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Monday, September 30, 2013

Mr. Anon's Southwestern Corn Pudding


Mr. Anon's Southwestern Corn Pudding

Ingredients:

1 14-oz can cream-style corn
1 14-oz can whole kernel corn or niblets, drained
1 to 3 4-oz can(s) diced green chilies, to taste  (or sub 1 can diced jalapeƱos for one of chilies for more spice, or sub lightly sauteed fresh diced peppers if available, to taste)
6 large eggs
1-1/2 cups soft fresh cheese (ricotta or quark)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 lb to 1 lb diced or shredded pepper-jack cheese, depending on your taste and calorie requirement (or sub medium cheddar cheese for part of pepper-jack cheese.  Using all cheddar tends to overpower the taste of the corn, though.)
3/4 cup dry cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

(Optional:  1 teaspoon onion powder or 1/3 cup dried onion flakes, rehydrated, or 1 cup diced fresh onion, lightly sauteed, or 1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions)
(Optional:  1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram or oregano and/or 1/2 cup fresh chopped cilantro or parsley)
Preparation:
Combine all ingredients well in a large bowl.
 
Transfer to large lightly oiled or buttered casserole dish and bake in 325 degree F oven for about 45 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out almost clean (it will continue cooking for a while after you take it out).  Check at 30 minutes if using a shallow dish.  Avoid overcooking, as it will toughen the eggs and make the final product "weep" once you serve it.

Allow to rest 10 minutes before serving.

Chef's Notes: This is a very flexible recipe.  If you have fresh corn cut from the cob, use about 4 cups, and process half in the food processor with some of the egg until smooth.  For a more custardy/quiche-like texture, use less cornmeal and sub milk for some of the fresh cheese.  Control the fat content by the type and amount of cheese you use, sub milk for the sour cream, and sub extra egg whites for a couple of the egg yolks.  Make it even heartier by adding a can of drained black beans, if you like.)

A Year of Starvation: My Experience, by K.S.



From the Survival Blog

Though food shortages and malnutrition are popular discussion topics for preppers, I doubt that many of us have experienced a real, prolonged lack of food. Certainly we’ve all had a day or two – maybe even more, for the gutsy– with minimal or no food, but often those days happen by choice and are for practice, with a set end in sight. How many of us have gone weeks, months, or more on limited rations? How many of us know what to expect and how we’d feel? How many of us are ready for the surprises and challenges that prolonged malnutrition will bring?

More than ten years ago, as a teenager, I grappled with anorexia nervosa for almost a year. Although dealing with a deadly disease (a
mortality rate of 10% is often quoted. ) may not be the way most of us will confront starvation, many of the physical and mental symptoms I experienced will translate. If you’ve never really starved before, then you may be caught off-guard by what you experience if (hopefully never when) it happens. I hope that what I relate will help you know what to expect.

In this article, I plan to describe my physical, mental, and emotional experiences during illness and recovery. I also hope to sketch out some basic treatments and coping mechanisms for staying as healthy as can be possible during starvation. Due to the passage of time, and the memory lapses associated with anorexia, I know I’ll omit some details that could be helpful, and for that I apologize in advance. Moreover, I am not a doctor, and this article is not intended to offer medical advice, to substitute for professional care and consultation, or to guarantee or provide any health outcome.

Finally, anorexia nervosa is a serious physical and mental disorder affecting many men, women, and even children worldwide. If you or someone you know are dealing with it, or want more information about it, please utilize these trusted resources:




What you may experience right at the onset of starvation:

·        Emotional issues. Some people experience an initial euphoria (similar to a runner’s high) as they, in the initial phases of starvation, feel invincible. “Look what I can do with less food”, they think. “I still feel great, strong, and healthy, and a lack of food isn’t slowing me down! It’s just mind over matter.” This high won’t last – the body and the mind will grow weaker over time.

Other folks feel an increase in stress. “Food was already in short supply – how will I make it now,” they wonder. All their thoughts and energies start being directed towards meals, eating, and supplies, with little effort left over for life’s other requirements. Stress also takes a toll on the body and mind.

There may be other emotions happening that are quite different, or at least unexpected. This can disrupt your routine and feelings of normalcy, and make it harder to get through a day. Try now, or as soon as possible, to establish and stick to a routine and schedule. As I’ll describe further below, routine, repetition, and structure are incredibly essential to making it through, and recovering from, starvation.
What you may experience in the middle of a period of starvation:

·        Emotional issues. The high is probably gone, and the reality of starvation may be kicking in. This can prompt depression, anxiety, and more stress. These emotions and feelings weigh on us even during times of plenty. They may be even harder to deal with as your physical resources are depleted. Try to identify your feelings, verbalize them to someone, and work through as much as possible so that your limited energy can be directed not at carrying tough feelings inside, but at doing what will need to be done in a survival situation.

·        Osteopenia and osteoporosis. It’s possible that my bones weren’t robust to begin with; I was always a smaller kid. But what’s known is that at age 16, I had osteopenia in both hip joints and full-on osteoporosis in vertebrae L1-L4 (lower back).These  physical issues are usually found in 80-year-olds;  I was not a normal growing teenager. Three and four years later, I broke my left and right foot, respectively. Though bone scans didn’t explicitly show problem areas in my feet, I’m convinced that the low bone density brought about by starvation was a cause. Fortunately, I haven’t had a break since then. Be extra cautious of bone health. Prepare your medical supplies to take care of breaks and fractures. If possible, supplement your diet with calcium. The best way is via whole foods like leafy greens and raw milk, but if those aren’t available, take calcium in tablet or pill form.

·        Memory issues. The human brain needs fats to operate, and fats are in short supply in a starvation experience. I’d had an average to good memory as a child; remembering complicated dance routines or memorizing passages from Shakespeare presented no problems. In the last three months (out of eleven total months of restricted food intake), though, memory work that had formerly been routine became noticeably laborious and nearly impossible. This realization, and the realization that I couldn’t come up with any mnemonic work-arounds, prompted frustration and depression – which you can see is related to emotional state.

Additionally, animal fats (grass-fed butter especially) and some plant fats (avocado, coconut oil) are essential brain nutrients. Even if other foods are in short supply, if you still have quality fats available, add more to your diet. Try to avoid processed vegetable fats like canola oil, though.

·        Physical symptoms.  Not every person experiencing starvation experiences all the possible physical symptoms of it. For example, it’s often brought up that a starving person will start to grow soft, downy hair in certain places on their body (back, face, arms, etc) to trap heat and keep the person warm. I didn’t experience that. What’s important to take away here is that lack of any particular starvation symptom doesn’t mean that the person isn’t actually starving, it just means that it manifests differently in different individuals. You may grow weaker, feel dizzy more often, start to black out or faint (as I did), and be unable to do more heavy-duty tasks. In a survival situation, where medical help may be non-existent, it’s so important to be careful, especially because there may be outdoor tasks with power equipment. Work with a buddy, don’t over-exert yourself, take breaks, stay hydrated, and be realistic.

·        Obsession with food. As the amount of food I actually ate decreased, the amount of time I thought about it increased. In order to direct unwanted thoughts of food away from eating, I started reading cooking magazines and cookbooks, baking food for others, ogling other students’ lunches at school, and in general obsessing over eating (and not eating). In a survival situation, it may be irresponsible and wasteful to just think about food, rather than doing what needs to get done. Unfortunately, it’s really hard not to think about food when you’re starving – that’s how the body keeps telling you that you are, in fact, starving. Find a way (via routine, schedule, structure, and the assistance of others) not to let those thoughts control you.

What you may likely experience while recovering from starvation:

·        Long physical recovery time. It took about a decade after the initial diagnosis for my body to be essentially completely healed. My weight no longer fluctuates based on a day’s or week’s eating habits, I no longer have weak bones, my heart beats normally, and I don’t get abnormal dizziness. The dizziness and erratic heartbeat resolved after a few years, the osteopenia and osteoporosis healed (with a closely monitored, high-calcium diet, and weight-bearing exercise) after about eight years, and finally, now in 2013, my body has established a stable set point. The ratio of ten years of healing to make up for one year’s starvation may not be too far off.

·        Difficulty regulating normal eating patterns. This remained consistently incredibly difficult for almost a decade after the hospitalization, even under clinical supervision and with a structured meal plan. Don’t think that just because you don’t actually “want” to starve (the relation of will to eating disorders is debatable) that it’ll be easy to start eating regularly again. It won’t be. After the body experiences starvation, when it is presented with sufficient food again, it remembers the starvation state and tries to avoid that in the future. The body plans ahead, in a way, by increasing your food cravings in order to build up reserves (i.e. extra weight) to stave off possible future times of food uncertainty.

·        Emotional issues. It’s hard to experience physical changes in one’s own body without accompanying emotions and feelings. Sometimes, when bodies change via starvation or refeeding, it’s a traumatic experience, because it’s out of our control. Feelings of helplessness, being out of control, anger, and confusion can happen. These feelings, while powerful, are normal. You may be surprised to find you’re not thrilled when food is abundant again. Your normal way of life has changed once more, and again you have to cope with something new – plenty to eat. Get support from others during this time – even just talking about it with someone who can relate can be helpful. Again, use the buddy system, have a routine, plan your meals, and keep life as structured as possible during this transition time.

What you probably won’t experience during or after starvation:

·        Refusal to eat available food.

·        Denial of the problem.

·        Aversion to treatment.

·        Phobia of gaining weight.

·        All these symptoms are more representative of a patient in denial of a real medical and mental issue. If you or someone you know starts to manifest these behaviors, something more serious may be going on, and you should consult with a medical professional about how to proceed. My best guess is that most folks undergoing involuntary starvation will not show these symptoms, but again, YMMV, and I am not a doctor.

What this means for you (with concrete steps to take):

·        As food availability decreases, access to warmth, shelter, and good hygiene must increase. Your body will have essentially zero extra resources to spare to keep your temperature up and to fend off infection. It’s crucial that you take as much physical stress off it as possible. Wear hats, warm clothes, down, and wool. Keep your extremities covered – they’re often very difficult to warm back up, especially if you are prone to Reynaud’s Syndrome. Mittens can be better than gloves for this. You must also keep warm enough when asleep, which is when body temperature can often fall and the heart rate decrease. In the hospital, patients were often cocooned in Bair Hugger blankets (heavy-duty medical grade electric blankets). You might not have access to something of that caliber, but if electric blankets are a possibility, they could save your health. If not, again, use down and wool, and sleep with someone else if possible to utilize body heat (much like hypothermia treatment). Finally, it will be harder to stave off infection and disease – your body is working overtime just keeping basic systems going. Clean out cuts and scrapes, brush and floss your teeth, don’t pick your nose, wear a surgical mask... do whatever it takes to avoid unnecessary infection and exposure. You don’t have the physical leeway that a healthy, non-starved person does.

·        Physical exercise, while not a panacea, shouldn’t be totally avoided. It’s true that you won’t have a lot of energy to spare. However, if you, afraid of wasting energy, just sit inside and do nothing all day, your muscles will atrophy even further. It’s essential to maintain some kind of muscle tone, especially as your bones may become weaker. I’m convinced that one of the reasons I didn’t suffer a disastrous break in my back or hips was because of the level of weight-bearing activity I maintained during illness and recovery. Gardening, child care, and cleaning the house could be good lower-impact options.

·        It is very unlikely that you will be able to recover from starvation alone. Your brain won’t be working right, your body will be startlingly weak, and you won’t be able to correctly assess your physical, mental, or emotional states, or your physical needs, for that matter. You need an external point of view on your situation, which is hard enough to do when well fed. One of the more helpful things I practiced in recovery was making lunches for the younger kids in treatment. It would’ve been too easy to skimp a little (or, in a SHTF-type situation, to give yourself a little more than everyone else) on my own meals – I had no such investment in their lunches. I made their sandwiches with exact, measured amounts ; because of my mind not working so well about myself, I’d never have been able to do that for my own lunch. Find a buddy in your group who will do this for you; do it for them, as well. Plan ahead of time, when you’ve got enough food, how you’ll go about caring for each other when it’s a starvation situation. Develop a schedule and framework now to follow then. Get it on paper and put it in your resources binder. Chances are not good that you’ll be able to do all this under stress and without food.

If I had to narrow down the take-away message about real starvation to just the essentials, they would be these two points:

·        You cannot think straight when you’re starving. No matter how much you think you’ll be different – that you’ve got more willpower, more backup plans, more experience, more toughness, whatever – starvation is going to affect your mind, and affect it drastically. Your memory, emotional stability, perception of reality will all change. In fact, in some ways, starvation affects the brain more than it does the physical body, and I don’t think many people will be ready for that.

·        You cannot recover from starvation alone. Again, no matter how much willpower, toughness, backup planning, or whatever you have, I posit that it’ll be essentially impossible to return to mental, emotional, and physical health by yourself. Each of those strands of health weaves into the others, so if you, alone, are struggling emotionally, that’ll affect your mental and physical health – it’s the same for any of those strands. Having even one other person supporting you means you now have a source of strength and objectivity that you didn’t have when you were alone. Get a group; make a plan; find a partner – it’ll save your life.

I don’t wish starvation upon anyone. It can be not only physically but also mentally and emotionally devastating. I hope this article serves to highlight the seriousness of starvation, whether voluntary or involuntary, and helps those dealing with it to find the resources they need to survive and thrive.

6 Months in the Middle Ages: Surviving the Moscow Winter



       An interesting link with lot's of pictures can be found at:  http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20130923/183672406/Six-Months-in-the-Middle-Ages-Surviving-the-Moscow-Winter.html

Bali


Bali

       A wiki link on this island and province of Indonesia can be found at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali

Another disarmament story


Marines Plan Troop Cuts, Command Headquarters Relocations by 2017


Budget cuts will force the Marine Corps to trim the “strategy-driven” force design it had envisioned and shift toward reduced troop strength and the elimination of a three-star command headquarters, a key planning officer said on Thursday.

Marine Maj. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., the Marines’ point man on the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Review being prepared for release in February, said his year-old structure review group had settled on 186,000 as the best troop strength for the Marines, but that the 2011 Budget Control Act required dropping it down to 182,000.

McKenzie spoke at a Navy League breakfast in Arlington, Va., about what to expect in the fifth QDR. “The Marines express our strategy in end strength, in human beings that we deliver to the battlefield, not equipment,” he said. He said the force has averaged around 196,000 since the Vietnam era, but rose to 202,000 for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The cut from the current 194,000 troops would be accomplished by 2017, he said, adding under questioning that if sequestration continued, the “lowest risk band” option the Corps could stomach would be 174,000.

That smaller force would require a “1-to-2 dwell force ratio,” assigning Marines to six months of deployment, followed by 12 at home. “We’re the only service that accepts this ratio as a steady state,” McKenzie said. “The young members like it, but the officers who have families don’t.” Reserves would draw down from 39,600 to 38,500 but still be available as a crucial “shock absorber” for the smaller Marine Corps, he added.

The Marines’ probable contribution to the QDR -- which ultimately is the responsibility of the Office of the Defense Secretary -- would also involve cutting tanks and artillery, as well as doing away with a three-star expeditionary force headquarters command currently in Camp LeJeune, N.C., and consolidating it with one East Coast headquarters in Norfolk, Va. The new command would complement an expeditionary task force headquarters in Okinawa, Japan, and one based in Camp Pendleton, Calif., that is deployable anywhere. “That’s a significant change,” he said.

What will be deemphasized, he said, are long-term stabilization activities such as cooperative threat-response exercises with allies.

McKenzie said the Pentagon’s planned pivot to Asia will not be slowed by the new force design, adding that any coming action in the Mediterranean region, such as Syria, can be handled by forward-positioned forces in Spain and Africa. “The coin of the realm” for a Marine Expeditionary unit is that it is forward- deployed, but it can’t be everywhere,” he said. “If we had to go to a major conflict, we’d be all in -- everybody goes, no rotation” and activities elsewhere would not happen.

The controversial F-35 joint fighter jet would remain “a highest priority” on the QDR, he said. “It is on track, and I’m comfortable with the design,” he added. “It is a versatile platform and has a deterrent effect on the enemy.”

McKenzie also backed the amphibious combat vehicle, saying the commandant will soon make decisions on its design, affordability and desirable speed.

“Many think the QDR [has] had marginal impact,” McKenzie said, adding that the Obama administration’s recent internal Strategic Choices and Management Review “ate into some of our time” that should have begun in January. But the coming document will benefit from that earlier work, and will be supplemented 90 days later, he said, by an assessment by the National Defense Panel led by former Defense Secretary William Perry and retired Gen. John Abizaid. Ordinarily, that panel “grades the QDR,” he said, but “this time it will be a parallel effort.”

Worse Is the New Normal


Mid-20th-century assumptions of generational progress no longer obtainable


No one has ever before attempted to devise a uniform health system for 300 million people — for the very good reason that it probably can’t be done. Britain’s National Health Service serves a population less than a fifth the size of America’s and is the third-largest employer on the planet after the Indian National Railways and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the last of which is now largely funded by American taxpayers through interest payment on federal debt. A single-payer U.S. system would be bigger than Britain’s NHS, India’s railways, and China’s army combined, at least in its bureaucracy. So, as in banking and housing and college tuition and so many other areas of endeavor, Washington is engaging in a kind of under-the-counter nationalization, in which the husk of a nominally private industry is conscripted to enforce government rules — and ruthlessly so, as Michelle Malkin and many others have discovered.

Obama’s pointless, traceless super-spending is now (as they used to say after 9/11) “the new normal.” Nancy Pelosi assured the nation last weekend that everything that can be cut has been cut and there are no more cuts to be made. And the disturbing thing is that, as a matter of practical politics, she may well be right. Many people still take my correspondent’s view: If you have old money well managed, you can afford to be stupid — or afford the government’s stupidity on your behalf. If you’re a social-activist celebrity getting $20 million per movie, you can afford the government’s stupidity. If you’re a tenured professor or a unionized bureaucrat whose benefits were chiseled in stone two generations ago, you can afford it. If you’ve got a wind farm and you’re living large on government “green energy” investments, you can afford it. If you’ve got the contract for signing up Obamaphone recipients, you can afford it.

But out there beyond the islands of privilege most Americans don’t have the same comfortably padded margin for error, and they’re hunkering down. Obamacare is something new in American life: the creation of a massive bureaucracy charged with downsizing you — to a world of fewer doctors, higher premiums, lousier care, more debt, fewer jobs, smaller houses, smaller cars, smaller, fewer, less; a world where worse is the new normal. Would Americans, hitherto the most buoyant and expansive of people, really consent to live such shrunken lives? If so, mid-20th-century America and its assumptions of generational progress will be as lost to us as the Great Ziggurat of Ur was to 19th-century Mesopotamian date farmers.

George Orwell, after attending a meeting of impoverished but passive miners, remarked sadly that “there is no turbulence left in England.” The Democrats, and much of the Republican establishment, have made a bet that there is no turbulence left in America, and the citizenry will stand mute before Obamacare’s wrecking ball. Unless they’re willing to accept a worse life for their children and grandchildren, middle-class Americans need to prove them wrong.

A World Clock


A World Clock

 

From an email...

 

Amazing clock!

I had not seen this one before

 

You've never seen a clock like this one..........

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

 

Poster's comment:

 

I can't vouch for the accuracy.

Dick and Jane reading books


Dick and Jane reading books

               Customer reviews from Amazon.com

The Dick and Jane series came out during a (strange) time when phonics was not being taught. If you use this book with your child, it'll be easy to understand why phonics wrongly fell out of favor. You'll find that your child, if she is ready, will learn to sight read words faster than she could with flash cards. It happens so quickly that it makes you understand the temptation to skip the phonics step.

My recommendation is that you use this book as a supplement to a good phonics program. For example, if your child knows her letters and her basic sounds, and she is beginning to read phonetically in her school program, you can then use this book to help build confidence and add to her sight-reading vocabulary. It'll give you lots of opportunity to praise progress too.

My daughter started this book at home when she was six and beginning first grade. She had a solid grounding in phonics, but reading was still pretty slow and tedious. It only took about five weeks to fully master the book and read any part at a relatively rapid pace. I built a reading vocabulary list in the order that words appeared in the book (see note below). We went over the list of learned words before each session, which kept her from forgetting faster than she was learning.

The fact that the book is a compendium of three earlier volumes makes it a little awkward in its progression of adding sight words. The hardest pages to read are about two-thirds of the way through the book at the end of the second volume. In fact, the best approach may be to read from page one to page 79 (about half way through the second volume), then jump to the start of the third volume and skip back and forth from that point as you alternately work through the third volume and the second half of the second.I gave this book four stars out of five, because it's about as good as it can get without being phonics oriented. It's a terrific bargain with lots of content for the dollar and a beautiful binding. I only wish there were a phonics-based book that made learning sight words come so easily.

Good luck and God bless!

 

Oh, Oh.
Look, look!
See, see!
Look what Mother found at the bookstore.
See Baby read to Mother.
Clever, clever Baby!

I remember my teacher reading a few of these stories in 1966. When I saw this book at our local bookstore, I immediately snatched it up. That night at bedtime, I marched my 4 & 3/4 year-old daughter upstairs, pulled out this book and said, "I am tired of reading to you, so tonight you will read to me!" After helping her sound out the word "Oh Oh" and "Look and See" imagine her surprise and mine when my daughter reads the first story all by herself and with her new-found confidence, began to devour the following stories over the next sixty pages! I was so stunned by this success, I could not believe it. Playing an active role in teaching your child to read is an absolute thrill! This book is a true gem. My daughter loves the pictures that go with the stories, gentle pieces of Americana artwork in themselves, not like the flat, highly-stylized cartoons in children's books today that may satisfy the whimsy of adults, but don't capture the attention or spark the imagination of children. Our favorite stories are when Baby Sally puts too much of Mother's powder on Tim, Spot and Puff and when Dick and Jane race Baby Sally to the market and overturn their wagon. Please buy this book for all your little loved ones in your life. I am excited to see there are other books in this series, too.

 

One of my daughters has been having a terribly hard time learning to read in school (and at home). It seems to be very hard for her to remember words that she's seen before, even "knew." She has come to resist reading practice as a form of torture.

The book she loves the most is this "Dick and Jane" compilation. The simple phrases, the often-mocked repetition of words, the bright and pleasant drawings--they have been perfect for her. We were amazed when she eventually proved able to read it all from cover to cover. She was so proud of herself, and loves the pretty yellow book so much, that she brought it to school to read to her teacher. Whenever we ask her to "read a book," her new but already-beloved Dick and Jane book is the one she reaches for. It's not Shakespeare and I guess the D&J series fell out of favor with the educational establishment, but if the choice is between a child proudly reading "See Spot run! Run, Spot, run!" or gloomily reading nothing at all, I'll gladly go with Spot (and Dick and Jane and Sally and the perfectly-dressed mother and father!)

I feel like the publisher has a winner here and I would buy every reprint compilation that it chose to sell. I'm going to buy all the other D&J texts that I can find. They've certainly been a success in our home.

 

I used to be a little chagrined to admit I learned to read in Kindergarten (1964) with Dick and Jane! It was almost "out of fashion" then -- in Grade 1 I remember the teacher introducing something "new" called phonics that was much more difficult to master than "sight reading" had been. (By Grade 1 I was already reading chapter books such as "Honey Takes a Trip" using my D&J skills.) So, when my own Kindergartener was not having much success with "Bob Books" and was in fact expressing great frustration, I was worried. I thought it was her "readiness" -- I never dreamed it might be the approach I'd selected. That became instantly apparent when she got her yellow D&J anthology. By the end of the first night she was reading stories. When Grandma later gave her the blue D&J anthology, she read the entire book that night out loud to Grandma! She still resists the Bob Books but night after night she's in her bed reading and re-reading D&J to her animals. Guess success feels good to her, too. And, her reading vocabulary is bigger than her school-mates. It's a shame that School Boards have still not put D&J back in the classroom!

 

 

Phonics and alternatives


Phonics and alternatives

       A wiki link on phonics can be found at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonics

            Many people still believe the alternative methods of teaching reading to our children   are a better course of action.  Yep, there are alternatives. One obvious example is the "sight method" used in the Dick and Jane series that was used for decades before phonics was introduced.

            These days I think "phonics" reigns supreme as a teaching idea in the USA, and maybe a political idea here, too.  Yet I still ask the question, is this method  the best course of action for today's kid's and where we live?  

            Of course our local school boards often have a lot of influence on what the decision is finally made, and  locally with your kids that you send to your local public schools. And in fairness, school boards have other issues, too, like real estate decisions. One school board I know of has a $1.4 billion dollar annual budget to deal with, for example.

            I suspect these days the real estate problems (my example)  may be  more important to many school board deciders than our children's future through education, both of which they have serious influence on , I believe, in their decisions.

            The key point to me is to teach our children as best we can and where ever we live. Said another way, education, not indoctrination.  For example, I have child who got high school credit for taking a course in pet care in the Raleigh, NC area. That, to me, is absurd. Yet it happened over two decades ago.

            And since then she has been married, divorced, and has a child to boot. So is it the school boards fault, I doubt it.  Did her poor pet care education contribute to her present circumstances, maybe. I just suspect she is not a happy camper, now knowing there are other ways to go, and she and now your kids could go, too.

            And is this a future voting issue to so many that have children and can vote.?  I think so. Actually, I imagine anyone that can vote (that counts these days) may have interests in this subject, both young and old,  too.

            Anyway, the  present situation sucks, to me.

How to Roll Dough Without a Rolling Pin


How to Roll Dough Without a Rolling Pin

     http://www.ehow.com/how_7163786_roll-dough-rolling-pin.html

Read more:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7163786_roll-dough-rolling-pin.html#ixzz2gJACZdr9

Blueberries


Blueberries

     Here's a link you may enjoy reading:  http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=8

          There are many other links on this subject.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

How to make Ramen Noodles from Scratch


How to make Ramen Noodles from Scratch

       Here's just one link on the subject:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGU83jLxIa4

            It's a YouTube link.

            Here's two  link to some Ramen Noodle recipes:

 http://www.womansday.com/food-recipes/9-unique-ramen-noodle-recipes-86908

http://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/college-life/ramen-noodle-recipes/

Spotting Satellites in the Night Sky


Spotting Satellites in the Night Sky

 When and where to look for synthetic shooting stars.

 By Corey S. Powell in Discover Magazine

 

Traditionally, looking up at night was an act of escape, ascending from the human world into the cosmic one. But the growing number of artificial objects zipping around Earth has inspired a more synthetic form of skygazing: the new sport of satellite watching. You could think of it as the nighttime version of train spotting. (It even has its own insiders’ checklist for earning an award pin.)

Satellite watching is easy to do even under severely light-polluted city skies. The most prominent satellite — the 358-foot-wide International Space Station — routinely outshines the brightest stars. 

The far less famous Iridium satellites, a fleet of 66 telecommunication relays in low-Earth orbit, can shine brighter still. Because of their unusual six-sided shape, these satellites create brief flashes of reflected sunlight, called Iridium flares, that can reach a brightness of magnitude -8, about 30 times brighter than Venus at its peak. Satellite watching is also ideal for the impatient, since good appearances happen all the time.

Technology makes it easy; sources like Heavens Above will tell you when and where to look. The true challenges are vantage and timing. Many satellite passages happen at low angles, so nearby buildings and trees may block your view. And unlike deep-space observing, time is of the essence. Passages of the International Space Station typically last just five minutes. Iridium flares vanish in 20 seconds or less. 

It’s one more reminder that, from a cosmic perspective, all things human are fleeting.

This article originally appeared in print as "Satellite Spotting."

The Discover Magazine post can be found at: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/oct/22-satellite-spotting

The intent of this post is to show a night sky way to be entertained,  for some at least.

 

How Many Doctors Support Suicide for the Terminally Ill?



The results varied from country to country...

 

by Theodore Dalrymple from PJ Media

Not long ago the New England Journal of Medicine ran an article on the vexed question of physician-assisted suicide in the case of the terminally ill, and doctors were asked to vote, for or against, online. The results of the poll have just been published.

As the editors are at pains to point out, such a poll has no scientific validity, since those who took the trouble to vote were not a representative sample of anyone but themselves. This does not mean, though, that the poll was altogether without interest, though certain data would have made it even more interesting.

In all, the journal received 5,205 votes from doctors around the world. However, the editors noticed that there were multiple votes in quick succession from several locations in Canada, suggesting a concerted effort to influence the result. These – 1,137 of them – were excluded from the report, leaving 4,068 votes deemed valid.

It would have been interesting to know in which direction the discounted votes voted, but this information was not given. Do those against or those in favor of physician-assisted suicide have a more active lobby or pressure group in Canada? I am not sure I would know which way to bet: one could almost hold a poll on the subject. 

 The fact that the lobby group (if that is what it was) voted in quick succession suggests a degree of the blindness of monomania, for surely anyone other than monomaniacs would have realized it would be best to vote at intervals rather than in quick succession. I was rather reminded of the few murderers whom I have known who killed for life insurance money after the sum assured on the victim had been raised dramatically. They could seldom wait more than two weeks before they killed the victim and made their claim: a sequence of events that greatly assisted the police in elucidating the crime.

There were 1,712 votes from 39 of the United States and 2,356 votes from 74 other countries. Overall the votes were similar in the U.S. and abroad: 67 percent of American doctors, and 65 percent of foreign ones, were against and 33 and 35 percent, respectively, were for.

There were 11 countries, however, in which a majority of voters were in favor (with Mexico in the lead), and 18 of the 39 American states. Interestingly, Oregon and Washington were not among the former, though they are the two states in which physician-assisted suicide is actually legal. Unfortunately, the sample is too unrepresentative to draw any conclusions from this, for example that doctors in those states who have seen assisted suicide up close have turned against it. The voting might just as well have been the result of die-hard, last-ditch opposition to what has already been accepted.

The voters were allowed to record briefly their reasons for their vote. The main argument for is that doctors have a duty to relieve suffering as well as prolong life. A less good reason given, indeed one that seems to me senseless, was that if physicians assist at birth they ought also to assist at death. Those against used the familiar argument from the slippery slope. We are all of us dying from the moment of conception; why should the mortally ill alone be spared the pain of continued existence? And if assisted suicide is a right, who has the corresponding obligation to provide it?

In Britain, younger doctors are more in favor of assisted suicide than older. Whether this represents a cultural change or merely the effect of aging as the prospect of being shuffled of this mortal coil by homicidally humane young doctors draws closer is not yet known.

 

Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is Second Opinion: A Doctor's Notes from the Inner City.