Well well well well well . . . . It seems like a mental enema is in store here.
fall down seven, get up eight
Japanese Proverb – seems appropriate.
I’ve been a naughty, neglectful boy with my passion blog.
Started getting back in the swing of things back in May only to let the entire month of June slip on by. ”Buh-bye” people must’ve thought. For shame
So a good old fashioned BLOG PEE seemed appropriate here to start up again. I’m surprised my bladder didn’t burst. (actually i was relieving myself in the sink)
As it’s america’s birthday this weekend…. again… #235 – boy is she gettin’ old eh?
Bet you wished you look this good at that age….. hell, bet you wish you could reach that age – HA!
What better time to brush up on your RIGHTS (while you still have them!)
BILL OF RIGHTS [|||] U.S. CONSTITUTION
It’s summertime!
So the 2nd half of 2011 has begun. Time to start a new ritual?Trend? whatever you call it…. How about:
Take a moment this weekend to reflect upon the first half of the year and see what you’ve accomplished and whether you are on track with your goals. Maybe you have new goals – i know i do. Maybe you fulfilled some, maybe others are getting cold and moldy on the back burner – salvage them if you want, or throw them out and make room for NEW.
I have been cleaning out my physical environment to create more clarity and focus for myself. It feels good to purge yourself of old things that you no longer want or need. Nostalgia and the What-If creatures try to sneak into your psyche to get you to reconsider letting go of your STUFF. But then Rationalization and Practicality double-team them and counter with the ideas of “you can’t take it with you”,” it’s holding you back” and ”it’s weighing you down.”
Ok, I realize this is normally slotted for an Eff-En-Eff, so here’s 2 mini-videos of UFOs over LONDON that were aired recently. Quite intriguing. Now I’ll keep my opinions to myself as I’m not an expert on analyzing real vs. fake. The fact that these two I found are taken in totally different parts of the city makes it seem a bit more convincing.
However, an observation is in store here. Why is it that UFOs always seem to move like UFOs? The triangle formation, the radical changes in direction and speed. The odd way the larger disc rotates and spins slowly. And so on.
Finally – cause I got work 2 do, I’ll blog more about this later, but time is of the essence.
There are blenders and then there is IMO, THE World’s Best Blender, ever. The one and only BLENDTEC. Even better, it can be purchased with FREE SHIPPING all during the month of JULY, 2011.
So my question to you is, Will It Blend, Punk?
footnote - - -
- – - You Might Be A Zombie if …you don’t realize we’ve been living in a Zombie Apocalypse for several years now.
Yes, I am probably starting a new meme here, but it dawned on me that the way most people go through their lives, they sure have an awful lot of zombie tendencies and traits… remember, kill the brain and run away – the lactic acid build up in reanimated dead tissue causes them to stop ‘dead’ in their tracks fairly quickly.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, healthy lifestyle is part of my thing.
This documentary came out November 13, 2007 according to the info on Hulu - less than 4 years ago as of this posting. However, when checking out the history of the film on it’s OWN website, I found this:
The Future of Food has been a key tool in the American and international anti-GMO grassroots activist movements and played widely in the environmental and activist circuits since its release in 2004. The film is widely acknowledged for its role in educating voters and the subsequent success of passing Measure H in Mendocino County, California, one of the first local initiatives in the country to ban the planting of GMO crops. Indicative of its popularity, the Future of Food showed to a sold out audience of 1,500 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in 2004, a benefit for Slow Food, where it was introduced by Alice Waters. [source]
Like Food Inc. and The World According To Monsanto, it is an eye opener for many as to what’s being done to our food supply. Remember, knowledge is power and ignorance breeds complacency and allows for ease of control. Keep informed!
The Future Of Food offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade
Enjoy the film:
IF you are reading this post after HULU has removed the movie again, you can watch it for free here>>>http://www.thefutureoffood.com/onlinevideo.html
April Fools Day All Ya Pranksters
I’m bringing back the EffEnEff – aka Friday Night Film or Friday Night Funny – whichever fits the bill.
Tonight I share two TED Talks that I like – most of them are sooo good it’s hard to choose just one.
Number one is Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution movement.
Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.
Number two is Magician David Blaine explaining how he was able to hold his breath for 17 minutes
breaking the world record – and what his often death-defying work means to him.
For more inspiring TED talks, you can visit their site where you can even download
talks for free to your computer or mobile phone. Now that’s good brain food.
I wanted to add an update on the benefits of the supplement ChlorOxygen.
First off, what the heck is Chlorophyll?
Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plants that harnesses the sun’s energy in photosynthesis. Chlorophyll performs metabolic functions in plants such as respiration and growth.
OK, so why would I, who am NOT a plant, want to take it?
Well, if any of the following apply to you, that’s why:
SO WHAT’s the best brand to take and where do I buy it?
ChlorOxygen Regular
ChlorOxygen Mint
Each ounce of Herb’s Etc. Chlorophyll Concentrate contains as much Chlorophyll as one or two 16 ounce bottles of other brands. Each ounce contains approximately 2,950 milligrams of Chlorophyll.
What makes ChlorOxygen Chlorophyll Concentrate such an awesome product?
SUGGESTED Use: Each 36-drop dose delivers 100 milligrams of Chlorophyll Concentrate. Take 18-36 drops twice a day in 8 ounces of water.
Caution: Dark green stools may occur. I have found this to be true when taking it for the first time or when I haven’t taken any in a while and consuming the maximum daily suggested amount. However, the body seems to acclimate to this after a day or two and that side effect tends to diminish.
I first discovered this product while visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico for the first time. Coming from sea level in Florida to 7000 feet in the mountains didn’t seem like a big deal immediately. Arriving in the AM and hitting the ground running, it didn’t hit me or my friend until the afternoon. Shortness of breath, headache, nausea and the feeling she was going to pass out was my friend’s reaction. I was mainly just a little winded and had a mild headache. We were both feeling the effects of high altitude sickness due to less oxygen in the air than we were accustomed to.
Long story short, we were introduced to Chloroxygen at a local health food store and it was a life saver becoming an instant new favorite in my supplemental arsenal. An added benefit that has me using the stuff daily even in Florida is the energy boost it gives me. It’s a great alternative to energy drinks if you’re like me and don’t care for them. Unlike coffee or other caffeinated beverages, the chloroxygen gives me a nice consistent boost in energy level and alertness.
You should be able to find Chloroxygen at your local health food store, but I have found iHerb.com to be a better deal all around. WHY iHerb.com?
If you are planning on a trip to the mountains for snow boarding, hiking or skiing or simple traveling to a high elevation from a low one – like Florida – and you want to acclimate instantly to the higher elevation, Chloroxygen is the ticket. For me, I would use the old Amex phrase, “Don’t leave home without it.” Even if I’m not going to the mountains, bringing a bottle of chloroxygen with me to give me energy when traveling is a must.
Chloroxygen offers 3 ways to take it: it comes in liquid drop form both regular and mint as well as capsules. It is alcohol and preservative free and doesn’t require refrigeration. More pluses in my book!
Made from stinging nettle leaves, just 36 drops in 8 to 16 oz of water or liquid gives you 100mg of chlorophyll.
The one ounce bottle has about 66 servings at 18 drops per serving. The bottle is about $10 bucks @ iHerb.com and with the coupon code IHE882, you save another $5.00. Store prices run around 12-15 dollars by comparison.
Some other insights I can share with Chloroxygen are:
Chloroxygen High Altitude Sickness Natural Remedy and Energy Booster
A friend of mine has a really cool company called EcoBold. She has a popular YoutTube channel and website that encourages and educates people about the importance of going green and buying from companies that are not destroying the planet in the process.
Recently, she posted this hilarious video that shows off just how funny she is and how you can have fun and be entertaining while touting the virtues of living a healthy lifestyle.
This is my much anticipated and requested follow up video report in response to the McDonald’s 4 year old preserved Cheeseburger and Fries.
[In Lieu of the Regular Friday Night Film...]
I didn’t realize when I first did this that the guy who made the movie Super Size Me had done a similar experiment with various McDonald’s menu items placed individually in glass jars. His videos showed the food decaying and molding… except for the fries. My experiment was different in that I included Wendys and Burger King.
I wish I had taken photos along the way to show the rate of decay. I remember around 3 months they still looked fairly intact but mold was beginning to grow.
I think a few things affected my results. One being that I stored them right away while they were still warm/hot in plastic containers which caused a rather moist environment in an already humid environment (Florida).
It was only in the last few days that I noticed a smell coming from the cabinet where I had stored the specimens. Once I realized where the smell was coming from I knew it was time to finally finish this project. 6 months to the day.
They all smelled really bad but Burger King by far was the worst.
I managed to avoid throwing up but I was dry heaving afterwards a few times.
“My apologies to my dedicated cameragirl – I didn’t realize just how bad the smell was until I took the respirator off.”
Here’s the Video:
Yo, Step away from the Ding-Dong!
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-fourths of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many of them are.
We spend $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more treating cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet.
Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s gobs of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.
Take for example the market for prescription drugs and medical devices to manage Type 2 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control estimates will afflict one in three Americans born after 2000.
So you might be thinking, what about the insurance companies? Where’s the incentive for them to encourage prevention over disease management?
As for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it’s much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill.
Maybe if they made it so you can’t deny pre-existing conditions for new customers and not charge exorbitantly higher fees, then the insurance companies might be enthusiastic fans of healthy lifestyle choices.
The status quo is slow to change and to entertain the idea of expulsion of those currently running the show is a bit ridiculous and likely to cause too much mayhem and chaos in the process.
True education and the desire to own and rediscover each of our divine personal power and use our waning ability to think and question for ourselves is a much more long term solution to this epidemic.
The secret to saving the world (assuming that it even needs to be saved) is to start with yourself first and don’t worry about what the other person next to you is doing. Get your own house in order. If these words are heeded by a majority, then we’ll be in pretty good shape.
and Hey! Put that Twinkie down!
Vertical Farming, or more definitive, Vertical Hydroponic Organic Urban Farming is coming to a town near you. Or it should be, in my opinion. Yes, I know I’ve been on a farming bender lately with my blog, but hey, after air and water, food is pretty important to staying alive.
Even though I currently reside in a condo and don’t currently fancy myself possessing a green thumb unless it’s from paint, thanks to my mother and grandfather et al, I’ve got farmer’s blood in me. And it is true that I’ve always been into quality food, health and nutrition.
Before I get into the cool pics and advantages of Vertical Farming, I need to bring up something else about our relationship with . . .
Now of course, this ties in directly to the elephant in the room many people try to avoid confronting. And that is the horrendously unhealthy typical American diet and its catastrophic effect on the out-of-control health care in this country. Wait, we’re still calling this Health Care? More like Disease Management.
It’s the quality of food we eat – mostly processed and devoid of enzymes and basic nutrients in adequate levels. It’s the quantity too – most of us eat way too much food, much of it garbage.
It’s also when we eat. Too many people skip breakfast or think a cup of joe is a sufficient breakfast. This is followed by eating the biggest meal of the day at dinnertime – often much too late in the evening.
Finally, lack of quality fresh food, effective, bio-available nutritional supplements, and eating while under time stress and other stresses creates the inability to absorb and digest what we DO end up shoving in our mouths.
There are a myriad of ‘pie in the sky’ artist conceptions and designs.
Perhaps a smaller model would be more easily created in a shorter amount of time.
Here’s a few interesting ideas:
As the world’s population has already surpassed 6 billion and billions more on the way, before we know it the traditional soil-based farming model developed over the last 12,000 years will no longer be a sustainable option.
Irrigation of crops uses 70 percent of the fresh water that we use. The excess agricultural runoff, contaminated with silt, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, is unfit for reuse.
VF food production will take advantage of hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. Both methods are soil-free. Hydroponics allows us to grow plants in a water-and-nutrient solution, while aeroponics grows them in a nutrient-laden mist. These methods use far less water than conventional cultivation techniques, in some cases as much as 90 percent less.
For every indoor acre farmed, some 10 to 20 outdoor acres of farmland can return to their original ecological state (mostly hardwood forest).
A vertical farm will behave like a functional ecosystem, in which waste is recycled and the water used in hydroponics and aeroponics is recaptured by dehumidification and used over and over again. The technologies needed to create a vertical farm are currently being used in controlled-environment agriculture facilities but have not been integrated into a seamless source of food production in urban high-rise buildings.
High rises aren’t the only structures that could house vertical farms. Farms of various sizes and crop yields could be built into a variety of urban settings — from schools, restaurants and hospitals to the upper floors of apartment complexes. By supplying a continuous quantity of fresh vegetables and fruits to city dwellers, these farms will help combat health problems, like Type II diabetes and obesity.
Vertical farming can finally put an end to agricultural runoff, a major source of water pollution.
City dwellers will also be able to breathe easier – literally. Vertical farms will bring a great concentration of plants into cities. These plants will absorb carbon dioxide produced by automobile emissions and give off oxygen in return
One estimate for proof of concept: constructing a five-story farm, taking up one-eighth of a square city block, will cost $20 million to $30 million.
An actual indoor farm developed at Cornell University growing hydroponic lettuce was able to produce as many as 68 heads per square foot per year. At a retail price in New York of up to $2.50 a head for hydroponic lettuce, you can see how profitable this and other similar crops can be.
Learn more about Vertical Farming @ http://www.verticalfarm.com/
I would love to see Monsanto be destroyed by it’s own corruption and greed – and any other company with equally diabolical plans and schemes such as theirs. Patenting life and trying to own and control the world’s food supply. The way they conduct their business makes me extremely distrustful of anything they say as being accurate or truthful.
With that bit of zing, I want to share with you an article I was sent today by a friend.
02-04-2010
When we consider the rogue’s gallery of devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporations, we generally come up with outfits like Microsoft, Bechtel, AIG, Halliburton, Goldman-Sachs, Exxon-Mobil and the United States Senate. Yet somehow, Monsanto, arguably the most devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporation in the world has been able to more or less skulk between the raindrops — only a household name in households where documentaries like Food Inc. are regarded as light Friday evening entertainment. My house, for example. But for the most part, if you were to ask an average American for their list of sinister corporations, Monsanto probably wouldn’t make the cut.
It should.
Founded by Missouri pharmacist John Francis Queeny in 1901, Monsanto is literally everywhere. Just about every non-organic food product available to consumers has some sort of connection with Monsanto. Anyone who can read a label knows that corn, soy and cotton can be found in just about every American food product. Upwards of 90% of all corn, soybeans and cotton are grown from genetically engineered seeds, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These genetically enhanced products appear in around 70% of all American processed food products. And Monsanto controls 90% of all genetically engineered seeds. In other words, Monsanto controls — and owns patents on — most of the American food supply.
When you consider, as Walletpop originally reported, that one-in-four food labels is inaccurate, that the F.D.A.’s testing is weak at best, then how can we trust one corporation to have so much control over our produce? The answer is, we can’t. Recently, a study by the International Journal of Biological Sciences revealed that Monsanto’s Mon 863, Mon 810, and Roundup herbicide-absorbing NK 603 in corn caused kidney and liver damage in laboratory rats. Scientists also discovered damage to the heart, spleen, adrenal glands and even the blood of rats that consumed the mutant corn. A “state of hepatorenal toxicity” the study concluded.
This hasn’t slowed down Monsanto’s profit machine. In 2008, Monsanto cleared over $2 billion in net profits on $11 billion in revenues. And its 2009 is looking equally as excellent.
Author and food safety advocate Robyn O’Brien told me, “Monsanto is expecting gross margins in Q2 2010 of 62%, its corn and soy price mix to be up 8-10% and its glyphosate revenue to expand to an estimated $1 billion in gross profit by 2012, enabling Monsanto to further drive R&D into seeds and to price those seeds at a premium – further driving price increases on the farm and in the grocery stores.”
This, O’Brien says, in the same year when farm income declined by around 34%.
Because Monsanto claims that its GMOs create higher yields and therefore comparatively higher revenues per acre for struggling American farmers, they’re certainly a tempting option. On the surface, that is. Monsanto controls its seeds with an iron fist, so even if you happen to own a farm next to another farm upon which Monsanto seeds are used, and if those seeds migrate onto your land, Monsanto can sue you for royalties.
Additionally, if you use seeds from crops grown from Monsanto seeds, a process known as “seed cleaning,” you also have to pay royalties to Monsanto or it will sue you. All told, Monsanto has recovered $15 million in royalties by suing farmers, with individual settlements ranging from five figures to millions of dollars each.
Back in 2004, farmer Kem Ralph served eight months in jail and was fined $1.3 million for lying about Monsanto cotton seeds he was hiding in his barn as a favor to a friend. They weren’t even his seeds (yeah, that’s what they all say!). By way of comparison, the fine in Ralph’s home state of Tennessee for, say, cocaine possession, is $2,500.
In keeping with the Orwellian nature of modern marketing, one of the first phrases you see on the front page of the Monsanto website is “we help farmers.” Funny. In a cruelly ironical way, that is.
In fairness, the argument in support of Monsanto is generally “it makes more food for lower prices.” Of course this is a red herring. Basic economics proves that choice and competition create lower prices. Not monopolies. This applies not only to American grocery stores, but also in terms of feeding developing nations where food is scarcer.
Moreover, stronger Monsanto herbicides, compatible with herbicide resistant seeds, are giving rise to mutant Wolverine-ish super weeds that have adapted and are rapidly spreading through the air to farms that don’t use Monsanto GMOs, destroying obviously vulnerable crops. Say nothing of the inevitable mutant bugs that will adapt to the pesticides that are implanted into the Monsanto Mon 810 genetic code. And if further studies indicate similar organ damage in humans, the externalized costs to health care systems will begin to seriously out-weigh the benefits of cheaper food.
Ultimately, there are better, healthier ways to make cheaper food. Until then the best thing we can do is to demand further investigations and buy organic products whenever practical.
And if you can’t afford to buy organic, O’Brien recommends, “A great first step, given how pervasive these ingredients are in processed foods that often use these ingredients to extend shelf life, is to reduce your exposure to processed foods and stick with pronounceable ingredients and foods that your grandmother would have served her kids.”
Meanwhile, let’s endeavor to make Monsanto a household name. But not in a good way.
On January 15, the Obama Justice Department launched an anti-trust investigation against the corporate behemoth over its next generation of genetically modified “Roundup Ready” soybean seeds. The very next day, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, which challenges the safety of genetically modified agricultural products — the centerpiece of the Monsanto empire. If the investigation fails, farmers will have to switch over to the next generation of Roundup Ready seeds in 2014. And the cycle of corporate abuse and monopolization will continue.
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