When I’m not on the internet, I generally catch the latest news on the car radio, like lots of other folks tied up in California freeway traffic. Yesterday the question had been raised whether Foster Farms chicken was in some way associated with a salmonella outbreak. The company suggested that improper preparation of the raw chicken was responsible.
Not so. Now the news reported by USA Today, whom I applaud for picking up this story, says that Foster Farms was also the origin of a salmonella outbreak in 2012 in Oregon and Washington that sickened 134 people in 13 states.
It is reasonable to ask, “What the hell is going on?” Read more on Playing Chicken With The Gvt. Shutdown…
Filed under Government, News by on Oct 9th, 2013. Comment. 
My field is health – which is radically removed from bodybuilding. Oh, the work-out gurus will tell you they are experts in nutrition and health, but their knowledge is often flawed (to put it charitably). And they view someone like me with “Book Learning” as a real kill-joy.
There is something special about bodybuilding supplements — allegedly natural ones. I remember a fairly brittle bipolar – a young and pumped-up muscular male model — who refused, as both I and his girlfriend pleaded with him, to give up a body building supplement. I told him the contents seemed strange and unknown to me. This supplement had made him go angry and seemingly psychotic and she was ready to break up with him if he did not stop this strange supplement.
The girlfriend trusted me. The young man was lost in wishful thinking (and perhaps an adverse drug reaction bordering on psychosis). Read more on Deadly Health Supplements…
Filed under News, Stimulants by on Oct 6th, 2013. Comment.
Okay, so you don’t care. You tell me you don’t have sex too much and that is kind of like birth control. It isn’t. It might be if it took having sex five times to have a kid, but it only takes one, so you are very likely to get pregnant. Once you get pregnant, the child is your responsibility for life. This should be taken seriously — it isn’t always a bundle of joy and not all “moms” are equipped to handle the stress. If you try to murder the kid you are in worse trouble — yes I have seen girls who have tried that one. Sometimes the baby-daddy will marry you. This does not necessarily mean happiness — you probably never were thinking of him as a baby-daddy anyway, just a guy who wanted sex and you didn’t feel like fighting with him. Maybe it felt good at the time, but that was then and this is now. If you decide to bring up the child on your own, this single-mother bit is no picnic. Sure, you got a cute little baby who loves your breast or bottle or whatever. You might not want to think about it now, but in fifteen years or so, you are at high risk to end up with a juvenile delinquent who puts bricks through windows(or worse) and you are responsible. Read more on (Poor) Substitutes For Birth Control…
Filed under Contraception by on Sep 27th, 2013. Comment.
We are in an era when all reporting — wire services, networks, whatever — looks the way tabloid reporting did when I was small. Aggressive, emotional, mostly verbal renderings of disasters that are meant to strike terror into the heart of the reader. Sometimes, something miraculous or near miraculous. Once in a while in this constellation of stories there is something “inspiring.” We all need inspiration. It is tough to define and highly individualistic.
I actually like this definition more than others: That “feeling of enthusiasm” that makes you “do” or “create” something. Read more on We All Need Inspiration — Here Is Today’s Dose…
Filed under Doctors, Religion by on Sep 26th, 2013. 1 Comment.
Can you die from a tattoo? You betcha.
I never looked very closely at the literature since getting tattoos on your body is against Jewish law. I remember from Jewish Religious school when I was quite young, having it reamed into y poor little noggin along with a bunch of other stuff, that when God came for the resurrection of the flesh, not only was it a really good idea that you had a little bit of earth from the land of Israel in your pocket (in Boston, tiny sacks of such alleged origin were overpriced at best) but there had to be no, absolutely no, placed-there-on-purpose marks on your body. It would be really bad because you wanted God to know you were the right (strictly Kosher) Jewish body.
Somehow, it seemed to be possible to get by with a scar. I figured it was because if you had an accident, an omniscient God would know about it anyway. Read more on Death By Tattoo…
Filed under Disease, informed consent by on Sep 16th, 2013. Comment.
I am linking to so many places because I think something very clever happened.
No, I am not addressing the “objectifying” of women as physical beings. I still meet women who want to enter beauty contests. They are usually not counting the money from winning the scholarship.
Once upon a time, when I was between states and between licenses, I actually coached a beauty contest winner. I taught her how to answer the insipid questions beauty pageant hosts ask. Most of them were about what she wanted to do in life. It was not hard for me to research past questions (the internet was already alive and well) and figure out it was helpful to express an interest in helping retarded children. To my utter amazement, before I searched this, I had learned she was actually interested in — helping retarded children. Maybe this says something about beauty pageant contestants.
She was adorable, of course, and came in as first runner-up for Miss California. Read more on Holocaust Survivor Beauty Contest…
Filed under News by on Sep 2nd, 2013. Comment.
I do surf the web — I do not do so aimlessly.
I was impressed by an article published by AARP on things people should not do after 50. Despite the fact that I absolutely abhor anyone telling me “laws” about what to do or not to do, I checked it out.
I decided most of them were so stupid they should never be done by anybody. Read more on Bouncing Back From Adversity…
Filed under Aging, News by on Aug 29th, 2013. Comment.
I really don’t know what is real and what is not, in this list of accusations of Donald Trump. I know for sure he has silly-looking hair and I would not want to learn anything from him about hair.
There is a big business teaching people how to make money. My husband and I have studied this with some of the big gurus, in public auditoriums and oversized mansions in Las Vegas. I think some, although not famous, are ethical.
I do know that we have been followers of those who “sell information” and make money. I have a lot of information that the world ought to know and I remember my amusement when I first learned it was possible to charter a university in California for only $5000, which does not seem like a totally unobtainable sum. Read more on The Rich Really Are Rotten…
Filed under News, Personality Disorders by on Aug 28th, 2013. Comment.
Alright, so I am a cynic. It seems like the very public change of position of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a mainstream doctor who presents mainstream medicine in the media is on the level with religious conversion among the missionaries.
Read more on Like Me — More Experts Are Changing Their Mind About Medicinal Marijuana…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Government, News, politics, Research by on Aug 12th, 2013. Comment.
I thought that everyone knew by now that if something is a supplement that is supposed to help you lose weight by gulping down a pill, it is going to turn out to be a lie. One of the first things they teach you in debating is that your weakest argument is an appeal to authority. Everyone who follows Dr. Oz has noticed that his recommendations seem to “flip-flop.” Perhaps individual supplements come to him with some inducement to publicize them? Whatever. This stuff does not work terribly well. Garcinia cambogia is also tamarind, often used in different cultures to aid with weight loss. It is a wildly fibrous fruit, so it fills people up. This seems to be responsible for at least some of the alleged weight loss properties. It may be one reason that despite the use of this fruit in Mexico, it does not seem to have ever really caught on with American tastes. Read more on More Fake Diet Methods On The Market…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, News, weight by on Aug 8th, 2013. Comment.