Archive for December 2008
The New Year
Well; we're in the snow. Our very dear friends, Alessandro, and his longtime partner Robert (the two doctors -- one a chemist -- foreground -- Italian immigrant who speaks better English than most -- the other a psychiatrist -- home grown) just emailed me from Rio.
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Caldo De Res
My dad-in law made soup this afternoon. First generation out of Mexico, he has never forgotten his heritage, and at now 80+ in age, he gets around no differently than when I first met him a dozen years ago. A true inspiration. Hey, maybe this has something to do with it. I didn't do any corn. What I did do was to put it on a plate instead of a bowl, and eat with my hands. Who do you think got the two useable pieces of bone marrow? That only wet my appetite. Tomorrow, I'm headed out to the butcher to see if I can get a bunch of marrow bones. Tell you what. I'll get his recipe tomorrow and toss it up. Deal?
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Totally Animal
What a day. I promised a dozen posts, and got the last one up at 11:59 PST. Could have had it up 30 minutes earlier, but was trying to be choosy in a music choice that turned out to be limited to one -- as I had my mind set on a particular song I've been enjoying lately. So, for reference, here are the posts in chronological order. Parents: Stop Killing Your Children Slowly Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D Spoiled & Pampered Animals Traveling: The Perfect Time to Fast Low & Slow Wins Again "U.S. Weight, Lifestyle and Diet Trends, 1970- 2007" Vitamin D Deficiency and Type 1 Diabetes Melanoma, Sun, and Its Synthetic Defeat (Sunscreen) Vitamin D Deficiency and All Cancer Dad Makes It a Little Easier LSD Chicken Self Indulgence -- In The End There you are. Oh, but wait!. Do you know how to cook bacon properly? It's an essential skill. Frankly, I like the fatty bits, and I never put the bacon on paper towels or pat off the drippings. It goes straight onto the plate, fingers get involved, and the fat ends up in my mouth. But here's what's essential about that: low heat. Patience....
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Self Indulgence — In The End
Can I? This is number twelveroonie, just as promised (though I've got a baker's dozen followup in the batter's box already). I'm coming up to 18 hours pretty much straight at this endeavor, with the exception of a time-out for breakfast -- cooked up by the wife & mom-in-law -- a quick tripette to the market, and in the last couple of hours, refills of my tumbler (scotch). I often tell people that Rush (and herbs) got me through college. We smoked dope and listened to them constantly. What days. I was a 4.0 in high school, but in a sheltered environment. College was a candy store in every way (every. way.). And I was a very poor student as a result. But thanks to Rush & marijuana, I pulled a 3.8 GPA in my most stoned semester (study stoned; test stoned), advanced quantitative economics, business, and accounting. I can still read a complex balance sheet competently; P&Ls are child's play. Go figure. Kids: take note & smoke some dope if you like, and forget about the ignorant fear. Get it over with, or carry on, as you prefer. Hyped o-m-god paranoia is inversely proportional to ... "authotity." See, it's...
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LSD Chicken
Ha! Anyone ever heard of Owsley Stanley? In Paleo circles, he's known as "The Bear" -- a complete carnivore -- in his 70s, now, who thinks all plant matter is toxic (it is, to a degree, but we're evolutionarily adapted to most of it -- grains and legumes excluded -- which is a good reason to mix up what you eat vegetable / fruit / nut wise and employ intermittency to simulate seasonal availability). All plant matter naturally contains anti-nutrients & toxins per the logic of natural selection; It couldn't be any other way, but it's a pet peeve of mine when certain folks essentially anthropomorphize plants as an explanation for the phenomenon. I'll save that for a future post. Anyway, his fame is that he cooked the best lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in history. A half a kilo. A. Lot. Tiny micrograms will blow your mind, though, I've yet to experience it personally. Perhaps; one day. He was also the sound man for The Grateful Dead throughout their long tenure. But let's get back to chicken. At this point, I'm loath to look up the link, but he's notorious on the high-fat carnivore forums, when he explained himself at...
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Dad Makes It a Little Easier
Since I'm on a deadline to get a dozen reasonably substantive posts out out today (2 1/2 hours to go PST), I'm grateful to dad (22 or so pounds lost & counting), who took it upon himself to make Keith's baked eggs. Voilà: Dad says: I changed the ingriedients a little because I didn't have some of them. I started out with olive oil and a little bacon dripping, with bacon on the bottom, followed with onion and green peppers, then sharp chedder with two eggs on top. I had to bake it a little longer, probably because I used a crock and should have pre-heated it.
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Vitamin D Deficiency and All Cancer
This is a huge presentation from GrassrootsHealth, much of it likely inaccessible to the average layman. So let me help. I could certainly use as much knowledge as possible -- and let me come clean about something. It's weird, at the age of 47, having completed one career and then started a successful company that pays my way even when I'm not there, only to find that I probably should have studied biochemistry instead of mathematics, computer science, and ultimately, business administration. I must have been derailed by my teenage infatuation with layman physics and pop cosmology, which set my course. I ultimately became unsatisfied with high-level math because, I dunno, I didn't smoke dope (at the time). It was just too inapplicable to the practical realities that interested me then. Biology was the farthest thing from my mind, and her I am, decades later, pouring over ever study I can get my computer on. Computer programming was cool, and it teaches you logic like nothing else, but I got impatient with the stone age way computer time was managed at the university I attended, and I just had to move on. Alright, on to highlights of Dose-Response of Vitamin...
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Melanoma, Sun, and Its Synthetic Defeat (Sunscreen)
As per the last post, this is courtesy of GrassrootsHealth. The particular presentation I'm highlighting is Skin Cancer / Sunscreen -- the Dilema, by Edward D. Gorham, Ph.D., Frank C. Garland, Ph.D., Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H. and Sharif B. Mohr, M.P.H. Let's jump right in with some graphical highlights. Melanoma has been getting worse and worse, where? Indonesia? Brazil? Cuba? How about Tunisia -- all places pretty close to the equator where the sun is powerful all the year long. Bzzzzt. Norway. In fact, the father north you go in the northern hemisphere, or the father south you go in the southern, skin cancer rates go up. Oh, well that's because of the ozone, right. Bzzzzt. Wrong again. Looks like ozone thickness is higher at extreme latitudes. The sunscreen manufacturers are doing just fine. Really, really fine. The more money they make, the more melanoma, and the more calls go out to use more sunscreen. Excellent business plan.
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Vitamin D Deficiency and Type 1 Diabetes
Well, via a nice Google alert for vitamin D, I stumbled upon a treasure trove, yesterday. At first, it was just one of the more common news articles I cite. In this case, however, there was this bit towards the end. Carole Baggerly started a group called GrassrootsHealth last year in California, which focuses solely on promoting information about vitamin D. She started it after a bout with breast cancer that was followed by a diagnosis of osteoporosis. She learned she was vitamin D deficient. This led to a whole list of discoveries about vitamin D. She read research that suggested raising vitamin D levels may prevent up to half of all breast cancer and two-thirds of colorectal cancer cases in the United States. She read a study showing women with the lowest levels of vitamin D had nearly double the risk of their breast cancer progressing, and a 73 percent greater risk of death compared to women with adequate vitamin D. She found out that the first study linking colorectal cancer and vitamin D was published in 1941. You know, I'm seeing this more and more, and I don't blog or link even a 10th of the stuff I...
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“U.S. Weight, Lifestyle and Diet Trends, 1970- 2007”
Stephan went to a lot of work to compile this post and it's pretty revealing. Best you read it over there, but here's just a taste. First, everyone's getting fatter. Second, it's not the animal fat. Go check out his post for the rest. Here's a graph I just found on my desktop, but I don't recall where I stole it from, but thanks to whoever put it together. It's not the butter, either.
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Low & Slow Wins Again
Well, that's settled. I believe I'll never again do a tri-tip roast on the grill, except when camping. Here was last evening's dinner preparation before heading off to the oven. I believe the only thing on it is rosemary, savory, and a bit of salt & pepper. I don't often do potatoes, but we had guests. I ended up eating 2 or 3 of those sections, so less than half a potato. However, it has been a long time since I've believed that the potato has much or anything to do with obesity or diabetes. It certainly helps to avoid them when trying to loose weight, but in the long run, you especially need to be off grains of all kinds, vegetable oils, sweets, and of course, all the processed frankenfoods that abound. A potato now and then? Not an issue, in my book. Into the oven it goes, 250 degrees. I recommend getting one of these handy meat thermometers so you can monitor in real time when cooking. Up here at the cabin, I only have an instant read, so you've got to keep popping the door open once you begin testing. Of course, cooking at low heat anyway...
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Traveling: The Perfect Time to Fast
I have found over the last year that my absolute favorite time to fast is while traveling, either by car or through those awful airports. For one -- especially when on a long drive -- you eliminate any sort of discomfort from whatever food might do to you gastrointsestinaly. For another, it just makes the trip easier, as you don't have to worry about when and where to eat, like, damn, wish we'd have gone there, at that exit back there. And most applicable to driving, it really shortens the trip when you don't have to stop for an hour to sit down at a restaurant to eat -- since I almost never do fast food joints, even the healthier choices some now offer. Here's a photo I snapped the other day at a refueling pit stop. That's the line at the Subway sandwich shop inside the gas station. I note that's the big thing, now: fast food joints at all the major gas stations. You'll be better off with some nuts, jerky, or even pork rinds. It's really mind altering, this Paelo way. It seems to far off, now, to be obsessed about food all the time. No sooner...
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Spoiled & Pampered Animals
Spoiled? Our dogs? Here's "daddy's sweetheart," Nanuka ("Nuke"), a 3-yr-old rat terrier. Pampered? Pillow, even? That's Cumie, Boomie, the Cumster -- or whatever I happen to call him -- short for cumulous. He's my parents-in-law's dog. It was Bea's & mine when but a pup, but he was just to unruly, way more of an outside dog, and the parents had a big yard. Work out great, and now he's a fabulous little guy to have around. Oh, and just so I don't leave out his majesty, Rotor. Here's a recent post on EvFit & Paleo for pets. You'll be amazed how they will lean out and gradually become calm & cool most of the time.
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Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D
This is the first of what may turn out to be two or more posts on Vitamin D today, and the focus is epidemiology. The next one will be a doozie, but this is an excellent set up. I had not known the background of Dr. John Cannell of the excellent resource, the Vitamin D Council until I stumbled upon this amazing account over the weekend. You're best off reading that, which might require 15 minutes of your time, but here's a few excepts to wet your appetite. In early April of 2005, after a particularly rainy spring, an influenza epidemic (epi: upon, demic: people) exploded through the maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane where I have worked for the last ten years. It was not the pandemic (pan: all, demic: people) we all fear, just an epidemic. The world is waiting and governments are preparing for the next pandemic. A severe influenza pandemic will kill many more Americans than died in the World Trade Centers, the Iraq war, the Vietnam War, and Hurricane Katrina combined, perhaps a million people in the USA alone. Such a disaster would tear the fabric of American society. Our entire country might resemble the...
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Parents: Stop Killing Your Children Slowly
I think this angers me more than anything else. I want to slap parents silly when I see kids constantly chowing down on cereals, drinking those poisonous "fruit juices" in boxes marketed to imbecile parents as "healthy,' cookies, sweets non-stop, and then, when it's time for a meal -- even if it's a remotely healthy meal -- the kids either don't want to eat, or they want mac & cheese, pizza, or some other awful crap. Just go to a local mall sometime, and any mall in America will do. You'll see it: the lines at Jamba Juice (don't be a moron: that garbage isn't remotely healthy), Cinnabon, cookie stands, Cold Stone, you name it. Karen gets it. As does Dr. Mercola. Some breakfast cereals currently being marketed to U.S. children are more than half sugar by weight, according to Consumer Reports. A single serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg's Honey Smacks, can carry as much sugar as a glazed doughnut. And some brands have even more sugar and sodium when formulated for the U.S. market than the same brands have when sold in other countries. Post's Golden Crisp and Kellogg's Honey Smacks are both more than 50 percent...
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The Coming Firestorm
Holiday whatevers: A dozen posts, tomorrow -- to you. I'll do my best, which means, I intend to deliver quality, not cheap. A few might be only peripherally related to our subject matter, here. I'll save explanations for tomorrow, but I have become born again in music over the last couple of months, and it is precisely tied to the diet (oh, man, had I know about this in the college dorm... where the midnight pizzas put me to sleep). Alright, though I feel like expounding, I shall resist, and instead, give you this. That's Kenny Wayne Sheperd, Blue on Black, in acoustic. In general, if I love something in accoustic, I'm going to love it even more with electricity applied to the project. Get a load of the words. It's a song about futility, near as I can tell. This is one of a few tracks I've taken notice of lately and added to my library. Anyway, I have finally stopped hauling around my 200 or so CDs and am most of the way through burning them into iTunes. It is quite an experience, allow me to assure you, to rediscover your 20-something college youth in both feeling and...
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Barack: Call Art*, Criag**, or Keith*** ASAP; Time is of the Essence; 1/20 Draws Near
Totally (Trust me: WAY totally) apart from politics, this may be the leanest & buffed President ever. Not bad at all, with a bit of "guns" on -- uh, oh. Certainly a lower BF% than I'm currently sporting, but I could take you in an arm wrestle (or leg or bench press), any day. The reportage claims you do cardio and weights 45 minutes ever day. Too much. And dump the cardio, sir. Walk, instead (do it with your staff, until they're panting and need a nap for the rest of the day). And bump up the intensity of the weights, Mister President. I take it back. ...On second thought, perhaps it would be better if you spend about 18 hours in the gym every day... And don't forget: sleep is very important... (That should not be construed as supportive of anything but leaving me the eff alone -- R, D, or any other political, opportunist organism.) * De Vany ** Ballantine *** Norris I told you the next week would be a firestorm of posts. Starts today.
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New Additions to Blogroll
In addition to the specific links to specific posts I assemble regularly, there are some out there whose regular content is so good that they earn a permanent spot here in the "Blogroll," which I actually call "Other Resources," as they are outside this blog, and some are not blogs but reference sites. I've just added three new sites. At Darwin's Table Really a great blog by Dr. Dan Bassett, a PhD marine biologist out of New Zealand. Here's a great quote from his profile: The research I undertake is feeding physiology / behavior / ecology / evolution of fish. It was this reason that the paleo diet really appealed to me. I'm so used to looking at the evolutionary basis for why fish feed the way they do, and the paleo diet really applied this reasoning to humans, and so I could back it wholeheartedly. Essentially fish are not so different than us, if you put them on an artificial diet they get sick and fat. Millions of dollars have been spent trying to do this and it just never works as well as if you have fish feeding on what they evolved to eat. Dan practices a Paleo...
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Blog Design Issue
I recently added custom CSS code to have blockquotes show up with the border and background color. This is what I'm talking about: Here is the code I'm using: blockquote { border-left: 5px solid #CCCCCC; padding: 10px; background-color: #D6E6E5; } Since then, I have received a few emails from people using Internet Explorer that some of the center column is getting truncated on one side or the other, and while I would like to admonish everyone in the world to dump Gates and his software and to use Firefox, or even Apple's Safari for Windows, I know people just aren't going to do it. I'll try to track down what the issue is, however, and it might help to get an idea of how widespread it is if anyone having such issues would kindly drop a comment. If you do, please tell me what version of Internet Explorer you are using (From the menu bar: Help | About Internet Explorer). I have been unable to duplicate the issue on my PC at the office, running 7.0.x. If any of you CSS experts see anything wrong with that code, please let me know, or maybe suggest an alternative. Later: Looks like...
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Heaven
This is a brief diversion. We arrived a couple of hours ago at our vacation home, cabin, chalet -- whatever -- and I've got snow on the brain; since I had to dig and dig and dig, just to clear the stairs up to the thing, a clerestory style of construction, and then I had to dig and shovel more just to get to the water access. My brother will be up here tomorrow, staying at his friend's cabin. But he'll be around plenty enough, as I have a bottle of Maker's and one of The Glenlivet (I prefer The McCallan (12; over 18), but 'tis was is). Not that he's a lush, but I'll encourage him, so I can be. It's a vacation, we'll be here a week, and I've been damn good for the last week. I'll be pretty Paleo in food (we brought 5 pounds of of tri-tip and 6 of ribs -- and there's a great butcher around for the other numerous things I shall require). I will blog food porn, rest assured, but I plan also on enjoying distilled spirits. Yep. My bro's in South Lake Tahoe at the moment, a mere hour from where...
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