Kudos to Obama

I am not a big fan of Presidents in general, believing that the Giant Amoeba we call the "U.S. Government" is where the power really is, but I have to give Obama credit for doing what he individually can to move our country from one with about the same number of homicides per year as Colombia and Russia, to one with laws more like other industrialized nations.  Without a big Special Report, the Obama administration quietly announced two new executive actions on gun control Thursday morning.

The first prevents those who are not eligible to purchase a gun (felons, for example) from registering firearms in a corporation's name.  Now, anyone associated with the corporation must undergo a background check.  Small progress, but I'll take it.

The second is a no-brainer.  It prevents anyone from bringing back into the U.S. military-grade weapons that have been given to U.S. allies (like the rebels in Syria).  We may not be able to protect Syrian citizens, but these guns won't be used to kill American kids.  

A majority of Americans are in favor of expanded background checks, and it will be interesting to see whether those in Congress who voted against any kind of sensible gun policy will be re-elected.

"The president's actions are definitely a good step toward keeping public attention that Congress hasn't acted yet," Hatalsky said. "They've done everything they can do without Congress, and the things that they can still do are pretty small."

She added that continuing incidents of gun violence also promise to keep the issue alive in the months to come, as Congress reconvenes.  The most recent, of course, being the teens who shot and killed the Australian baseball player. "With a motive that's both chilling and simple – to break up the boredom of an Oklahoma summer – three teenagers randomly targeted an Australian collegiate baseball player who was attending school in the U.S. and killed him for fun, prosecutors said Tuesday as they charged two of the boys with murder."   

A Little Perspective, Please

I have a friend who is convinced that this country is going down the toilet.  She believes that all parents are incompetent and are raising children who won't be able to live in society.  She thinks the economy will never improve, that college graduates can't get jobs, that divorce is out of control, and on and on and on.  It's depressing to try to have a conversation with her because she is so negative.  So when I saw this article, the words leaped off the page at me.  This is from an article published on Cracked.com.

"In general, it's easier to be negative.  It's easier for us as a generation, because to admit that the world isn't that bad right now would be to admit that we have it easier than our grandparents did and that the world thus has the right to expect more from us.  But as much as we like to joke about the sorry state of the world, the facts really don't back us up.  Here are four myths that the facts just don't back up." 

"Everything Is So Expensive."

The Complaint:

"The corporations and the government have us all living like slaves. I can back it up with numbers, too -- in 1950 you could buy a brand new nine-room brick home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for the whopping sum of $11,500. A decent family car was about $500, and the gas for it was about 25 cents a gallon. A large loaf of bread cost under 15 cents. A large coffee was a nickel, with a free refill. I could go on and on. But now between greedy corporations and the government confiscating our income with sky-high taxes, you have to work two jobs just to survive."

The Reality:

Let's start with the obvious: A low-end job in the service industry paid a dollar an hour in 1950. A fancy job in insurance or real estate? A buck-fifty an hour. You'd take home $50 a week after taxes. So please don't talk about the good old days of 50-cent steaks when people were getting paid what would now be Tooth Fairy money.

So how does this all average out, once you account for income? We don't have to guess. Punch anything into the cost of living calculator -- the one that uses the exact same formula that the government uses to decide things like tax rates -- and you'll see that the prices of most things have stayed pretty constant over the years. High-end manufactured goods have gotten cheaper. Much cheaper, as manufacturing costs drop.

In 1954, the cost of a high-end Westinghouse color TV, with a massive 15-inch screen, was $1,295. No, not adjusted for inflation. That was the actual price at the time -- half of the yearly income for some families. Everybody writes this off as if it's a constant of the universe ("of course new technology gets exponentially better and cheaper with time!") instead counting it among the benefits of the modern system. Why? This economic system has resulted in handheld devices that can access all the information in the town library, at a price affordable to the working man, and all we can do is complain about the cost of unlimited data plans?

And the golden age of the $500 car... how many of you come from families with two cars? Statistically it's most of you, and far more than what it would have been in 1960, when there were half as many cars on a per-capita basis in the U.S. (it averaged about one car per household -- so if you had two, someone else had none).

And taxes? Again, the numbers don't lie -- in the U.S. taxes are the lowest they've been since 1950. The government even threw you an extra two percent reduction in payroll tax as a cherry on top. The U.S. has the second-lowest taxes among developed countries.

Yes, we're going through a worldwide downturn and yes, a bunch of you are unemployed. Those of you who are reading this at a homeless shelter, we're not saying it's all in your head. But on the whole we could use a little perspective.

"People Are Getting Stupider."

The Complaint:

"Two words: 'Jersey Shore.' People are getting stupider by the minute, and the stupid people are breeding faster than the smart people. They watch mindless reality shows, and all anybody cares about is celebrity gossip and bullshit. Teenagers are obsessed with Twitter and video games and have probably never read a book."

The Reality:

IQ scores have risen 24 points since 1914. And on top of that, you have to account for the Flynn effect, discovered by James R. Flynn, which is a way of compensating for increased education (but more on that in a moment). The intelligence quotient is set up in such a way that an average score is 100. So, what do you do if people keep getting higher and higher scores, to the point where 100 is no longer the average? You rejigger the way scores are calculated so that it goes back down to 100.

So, while IQ scores may appear to be similar from one generation to the next, the scores have to be constantly adjusted back down to 100 because children are doing better and better on the test. If you scored 100 on a test back in the day, you might actually be considered slightly mentally challenged now.

Meanwhile, the quality of education has been going up for the past 40 years, with children scoring higher in reading and mathematics. That's not just in the U.S. -- it's worldwide. Graduation rates, too, are on an upward trend. So by the sheer numbers, we are actively creating useful members of society at an increasing rate. The world collectively is getting smarter. If you treat the combined mass of human knowledge as a resource for the future (and you should), then we're drowning in riches like Scrooge McDuck.

It seems like part of the negative perception is from trying to judge the intelligence of a people by their pop culture. But remember that most people spend their whole day at work or school thinking and making decisions and doing complex troubleshooting -- they treat entertainment as the break from all that.

And if you think that it's a sad sign of the times that Jackass 3D made a ton of money at the box office, hop in your time machine and go back 80 years. You'll find audiences howling with laughter at the Three Stooges.

"All This Processed Food Is Killing Us."

The Complaint:

"Just look at a label. High-fructose corn syrup? 'Phenylketonurics'? Hell, a simple chicken dinner may have 36 ingredients. Who knows what chemical preservative bullshit we eat in an average day? What happened to old-time family meals, when a roast was just a roast, and a loaf of bread just had flour and yeast and other natural ingredients?"

The Reality:

Think those ingredients in your TV dinner are scary? Prior to 1966, there was no ingredient labeling of prepared foods. You bought a tin of meat-and-potato stew, and what was in it was left to the goodwill of the manufacturer, who may have had to fatten profits by feeding people elk hooves and sawdust. You simply didn't know what you were eating.

The ingredient and nutrition labeling acts changed all that. Sure, food manufacturers can still try to lie and put bug shit and viruses in your food, but if caught, they get to pull all of their product off the shelf and dump it, at their own expense. And all those scary chemicals on the ingredients list? Many of those are preservatives. Meant to preserve the food. So it isn't rotten when you eat it.

Also, let's not forget that the refrigerator and freezer are both recent inventions -- go back to the Great Depression or earlier and you find that refrigerators cost more than a car. So keeping food cold or preserved was a crapshoot, with listeria, botulism and the shits acting as the dessert to granny's wholesome down-home country meal.

Oh, and feel free to browse through some recipes from the 1950s -- savor the Baked Corn Chex 'N' Cheese Custard and Spam fritters.

Again, we're not saying there isn't some gross stuff in your food -- there totally is and we have examined it in some detail -- just as we weren't saying that there are no stupid people in the world in our first entry up there.

All we're saying is that we're not at the disastrous nadir of some long downward trend.

"Crime Is Out of Control.”

The Complaint:

"A member of Congress gets gunned down in yet another mass shooting. You can't turn on the news for five seconds without hearing of a child being abducted and mutilated, or a massive gang war along the Mexican border. Every city in America has one section that you wouldn't dare drive through at night. Now compare that to the 1950s, when nobody even locked their doors at night. What changed?"

The Reality:

There absolutely was a huge crime wave in the 1980s, thanks to the crack epidemic (this graph shows the spike in murders in L.A., for instance). But the numbers do not lie: Crime, property crime, theft and burglary have actually been dropping since about 1993. Dropping and dropping, below even where we were before drug violence skewed the stats upward.

If you look at the homicide rate per 100,000 people, which is one of the only crime stats reliably tracked through the 1900s and into today, you can see that not only is it the lowest since the 1950s, but that it's quite a lot lower than it was in the 1970s and even the 1930s. (And it's a scaling formula, meaning it isn't skewed by population.) Now why would the crime rate be so high in the 1930s?

When the economy is bad, people get desperate, and desperate people will do whatever they can to survive, right? And here we sit, 80 years later, with the worst economy since the Great Depression. How's the crime rate faring now? It's lower than it was before the recession. A few days ago, the FBI published its statistics for the first half of 2010, which show that crime has dropped further still.

What has not dropped is the number of TV shows and news features about crime, and newspapers' need to report on violence whenever it occurs. Therefore, the only thing about crime that seems to be going up is the perception of how bad it really is.

So, by the sheer numbers, you would be just as safe keeping your doors unlocked at night as your grandparents were back in "the good old days."

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s._p2.html#ixzz2dCDRKTsF

New Parenting Method

I know many people want to stay current with the latest parenting trends -- attachment parenting, minimalist parenting, Tiger Mother parenting, et al. Well, I've stumbled upon a new technique that will guarantee your child grows up to be an exemplary student and citizen. It's called CTFD, which stands for "Calm The F*ck Down." And that's not a message to give your kids. It's for you.

Using CTFD assures you that -- whichever way you choose to parent -- your child will be fine (as long as you don't abuse them, of course). To see it in action, here are some sample parenting scenarios and how CTFD can be employed: 

Worried your friend's child has mastered the alphabet quicker than your child? Calm the f*ck down.

Scared you're not imparting the wisdom your child will need to survive in school and beyond? Calm the f*ck down.

Concerned that you're not the type of parent you thought you'd be? Calm the f*ck down.

Upset that your child doesn't show interest in certain areas of learning? Calm the f*ck down.

Stressed that your child exhibits behavior in public you find embarrassing? Calm the f*ck down.

Yes, using the CTFD method, you'll find the pressure lifted and realize your child loves you no matter what, even if they've yet to master the alphabet. You'll also learn that whether or not you're the best parent in the world, as long as you love your child, they'll think you are and that's what matters. Plus, CTFD makes you immune to those that prey upon the fears of new parents, like pseudoscientists and parenting authors.

To use CTFD, just follow these simple steps:

Calm the f*ck down.

There is no second step.

So, ignore all those other parenting trends and stick to CTFD. You'll be glad you did and so will your kid.

This post originally appeared -- without the asterisks -- on TheDaddyComplex.com.

Success is so sweet!

Success is sweet!  A friend of my grandson's is staying with us until he finds a job and can get his own place to live.  When we typed up his resume, I found out that while he was living in New Mexico he didn't graduate from high school.  Well! Anyone in my family can tell you that news like that just kicks me into high gear.  

I found that the library in Chandler offered GED tutoring and that the test was going to be given on August 24th.  He went to the library and got all the info, he registered online, and I loaned him the money to pay the fee.  He took the test last Saturday and tonight he got his results.  He passed with flying colors! 

What a satisfying feeling, knowing that I helped give him something that will help him from now on.

Aljazeera Whaaat?

I can't wait to see what the " new voice" of news in America has to say. We watched our first segment of Aljazeera America last night and I must say I was impressed.  Ever since the school massacre in Newtown, there have been very few investigative stories that focus on the proliferation of gun violence in our country.  Aljazeera apparently owes no debt to the NRA and is not afraid to shine a light on the number of shootings taking place in Chicago.  The first segment was last night, and the second is tonight.  The veteran newswoman, Joie Chan, is excellent, as is every other journalist I have seen on this network.  One of my favorites is Ali Velchi who I have previously watched on anorher network.

Here are the names of the editorial team for Aljazeera.  Relax, none of them are named Mohammed!

The editorial team will be led by Kate O'Brian, a 30-year ABC News veteran who will take over as president of the network.

She will be joined by David Doss and Shannon High-Bassalik, who will join from CNN as senior vice-presidents, and Marcy McGinnis, a former journalism associate dean who worked at CBS News.

Ehab al-Shihabi will serve as interim chief executive officer of the network, according to an announcement made by Al Jazeera's acting director-general, Mostefa Souag.

Q&A

Five Questions with Kate O'Brian, Al Jazeera America's newly

appointed president:

 Why Al Jazeera? 

This is an incredibly exciting opportunity to create a news product that I think is sorely missing in the American media landscape right now. There is a great history of quality journalism at Al Jazeera, and I am looking forward to bringing all that to Al Jazeera America. 

O'Brian, a former senior vice-president at ABC News who began her career there as an intern, will be based at the network's headquarters in New York City, and "will have full responsibility for defining and implementing the editorial strategy and operations across the network, including news, documentary and all other programming", according to the statement.

In an interview, O'Brian told Al Jazeera English, AJAM's sister network, that there was "a gap" in the US news media landscape that her channel would be seeking to fill.

"Coming into the American news landscape, the opportunity to innovate is something Al Jazeera can bring into the equation. We can start from scratch, producing in-depth, quality content for the viewers who are looking for something different. It will be a new product, not incremental tweaks in existing news formats," she said.

Al-Shihabi said at the end of June that Al Jazeera had hired 650 employees and planned to air 8 minutes of commercials per hour, which is below the industry standard of about 15 minutes.

Interestingly, the channel that the network purchased, Current TV, was sold to Aljazeera by none other than that great American, Al Gore.

Nothing Lasts Forever

As the grandmother of five (seven if you count the two we have taken care of since they were infants) I get lots of phone calls from parents who need to vent.  With one grandson now out of his teenage years, and two who are in the throes of that challenging time, I can recognize good advice when I see it.  Michael L. Stoller, LCSW, lists the common sense suggestions that will help any parent survive and even keep enjoying their teenagers.  Wherever Stoller says "your son," you can substitute "your daughter."

Respect your son’s integrity and his authority over his own life.

Have faith that whatever you want to tell your son, you have told him already and he will remember it when the time comes.

Offer help with an open hand.

Try offering help in the form of a question.  “Would you like…?” or “How can I help?”

Be responsible and manage your own helplessness and fear without imposing it on him.

Never offer advice without asking permission first.

Tell your son “I love you. I am proud of you. I know you have what it takes. You are a wild man.”  Do this thousands different ways.

Be around not only physically, but also emotionally.

Walk your talk (i.e. if you want your son to be healthier, look at how you are taking care of your own health).

Be vulnerable.  Share some of your fears, worries, and uncertainties with him.

Admit when you are wrong and apologize frequently.

Be selfish.  Fill yourself up first prior to giving yourself away.

Always be cool and calm in the face of his distress, anger, or sadness.

Listen to your son even if he is yelling at you.

Say as little as possible in order to get your son to say as much as possible.

Use “I” statements.  Talk more about your feelings than his behavior.

Gauge your son’s mood prior to having tough conversations.

Drop everything you are doing if your son wants to talk to you.  This opportunity does not come frequently.

Let go of your pride (i.e. you don’t need to have the last word).

Focus on the 90% he is doing well instead of the 10% he is not.

THIS TIME WILL PASS! He won’t be a teenager forever.

Ammonia hydroxide for lunch, anyone?

On Facebook today a friend posted a story that would make you puke up your lunch - especially if that lunch was a Big Mac.  The story told of the chef, Jamie Oliver's ongoing battle with Macdonald's and their practice of using "pink slime" in their burgers.

According to the FB account, the fatty parts of beef are “washed” in ammonium hydroxide and used in the filling of the burger. Before this process, according to Oliver, the food is deemed unfit for human consumption.

 “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest way for dogs, and after this process, is being given to human beings.”

Besides the low quality of the meat, the ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health. Oliver calls it “the pink slime process.”

“Why would any sensible human being put meat filled with ammonia in the mouths of their children?” asked the chef, who wages a war against the fast food industry.

To be fair, a response was published in Beef Daily on August 13, 2013.  

Here is part of the article by Amanda Radke:

"It’s been more than a year since the industry was “pink-slimed,” a term coined by ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer and British food blogger Jamie Oliver. The term, of course, was the sensational characterization of lean finely textured beef (LFTB). LFTB is a 100% beef product produced by a process developed by Beef Products Inc. (BPI) of Dakota Dunes, SD, which separates fat from lean in beef trim. Until the sensational ABC News expose, LFTB was commonly used as an ingredient in school lunch programs and fast-food burgers. The fact is that billions of pounds of the product have been produced and consumed over the years without any reported problems.

The news report, and the resulting social media campaign, created such a hysteria that demand for LFTB dried up, and BPI was forced to close three of its four LFTB plants and lay off 650 employees. BPI then sued ABC News and others for defamation, and that case continues. But the nasty connotation in consumers' minds that beef is tainted with chemicals persists.

In fact, that notion is being perpetuated by Oliver’s most recent musings. His war against the fast-food industry has been largely aimed at McDonald’s, which announced earlier this year that the chain will revise its burger recipe to exclude LFTB."

So, shining a light on the fast food industry did have an effect.  Maybe more parents will weigh the convenience of the Macdonald's drive-through against the idea that they really don't know what's in that food they are buying for their little soccer players.

The food scientists are busy in their labs right now trying to come up with some other process, just as gross, to increase their profits.  

Rolletes for Dinner?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the food giants and what they have done to the food we eat.  In a totally unrelated book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, I found another story in that same vein...

In an article appearing in Time magazine in 1959, it was said that Charles Mortimer, then chairman of General Foods, became frustrated by the same old, same old vegetables and put his best scientists to work to create some new ones. (No one can say he didn't have lofty ambitions!)

These kitchen wizards came up with "Rolletes," a product in which they pureed multiple vegetables-peas, carrots, and lima beans, for example-then formed the mush into frozen sticks.  Mom could then simply place them on a baking tray and warm them up in the oven.

The article didn't say whether or not the Rolletes would turn back into mush when heated.

Does anyone remember such a product?

God Took Her Eye Off the Ball

Be careful what you wish for, the old adage goes. An Arizona family that was fed up with government control in the U.S., decided to sail away and "see where God led us." God allowed a series of storms to damage their boat and leave them adrift. But then God provided a Venezuelan fishing boat to rescue them. Perhaps God was dropping a hint that she wanted them to go to Venezuela, but they didn't think much of that idea, apparently.

 They were transferred to a Japanese cargo ship where they spent three weeks before being taken to Chile. Good thing God speaks Japanese, huh? The family was on a flight back to Arizona arranged by the bad old US Embassy. Mom said they will go back to Arizona and come up with a new plan." I guess the plan is to give God another chance since the first one didn't work out too well.

Good News on the Obesity Front

You know the saying about how you never see Volkswagen "Bugs" until you start shopping for one, and then they seem to be everywhere you look?  Well, I had that experience when I started blogging about the book Salt, Sugar and Fat, and Americ"
a's obesity problem.  Suddenly, I saw articles about obesity everywhere!  The good news is that we may be turning those statistics around.

Sabrina Tavernise, reporting for The New York Times, tells us that obesity rates for pre-school age children from poor families dropped in 19 states from 2008 to 2011, although they remained unchanged in my state of Arizona.

One of the causes of the slowdown in obesity rates may be that breast-feeding has been encouraged.  Also, the mothers of those pre- schoolers may be poor, but they are more educated than in the past, and they want their children to be healthier adults than their grandparents were.

Why Is Having Dental Work Done Such Torture?

After not going to a dentist for years, due to personal dread and the high cost, I finally made an appointment with the local dental school in Mesa.  The first few visits were wonderful.  I could not have been more impressed.  The visits are long since the students are being extremely thorough and careful, checking and double-checking every entry on the computer.  Then a professor comes over and pretty much repeats what the student has done. So, count on 3 hours instead of the one hour you. usually spend at the dentist.  But I learned more about my mouth than I had in my previous 70 years! I completely understood what needed to be done and why.  At least this time I didn't feel like maybe the dentist said I needed that crown for $700 because it was time to make a payment on his cabin in the White Mountains!

I went twice, once for soft tissue investigation, and once for hard surface examination, and then the third visit was to go over a treatment plan and to make a mold of my mouth in case I opt for a partial on the bottom.  The total charge for all this was $69.00.

The first item on the treatment plan was deep cleaning.  You know, the kind where they go under the gums and scrape the crap off the roots.  I really don't know what happened to make this so frickin' miserable, but I don't know if I can go back for the second quadrant.  First, they used lidocaine instead of novocaine.  Every other time I have been numbed up, the dentist would stick the needle in and it was kind of painful, but it was over quick.  Not this time.  The professor was right there, telling Milen just where to put the needle, and telling him to "deposit" slowly, slowly.  Oh my God, it was torture!  It seemed like he had that needle in there at least 5 minutes.  And that was just the first of three!  And, to make matters worse,  it wasn't really that effective.  It was completely worn off by the time he was done.  I wasn't a very good patient after that, I'm afraid.

By the time the cleaning was completed (on that one quadrant) my arms were quivering from gripping the arms of the chair with a death grip, my whole mouth was throbbing, and I was pissed because the technology hasn't improved since I was 10 years old.

Why is it still so awful?  I don't know if I will go back or just let my teeth fall out!

Most Decisions Don't Require a Lot of Thought

So, after two weeks of reading Salt, Sugar, Fat, what did I learn?  I learned that, indeed, the Food Giants have hooked us, and they aren't about to turn loose.  It is a problem we have created with our economic system, actually.  These are corporations, their stock is traded on the stock exchange, you may even own stock in some of them.  Their job is to sell product.  Their mission is to increase profits every quarter.  The only way to do that is to sell more and more, expand their lines, decrease their costs.  Unless the government steps in and regulates food as it does drugs, the corporations won't - can't - change their ways.  And the members of Congress who have to vote to institute regulations don't want to lose their jobs, so they won't do it.

It's up to each and every one of us.  We have to read labels, be willing to cook more meals ourselves, not depend on processed food for our total nutrition.  And we especially need to stay away from the fast food joints.  If we can manage to stop buying enough of the food that's stuffed with salt, sugar and fat, then those corporations will switch to healthy products or die.  After all, enough people stopped smoking to hurt Philip Morris.  That's one of the reasons PM bought the food companies!  It's time to do it again.

If you can't change your habits for yourself, then do it for your kids.  Do you really want your son or daughter to have Type II diabetes by the time they are 40?  Well, believe me, those Food Giants do not care.  A corporation has no conscience.

Good Eating!

Old Macdonald Has Too Many Antibiotics

A story written by Sabrina Tavernise that appeared in the New York Times on July 30, 2013, reports on a study being conducted in Flagstaff, Arizona to determine how many people in one American city are getting urinary infections from meat from the grocery store.

Lance Price, a microbiologist at George Washington University has done his research on antibiotics at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix.  Dr. Price has been sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistance for a number of years.  He recently told a Congressional committee that evidence of the ill effects of antibiotics in farming was overwhelming.

He thinks the FDA's efforts to limit antibiotic use on farms have been weak.  In 1977 (36 years ago!) the FDA said it would begin to ban some agricultural uses of antibiotics.  But the House and Senate appropriations committees - dominated by agricultural interests - passed resolutions against the ban, and the FDA retreated.  Surprise, surprise.

David White, Ph.D., is the chief science officer in FDA’s Office of Food and Veterinary Medicine.  The following is a quote from the FDA article titled "Fighting the Impact of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria."

The fundamental concern over the agricultural use of antibiotics arises from the potential that resistant bacterial strains can be transferred to humans via direct contact, or ingestion of food derived from treated animals. This is a legitimate concern as epidemiological and microbiological data show that resistant bacteria from food animals can reach humans via the food supply. And most classes of antimicrobials used in animals have human counterparts. Therefore, resistance to an animal drug might translate into resistance to a human drug.

Antibiotics are given to animals for various reasons, including: 1) treatment of sick animals; 2) prevention of illness in healthy animals; and 3) control of disease in a group of animals when some in the group show overt signs of disease.

Antibiotics are also used to improve feed efficiency and weight gain in healthy animals, a practice the FDA has been working to change. In 2012, FDA released a guidance document for the animal health and animal agriculture industries that focuses on two primary principles: 1) limiting medically important antimicrobial drugs to uses in food-producing animals that are considered necessary for assuring animal health; and 2) limiting such drugs to uses in food-producing animals that include veterinary oversight or consultation. We think that this voluntary approach will move us forward in the quickest way possible, and it doesn't rule out future regulation.

Another example of how our government cares more about protecting the providers of food than the consumers of food.  Apparently, the FDA, after decades of studies showing that eating meat from animals fed antibiotics is a factor in antibiotic resistance, still feels that "voluntary" compliance is the way to go.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Interviews of former executives of the food giants reveal that, since retirement, most of them have an entirely different view of the products they once sold.  One, upon visiting his doctor and discovering that the cartilage in his knee was pretty much gone, decided that he would have to start managing his weight with diet instead of exercise.  As he roamed the aisles of his grocery store, he said, "Can't eat this, can't eat that."  And, predictably, he began saying, "We shouldn't sell this, we shouldn't sell that."

Another story involved a man who had spent his entire working life on developing Lunchables.  His family had grown up eating the prepared lunches and were proud of their Dad for inventing such a popular food item.  When his daughter graduated from college and went to her new job for the first time, she proudly showed up with her bright yellow packaged Lunchable.  The first remark she heard was, "Oh my God, don't you know what those things do to a landfill! And all those nitrites in that ham!"  

Working for the "corporate cookers" is like living in an ivory tower.  You become so dedicated to selling more and more and more that you lose track of the fact that real people are buying, eating and disposing of those products.

Now They Are Killing Us With Food

Why can't we solve the problem of obesity in the U.S? Michael Moss, in his book, "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" tells us, in no uncertain terms, why our government will not help, and, in fact, is complicit in making this epidemic worse.  By focusing on the three things that make food most appealing, Moss shows us how the giant corporations who control our food supply have made it nearly impossible to have a healthy diet.  

"The transition of food to being an industrial product really has been a fundamental problem," according to Walter Willett, the chair of Harvard's Department of Nutrition.  "First, the actual processing has stripped away the nutritional value of the food.  Most of the grains have been converted to starches.  We have sugar in concentrated form, and many of the fats have been concentrated and then, worst of all, hydrogenated, which creates transfatty acids with very adverse effects on health."

"Kelly Brownell, a Yale professor of psychology and public health, says, 'As a culture, we've become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies (owned by the tobacco companies) do the very same thing.  And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.'"

One of the most important factors in my giving up cigarettes was watching the government grilling of the 7 heads of the biggest tobacco companies and seeing them sit there and tell lie after lie.  They all innocently claimed they had no idea that smoking was harmful!  At that moment, I swore I would never again give a dime of my money to those lying bastards. And I thought that I hadn't given any more money to them.  I was wrong.

Not satisfied with killing people with cigarettes, Philip Morris acquired General Foods and Kraft.  Now it could kill people with fat and sugar - it would just take a bit longer.  But that was all right because the longer people lived, and the fatter they got, the more money Philip Morris would make.  Moss says, "By 1990, Philip Morris had all but cornered the market for cigarettes.  With the purchase of General Foods and Kraft, it had also become a consumer goods goliath, posting $3.5 billion in annual profits on $51.2 billion in sales.  Half of its revenue came from food."

So now I swear again that I will never give those liars another dime of my money.  Here is a short list of products I bet you didn't know were made by the same folks that brought you Marlboro cigarettes: 

Capri Sun juice boxes

Jell-O

Kraft Singles

Maxwell House

Oscar Meyer 

Philadelphia (cream cheese)

Velvetta

Cadbury

Next entry, I will talk about why each of those products should be labelled as "dangerous to your health."

You've Got to Read

Short post:  Go out TODAY and get a copy of "Salt, Sugar, and Fat," by Michael Moss.  Trust me.

The next thing to do is take a look at sugarstackers.com.  You will be surprised, I guarantee you.

Let's Ignore Those Idiots in Washington

 Last April my daughter and I toured China for 10 days.  We were both somewhat ignorant and suffering from what turned out to be incorrect assumptions about the Chinese people and the culture.  Having grown up during the Cold War, I fully expected to see "coolies" dressed in black pajamas and pulling a rickshaw.  So wrong.  Here's a photo of a typical young Chinese woman.

 

Doesn't she look Western?  Or look at this photo - would you believe this is a communist country?  

Never did I think that we would be able to wander freely as we did.  We went shopping, ate in a Pizza Hut, browsed through the Shanghai Art Museum, all without chaperones.

Our tour guides surprised us by talking about all the changes in their lifetimes in their country.  No question went unanswered by Sam or Allen.  The only warning we were ever given was prior to our visit to Tiananmen Square where the massacre took place in 1989.  We were told not to discuss what happened that June among ourselves, that there were undercover police alert to any mention of what the government has never acknowledged took place.

All of the people we spoke with were proud of their country, but not necessarily of their government.  Here in the U.S. more than a year later, I see many similarities in the attitudes of the Chinese and the Americans. Are you starting to lose interest in the childish behavior of our elected officials?  Do you think they are truly representing your interests, or their own?

Please comment and tell us what you think would happen if we all just went about our business paying no attention to the government.  In China, because they do not have elections, the people feel little or no connection to, or responsibility for, what their government does.  Of course, I am not suggesting that what the government does has no effect on the citizenry, but, believe me, I saw people far happier than you would expect them to be living under a Communist regime.

Is it possible that what Wall Street does affects our lives more than what Washington does?  Can we boycott Washington?  What if we hold an election and nobody votes?  But - and this is a big but (ha) - what if we only shop at businesses who support Gun Sense? What if we agree to ONLY buy products made in America? Are you making McDonalds richer by making yourself fatter? Well, stop.  I could go on and on, and you probably can, too.

What do you think?

God at 17,000 feet

A friend of mine recently watched a You Tube video about the Argus surveillance system that can be attached to a "drone" and can capture high resolution images from 17,000 feet.  Not only can it capture these images, it can zoom in on a specific area and show you what is happening on the ground in real time.  Once captured, the images can be stored and be available for recall in the future.

My friend was outraged.  The idea that some "eye in the sky" could record him walking to work from the subway seemed to threaten his sense of security.  The idea, however, that Argus could possibly have recorded the movements of the two brothers who placed the bombs in Boston and helped identify them, apparently did not occur to him.Since this friend was born and raised and educated in the Catholic church, I asked him how the Argus differed from the understanding most Christians have of God.  Doesn't God watch everything that happens on Earth?  Doesn't God see what each and every one of us does 24/7?  And doesn't He remember for eternity whether we have been good Christians or evil sinners?

 Why does one Almighty Eye cause outrage and the other (who supposedly has the power to strike you dead on the spot without a trial) deserve your worship?

We Are Killing Our Kids!

The children were pressed up against the glass in the Gorilla house, amazed at the size of the great silver-back inches away.  This particular primate was in excellent health, with a glistening coat and sparkling eyes that occasionally looked right back at the children.

I could not help but compare one primate to another.  The gorilla was happily munching on a head of lettuce, but there was no lettuce in any form (except maybe a leaf on a cheeseburger) available for the homo sapiens there to eat.  The homo sapiens specimens were almost all overweight, whether they were young or old.  

The gorillas were fed the diet that they were designed to eat; fruits and vegetables.  None of the animals on one side of the glass were obese.  Many of the ones on the other side of the glass were.  Which ones will live longer?

Who, Me?

Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It's not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument or your age that is to blame.  You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make.

                                            

                                                                        Period.

My Last Playlist

Not long ago our daughter approached my 73 year old husband with a question.  She was very hesitant and asked him not to be upset with her, but then asked, "What kind of music do you want at your funeral?"  Somewhat taken aback he started thinking about it.  And since then, so have I.

I decided that I should make "My Last Playlist."  Maybe you want to start creating yours, too.  So far I only have five songs in my playlist, but it's a start.  

The first is Key Largo by Bertie Higgins.  This is "our song" for Ron and me.  The wonderful old motor sailer that we spent so many happy hours on was named "Key Largo", and we just have to hear this song to wisk away the past 30 years.

The second is a song by John Denver called "Matthew."  When Steve and Kathy were little and we were living on the ranch in Alzada, we had a car with the old-fashioned tape player.  We had only one tape for a long time, and it was one of John Denver's. For some reason that I never figured out, the song titled "Matthew" touched something in me, and i would be driving our road going to pick the kids up at school, or something, with tears streaming down my face.  Ever have that happen to you?

A new song that I added is Titanium by The Piano Guys.  I just love their music.  It is a beautiful blend of classical with some of the most popular songs of today.

Fourth on my playlist is "American Pie" by the great Don Maclean.  One of the best songs ever written, in my opinion, deserves to be on everyone's favorite playlist.

Phil Collins recorded the theme song for a popular television show called Miami Vice.  One summer I played it over and over as we cruised the Chesapeake Bay on Key.  I was in love and hope and poassibility were "In The Air Tonight."

As I add songs to my last playlist, I will post them to this blog.

Can I Be Myself?

I have just finished reading Andrew McCarthy's book, The Longest Way Home, and it has made me want to examine my life - my feelings, my thoughts, my belief system - rather than continue to make decisions based on someone else's beliefs.  Too often I make a choice based on the cost of something.  Living with DH for so long has installed in my brain a calculator that instantly knows when something is too costly, not in my opinion, but in his.  He doesnt even have to be present.

Here are some simple examples: we were at Lowe's and I saw a new product: a sports towel that when wet stays cool and keeps you cool. Since I have always had a problem with sweating rivers when it's hot, my friend said "buy it," but it was $14.99 and I knew that DH would say, why do you need that? He would say that any hand towel would do just as well.  So I didn't buy it.  Now, after reading Andrew's book, I am ready to be myself and decide things based on what I think, what I feel, rather than just avoiding DH's judgment and criticism.

Another example is "The Chair."  For twenty years I have wanted a really super comfortable overstuffed armchair.  I just have visions of sitting in such a chair, maybe with a slipcover, reading Anne of Green Gables to my granddaughters.  And not long ago I saw "the chair" on an episode of "Big Bang Theory." It was perfect.  So I started shopping online.  Without a time-consuming search I found one at Macy's.  It costs $700.  DH wants to buy all our furniture at Goodwill.  He would sit on a pillow on the floor rather than spend more than $50 for any piece of furniture.  All these years I have lived with those constraints.  But no more.  I intend to buy my chair.