says that your likelihood of getting a false positive drug arrest for something like a police checkpoint is probably pretty low: say 1 in 17 from the above statistics with, say, a 5% chance of a false positive on top of that, so maybe 50 people would become potential victims of a false positive test.

I see trouble, though, if all hospitals start checking everyone's blood. This will vastly increase the total number of tests, driving up the false positive percentage rate.

I guess all this gives us one less reason to go to the doctor.

Though I do have one, funny, anecdotal story... I guy I knew was on dialysis and did a lot of drugs - pretty much whatever he could get has hands on as well as alcohol. One night he hit a check point on the way home - and they took his blood.

A few weeks later he got his summons and headed down to the court house for what he thought would be a lot of trouble. When he got there they sent him home - no charges.

All we can figure was that his blood chemistry was so messed up no prosecutor in his right mind was going to even try and explain the test results to a judge.