Life is Healthy

Week 36 - Light


Week 37 - Man-Made

I have a good friend called Simon, who moved back to Australia in 2002. He has a very distinctive square-ish shaped face, a thick dark crew cut with a precisely demarcated hairline, and rectangular glasses. Soon after he’d left, something strange started happening: I kept seeing people who looked like him. London seemed to be full of Caucasian men in their early 30s with distinctive square-ish shaped faces, thick dark crew cuts with precisely demarcated hairlines and rectangular glasses. It was like he’d died, and my poor bereaved brain kept seeing him everywhere. It was amazing how many people looked like him – even my girlfriend agreed when we saw one of them when we were out together, so I am not mental or anything. There is a possibility that I was just seeing the same man over and over again, who was probably getting quite annoyed with me staring at him and nearly saying “Simon, what are you... oh” every time I saw him, but I was pretty sure that Simon had multiple doppelgangers, perhaps all over the world.

So my idea was to set up a website called DoILookLikeSimonOrNot.com, along the same lines as AmIHotOrNot etc, where people (preferably Caucasian men in their early 30s with distinctive square-ish shaped faces, thick dark crew cuts with precisely demarcated hairlines and rectangular glasses) would send in photos of themselves, and other people would judge, against a pre-loaded photo of Simon, how much they looked liked Simon. Then, when I had enough ranked photos I would make Simon a big framed picture, with his photo in the middle, then the eight people who looked most like him arranged around him, then the next 16 people who looked most like him arranged around that in a 5x5 square.

But I’m a bit busy.

The Pentagon on Wednesday (29 / 9) gave U.S. $ 12 billion contract to Boeing to help modernize the B-52 weapons systems in more than eight years. "The contract provides for the acquisition and maintenance activities required to support the ongoing modernization of the B-52 weapon system," Department of Defense said in a statement in Washington.

On Tuesday, Boeing said that they has received a separate three-year U.S. $ 5.3 billion contract with U.S. Navy to create a 124 jet fighter. Under the terms of the agreement, Boeing from 2012 to 2015 will submit 66 aircraft and 58 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets fighter EA-18-G Growlers to the U.S. Navy.

B-52 is U.S. long-range heavy bomber, designed in 1948 by the Boeing Company and first flown in 1952. Originally intended as an atomic-bomb carrier capable of reaching the Soviet Union, it has proved highly adaptable and has remained in service as a conventional bomber, cruise-missile carrier, and maritime reconnaissance platform. It has a wingspan of 185 ft (56 m) and a length of more than 160 ft (49 m). Powered by eight jet engines, its maximum speed at 55,000 ft (17,000 m) is 595 mph (960 kph).

EA-18-G Growlers is capable of advanced electronic warfare aircraft, that can do missions to disrupt the opponent's radar system based on aircraft carriers to replace the EA-6B Prowler. Boeing shares rose more than one percent after hours trading in the middle of the announcement Wednesday.

Boeing is currently competing with rival Airbus from Europe to win the U.S. $ 40 billion project to renew the U.S. military tanker aircraft fleet.

U.S. officially has asked the Japanese government to withdraw from the oil project in Azadegan, Iran. The Japanese company Inpex Corp. has been involved in oil projects in Iran, so that the U.S. needs to issue the official request. This is related to the sanctions from Washington against the Islamic Republic who refuses to stop nuclear enrichment program.

Iran government insists, their nuclear enrichment program is for peaceful purposes. But the U.S. and his colleagues - Western countries - pointed the program to make weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. pressure against the Japanese government disclosed by Japanese media, the Yomiuri newspaper. Moreover, the Japanese government holds a majority stake in Inpex Corp., of 30 percent.

Inpex Corp. known as one of the biggest exploraion company for natural gas and oil in Indonesia and Australia, along with other oil-rich areas such as the Caspian Sea, Middle East, and South America. The company, which is focusing its efforts on the cleaner burning liquified natural gas (LNG), exports its products from Indonesia to Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Inpex Corp. has partnered with companies such as BP and Chevron to explore for and produce crude oil from fields in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Iran, and through the acquisition of Japan Oil Development has working interests in offshore oil fields in the United Arab Emirates.

Total population of wealthy people in Asia Pacific has experienced a major growth, rose 25.8 percent to 3 million people by 2009. In fact, the amount exceeds the population of wealthy people in Europe. The report said by the Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini has just been released 28 September 2010.

Property value of millionaires in the Asia Pacific region increased 30.9 percent to U.S. $ 9.7 trillion in 2009. Meanwhile, the number of super rich people in Asia Pacific rose 36.7 percent to 19,600.

"China and India become a motor of fastest growth of rich people in Asia Pacific, while Japan is still the most important market in Asia," said Wilson So, Head of Wealth Management at Merrill Lynch Global Wealth for the Asia Pacific region. This area is very promising and a strategic focus for the wealth management company. "

According to the report, the population of rich people in the Asia Pacific region is still focused on the top three countries, namely Japan, China and Australia. The three accounted for 76.1 percent of the total population of wealthy people in Asia Pacific, as well as controls 70 percent of the total wealth in the region.

Japan is by far the largest market for the Asia Pacific region which controls 54.6 percent of the population of millionaires and covers 40.3 percent of wealth in the region. Meanwhile, China became the second largest market in the region and fourth largest in the world with a total population of 477 thousand millionaires, or up 31 percent from a year earlier.

India is also experiencing rapid growth in 2009 with the increase in millionaire population and wealth as much as 50.9 percent and 53.8 percent. The increase was driven by the re-emergence of stock markets, as well as domestic economic strength.

"Asia-Pacific proved to be the toughest region in the economic crisis," said Bertrand Lavayssière, Managing Director Global Financial Services, Capgemini.

Last month we released two new stats gadgets to the Blogger in Draft testing ground; after hearing your feedback and making a few tweaks, we’re happy to announce that they are both now ready for the main stage. The new-and-improved Popular Posts and Blog’s Stats gadgets can be added to your blog right now from the Gadget Directory by clicking Add a gadget from the Design | Page Elements tab.

Both of these gadgets take advantage of the traffic data that is being collected by Blogger Stats and provide an easy way for you to pass that info on to the readers of your blog.

The Popular Posts gadget will automatically find and display your blog’s posts that have the most pageviews. You can choose whether to display image thumbnails or post snippets in addition to the post title. You can also choose the time window to be used for calculating pageviews and the number of posts you’d like to display.

The Blog’s Stats gadget lets you show off pageview data for your blog, with a handful of configuration options that are easily controlled. You can choose from a variety of styles and display options to suit your blog. We also provide an option to let you select the time window to be used for calculating pageviews.

We hope you enjoy these new gadgets and want to thank you again for your feedback as we fine-tuned them to their current state.

The stones on Brighton beach are predominantly of three colours – red, white and blue. What I want to do is to separate out whole skipfuls of the white stones, then at the lowest spring tide to dig a trench perpendicular to the sea, all the way from the lowest wave ebb up to the road, and then fill it up with all the white stones.

On a continuation of this line, a camera would be mounted high up on a building looking out to sea over the beach. Then I would take a long time-lapse series of photos over many days, charting the increasing entropy of the stones as the combination of wave action and people walking on them mixed them all back up again until all traces of the white line were gone.

This film would then be called White Line, and it would represent our powerlessness to control nature and impose order on the world.

But I’m a bit busy.

I made it to the gym this morning. I got in 40 minutes on an elliptical. However, I haven't worked out with weights for a while. I want to get back into it. I haven't been getting up in time to do much of anything expect a quick aerobic workout. These dark, cool mornings—I just want to stay in bed.

Well, I'm on day three of the, um, colon flush. As you my recall Dr. Natura sent me a Colonix kit. It's enough to do a 60-day program. Hmmm. I just thought—is someone trying to tell me something? I've never had much of a problem telling people they were full it. Maybe word has gotten out. . .nah. Anyway, it's going OK. The kit contains three supplements:

1. The Intestinal Cleanser, which is a fiber supplement.
2. The Paranil capsules that contain 18 detoxifying herbs to purify the colon and liver.
3. The KleriTea herbal tea for regularity and detoxification.

Manufacturer of BlackBerry, Research In Motion (RIM), Canada, finally announced a new device in the form of tablet computer, on Monday (9/27/2010) in the RIM Developer Conference in San Francisco. If previously rumored that the tablet will be named BlackPad, this new tablet evidently named the BlackBerry Playbook.

BlackBerry Playbook has 7 inches screen, smaller than Apple iPad. With an operating system made by QNX Software Systems that was acquired by RIM in the early years. Unlike iPad that has no camera, Playbook has two cameras in front and behind. This device will be released in April 2011. However, RIM has not revealed the price, stating only be sold with a price range that competes with the iPad.

There was no cellular connection on the device, but there is WiFi to access the Internet. Although not able to call, this tablet can be connected wirelessly via BlackBerry devices and via a WiFi connection as a second screen that is wider so that the users can see its activity when make a phone call. WiFi can also be used to access mobile services via BlackBerry.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie stated the device was designed as a standalone product to provide web access experience perfectly. RIM does not apply the approach of applications to access various web-based services including Flash with this Playbook device. "It means that the device will not depend on third-party applications or app," said Balsillie.

Playbook is designed as a consumer device that will be sold in retail. RIM would have positioned the product as a tool for the enterprise to business needs.

According to a report released by Inodesia's Bureau of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika / BMKG), in 2009, carbon emissions rose sharply as much as 10ppm to 382ppm (parts per million) from 372ppm.

These figures are alarming. The reason is, when matched with the figures released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the rate of growth of global carbon emissions per year in 2009 only equal to 1.61 ppm.

Increasing population, economic growth and the absence of significant anticipatory measures, carbon emissions in this country will continue to rise. At this growth rate, Indonesia would not be able to fulfill his promise to the United Nations to reduce carbon emissions by 26% in 2020.

Ecospec Global Technology, a Singapore-based technology and research company try to offer solutions. Through a new system that is named CSNOx, Ecospec managed to deliver a system that can efficiently remove sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from exhaust.

For information, SO2 and NOx emissions are contained in large vessels, power plants, factories and industrial processing. The technique used by Ecospec can also press the carbon dioxide (CO2) in large numbers simultaneously.

"This technology is important for terrestrial and marine industry globally," said Chew Hwee Hong, Founder and Managing Director Ecospec, in his statement, 29 September 2010. "This technology can eliminate the harmful emissions in a single process and can be installed in all types of ships," he said.

The system is named CSNOx using water as medium. Not only reducing gas emissions that contribute to climate change and air pollution, a process that is ran by CSNOx achieved without the need for chemicals or additives materials, and do not result in acidification of the sea, or produces by-products that need to be stored and disposed.

Microsoft and Automattic, parent company of WordPress.com announced that Windows Live Spaces blogging service will be replaced by WordPress.com. Users of these services can transfer their blog via the migration tools from today.

In his statement, Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Windows Live Product Management Microsoft said, in recent weeks, his party and Automattic have discussed about cooperation and integration on the internet.

"When we saw the need for blogging and what is offered by various companies, we are interested in what is done by WordPress.com," Mehta said, as quoted by Mashable, Tuesday, September 28, 2010.

For that, according to Mehta, than Windows Live invest to create a rival blogging service, Microsoft decided to bring them through the WordPress.com blogging solution.

"Starting today, users of Windows Live Spaces will have the option to switch their blogs to WordPress," said Paul Kim, Vice President of User Growth, Automattic, on its official blog. "To simplify, we make the importer from Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com."

In addition, Kim said, users of Windows Live will be offered to create a blog in WordPress when they will create a new blog.

For information, WordPress.com currently accommodate 14 million blogs. If half of the 30 million blogs on Windows Live Spaces switch, it will be a very significant acquisition for WordPress.

The testing turned out OK. While I have a condition in my esophagus that will never go away, it is not cancer. Years of acid reflux have eroded my esophagus to the point that it will always be damaged, but right now it can be treated with medication and common sense diet choices and drinking lots of water. And  don't have to go back for two years. Thank God for that one. I really hate how much time I've spent at the hospital over the last year. I just want to be well already.

That's my big news for the day.

While condoms are available and are preferred for  preventing sexually transmitted diseases, many can’t access other birth control. (EPA Photo)

My son-in-law loves me, even though he insists on calling me Lynnie every chance he gets.

“Goodbye, Laryngitis Lynnie!” he said yesterday as I was leaving Pittsburgh, big grin on his face.

Love you, too, Matt. *eyeroll*

It happens every couple of years, this laryngitis nonsense that always eventually makes sense. I felt it coming on Saturday afternoon, and sure enough by midnight, my voice was toast. I talked (actually I whispered) a little too much early yesterday which made it worse before I got smart and shut the heck up. For 28 hours I’ve been silent and must remain silent for at least another 24-48. Doctor’s orders.

I’m relegated to texting, emailing and hand-writing people I’d normally just talk to. I may have no vocal chords to speak of right now, but I still have a lot to say. Too much, perhaps. Just ask my massage therapist. A normal person with laryngitis would go in and write, “I have laryngitis and cannot talk” and just enjoy a silent massage.

Not me.

My massage therapist doubles as my shrink. I brought my note pad and pen into the room today and wrote to her while she worked the kinks out of my neck and knee. Only when I was on my stomach was I rendered speechless, so to speak, but it was then that I truly relaxed and heard that voice in my head say, “Chillax, woman.”

It’s not like I yammer on constantly. In fact, my days are usually filled with a lot of silence. But it’s silence born from being alone, not from an inability to talk. On silent days, I have the option of picking up the phone and calling someone. I can chat with the mailman. Say hello to my neighbor or the person who makes my latte. This self-imposed silence takes concentration. Mindfulness.

The reality is that right now, I can’t talk. It hurts. And when something hurts, you take care of it, right? Isn’t that what you do?

Probably not always, is my guess. How often do we put ourselves first, even when necessary? We’re busy, we have things we absolutely have to do, and we tell ourselves it’s OK – maybe even preferred – to care about everyone else, but not ourselves. We have too little time, we’re not that important, and so we suffer in silence instead of appreciate or welcome silence.

I thought it was funny (not “ha ha” funny, but funny) that it is this silence – this “I can’t talk even if I wanted to” silence – that showed me that I fill my vocally-able times with a whole lot of bullsh*t. Sorry for the expletive, but it’s the truth. How many times do we say exactly what we want to, with no preludes, no great big explanations and no apologies? How often do we just get to the point? Say what we need?

I’m certainly not the queen of succinct talking, especially when I have to ask for something. I hem. I haw. I try to read the other person to see if I have the right to ask what it is I want to ask. It comes down to self-esteem and self-worth, and I waste a lot of words winding my way through that maze. That was my MO when I was 300 pounds, that’s for sure. I hardly ever stuck up for myself or asserted what I needed unless I was sure I’d get it. My self-esteem was minus zero back then. Glad to say it’s on the plus side now, but still could use some improvement. I’m working on it.

It’s “helps,” if you will, to get laryngitis. I’m beholden to a pen and a piece of paper. A phone with 100 characters of texting capability. I have to be very succinct when I convey what I need. No BS, no fluff stuff that rarely belongs in a conversation.

“Will U buy me Vit C?” I wrote to Larry before he went to work. If I could talk, I’d have said my doctor said I should take vitamin C while I’m sick, then had a big long debate with him about whether vitamin C really does any good and maybe I shouldn’t waste my time and money, when in the end I know I’d have asked him to buy it for me anyway. So I bypassed the BS and simply “said,” will you buy me vitamin C? And he said, “Yes.” That’s all. Just, “Yes. 100 tabs OK?”

I wish it didn’t take such a drastic condition for me to wake up and appreciate silences; to knock off the BS and get to the heart of what I want to say. I’m sure it will be a few more laryngitis episodes before I learn that lesson completely.

My voice is toast. I just tried to say something and notta. I can’t even laugh. I even sneeze in silence. So there will be a lot of time in the upcoming day or two for silent thought and reflection. I’m not going to waste it. Because like the women in the Loreal commercial, I’m worth it. I’m worth this silent time. I just hope deep down I absorb it, believe it, and speak more mindfully when my voice returns.

I did not post last week because I have yet another health issue I've been tending to. I had to have a biopsy of my esophagus. That was about a zero on my fun scale. I still don't know the outcome, but I'm hoping it'll be OK. At least OK enough that I don't have to worry about another surgery until next year.

And this leads me right into things people send me because of this blog. The good folks at Dr Natura sent me a Colonix kit. What's a Colonix kit you may be asking? Well, it's exactly what you think it is. It's an internal cleansing kit. I will be trying this out for two months and reporting on the progress as I go. I started this morning. There is a fiber supplement that you're supposed to mix and drink in the morning. I didn't do that this morning because I have to take so many prescriptions, I don't want them to just flush out without my getting the benefit of them. So I'll have to figure out how to bring it with me, and drink it at work.

Actually, this couldn't have come at a better time. I have so many digestive issues. Maybe this will help. I hope this will help. At any rate, it probably won't hurt.

Tomorrow I go to the doctor, and he will tell me how the test came out. What a great way to spend a birthday.

I managed to workout this morning. Check that out on the Daily Mile.

And I'll let you know how things came out.

dreamhost review

Glycoalkaloids in Commonly Eaten Potatoes

Like many edible plants, potatoes contain substances designed to protect them from marauding creatures. The main two substances we're concerned with are alpha-solanine and alpha-chaconine, because they are the most toxic and abundant. Here is a graph of the combined concentration of these two glycoalkaloids in common potato varieties (1):

We can immediately determine three things from this graph:

• Different varieties contain different amounts of glycoalkaloids.
• Common commercial varieties such as russet and white potatoes are low in glycoalkaloids. This is no accident. The glycoalkaloid content of potatoes is monitored in the US.
  
• Most of the glycoalkaloid content is in the skin (within 1 mm of the surface). That way, predators have to eat through poison to get to the flesh. Fortunately, humans have peelers.

I'll jump the gun and tell you that the generally accepted safe level of potato glycoalkaloids is 200 mcg/g fresh weight (1). You can see that all but one variety are well below this level when peeled. Personally, I've never seen the Snowden variety in the store or at the farmer's market. It appears to be used mostly for potato chips.

Glycoalkaloid Toxicity in Animals

Potato glycoalkaloids are undoubtedly toxic at high doses. They have caused many harmful effects in animals and humans, including (1, 2):

• Death (humans and animals)
  
• Weight loss, diarrhea (humans and animals)
  
• Anemia (rabbits)
• Liver damage (rats)
  
• Lower birth weight (mice)
  
• Birth defects (in animals injected with glycoalkaloids)
  
• Increased intestinal permeability (mice)

However, it's important to remember the old saying "the dose makes the poison". The human body is designed to handle a certain amount of plant toxins with no ill effects. Virtually every plant food, and a few animal foods, contains some kind of toxic substance. We're constantly bombarded by gamma rays, ultra violet rays, bacterial toxins, free radicals, and many other potentially harmful substances. In excess, they can be deadly, but we are adapted to dealing with small amounts of them, and the right dose can even be beneficial in some cases.

All of the studies I mentioned above, except one, involved doses of glycoalkaloids that exceed what one could get from eating typical potatoes. They used green or blemished potatoes, isolated potato skins, potato sprouts or isolated glycoalkaloids (more on this later). The single exception is the last study, showing that normal doses of glycoalkaloids can aggravate inflammatory bowel disease in transgenic mice that are genetically predisposed to it (3)*.

What happens when you feed normal animals normal potatoes? Not much. Many studies have shown that they suffer no ill effects whatsoever, even at high intakes (1, 2). This has been shown in primates as well (4, 5, 6). In fact, potato-based diets appear to be generally superior to grain-based diets in animal feed. As early as 1938, Dr. Edward Mellanby showed that grains, but not potatoes, aggravate vitamin A deficiency in rats and dogs (7). This followed his research showing that whole grains, but not potatoes, aggravate vitamin D deficiency due to their high phytic acid content (Mellanby. Nutrition and Disease. 1934). Potatoes were also a prominent part of Mellanby's highly effective tooth decay reversal studies in humans, published in the British Medical Journal in 1932 (8, 9).

Potatoes partially protect rats against the harmful effects of excessive cholesterol feeding, when compared to wheat starch-based feed (10). Potato feeding leads to a better lipid profile and intestinal short-chain fatty acid production than wheat starch or sugar in rats (11). I wasn't able to find a single study showing any adverse effect of normal potato feeding in any normal animal. That's despite reading two long review articles on potato glycoalkaloids and specifically searching PubMed for studies showing a harmful effect. If you know of one, please post it in the comments section.

In the next post, I'll write about the effects of potatoes in the human diet, including data on the health of traditional potato-eating cultures... and a curious experiment by the Washington State Potato Commission that will begin on October 1.


*Interleukin-10 knockout mice. IL-10 is a cytokine involved in the resolution of inflammation and these mice develop inflammatory bowel disease (regardless of diet) due to a reduced capacity to resolve inflammation.

Apparently Apple continue to be terrorized by its competitors. After Galaxy Tab Samsung launched some time ago, Apple iPad will have a new 'guest' from neighboring countries, namely BlackPad, tablet computers made by Research In Motion (RIM).

After Samsung Galaxy Tab appears with OS Android, Research In Motion, the BlackBerry device manufacturer and service from Canada, ready to launch BlackPad that comes with QNX operating system on the annual event of BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco.

For information, software made by QNX has been used in various types of applications, from BMW vehicle navigation, to the software for U.S. military's six-wheel unmanned vehicles, which is created by Carnegie Mellon University in 2006, the tanks Crusher.

Reportedly, RIM also took Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan to create and design BlackPad. As for the chip, manufacturer have just launched the BlackBerry Torch in Indonesia has appointed Marvell Technology Group, Inc. as a partner.

Referring to the previous news, BlackPad will come with 9.7-inch touch screen, similar to the iPad. The price is pegged relatively cheaper, but still in the same range with the Apple's start from U.S. $ 499.

There are Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth in it. Users also can connect to the internet via their BlackBerry, unlike Apple which prohibit IPAD users accessing the 3G data service via iPhone.