Let me explain something that sometimes seems overwhelmingly hard to understand and is a cause usually championed by "hippies and the tin hat wearers." It's not complicated though. And it's super important. Here's a summary of the problem:
So Monsanto creates these genetically modified crops (GMOs). They alter them so they can withstand Round Up - you know, that stuff you squirt on your lawn to kill weeds. One of the primary ingredients in RU is something called glyphosate which basically makes it so these weeds can't absorb micronutrients like calcium and zinc and they just die off. These "roundup ready" crops can survive without absorbing as much of these micronutrients, so they survive and initially, the yield per acre is enhanced. However, this stuff also means that beneficials like soil organisms and worms and lady bugs and stuff, when they are exposed to this stuff also can't absorb micronutrients and they die off.
Meanwhile, it's like taking too many antibiotics, it eventually takes more and more RU to kill off the more resistant weeds that nature invariably creates to combat this effect. So now the saturation of RU is hitting record highs in the soil and this stuff is absorbed by the crops we eat. Here's the kicker. Glyphosate accumulates in the gut of whatever eats the crops that have absorbed in it. So this piece of corn that already doesn't have much in it from a nutrient perspective is also delivering a giant dose of this chemical that means what little is left in that food is harder to absorb by you!
And if that's not bad enough, there are indications that there may be problems with birth defects and reduced birth rates... but that needs more study.
Anyway, this is a kind of preachy article, but the video (while its long) is extraordinarily informative and is an interview with a Dr. that has been doing this research for a very long time. I recommend that if this concerns you that you not just read this summary, but that you at least watch this video.
http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Safety/gmo/gmo_0131121210.html
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Tax Code Has To Go
My friend really wanted to repost a rant I put on FB, so here it be with some of the spelling fixed, but no other changes:
Ok, gang, there's a lot of talk about how 15% isn't enough to pay for taxes. Here's my 2 cents. The reason that capitol gains tax is lower is because you've already paid taxes on that money as income. I'm not sure it's cool to keep adding taxes and more taxes to that same dollar. For instance. Let's say I make a dollar for a job I do. I'm probably paying 30% or more (if I'm like Mitt Romney ...and am worth a quarter of a billion). So that leaves me .70. Then there's inflation, which tends to be about 3% (I think) per year. So that's a hidden tax that the Fed printing more money to cover govt. debts, so it's still money the govt. gets ultimately. So that leaves me 67 cents. Then let's take local taxes of a conservative 10%, so that leaves me .57. If I buy a car or a house or whatever with that money, let's take out another 7 cents just to give us a nice round number, so we're down to .50. Do you have to pay taxes on things like food? Take that out too. So before I pay for groceries, etc, I've already given the govt. about half of my money. So let's say I manage to actually SAVE half of that. Totally unreasonable, but let's say I can save .25 out of every dollar I initially earn. Again, this is totally unrealistic. Lets say my investments keep up with the market (S&P), which averages about 8% every year. You're saying that giving up 15% of that is not enough? Folks have already paid about half of what they earn to the govt and you're telling me that hitting them for an additional 30% of whatever they earn on the interest on what they manage to save is reasonable?
Folks, we didn't even have a peace-time income tax until 1894 and then it only affected the top 10% of earners. Then in 1913, income taxes finally became a constitutional amendment. Since then its been all downhill and the tax code has grown to employ over 90 thousand (!) IRS workers which has an annual operating budget of over 11 BILLION dollars a year. To put the code into perspective, the bible has about 770,000 words. the tax code has well over 9,000,000 words! Who is actually going to read that crap? Not me! It has been estimated that it would take an average reader over 300 hours a year to read the tax code because it is ever changing, and that's assuming you understand it. But the lawyers that work for that famous 1% probably know it really well. Want justice? Want to make the playing field more "fair?" The tax code should be cut to the bare minimum and that means that it should be something we can all read and understand. No more lobbyists should affect the code and be able to add their cryptic 30 pages here and there to help buy an election. Then maybe the little guy and the middle class will be able to determine what is and isn't "fair" for themselves.
Ok, gang, there's a lot of talk about how 15% isn't enough to pay for taxes. Here's my 2 cents. The reason that capitol gains tax is lower is because you've already paid taxes on that money as income. I'm not sure it's cool to keep adding taxes and more taxes to that same dollar. For instance. Let's say I make a dollar for a job I do. I'm probably paying 30% or more (if I'm like Mitt Romney ...and am worth a quarter of a billion). So that leaves me .70. Then there's inflation, which tends to be about 3% (I think) per year. So that's a hidden tax that the Fed printing more money to cover govt. debts, so it's still money the govt. gets ultimately. So that leaves me 67 cents. Then let's take local taxes of a conservative 10%, so that leaves me .57. If I buy a car or a house or whatever with that money, let's take out another 7 cents just to give us a nice round number, so we're down to .50. Do you have to pay taxes on things like food? Take that out too. So before I pay for groceries, etc, I've already given the govt. about half of my money. So let's say I manage to actually SAVE half of that. Totally unreasonable, but let's say I can save .25 out of every dollar I initially earn. Again, this is totally unrealistic. Lets say my investments keep up with the market (S&P), which averages about 8% every year. You're saying that giving up 15% of that is not enough? Folks have already paid about half of what they earn to the govt and you're telling me that hitting them for an additional 30% of whatever they earn on the interest on what they manage to save is reasonable?
Folks, we didn't even have a peace-time income tax until 1894 and then it only affected the top 10% of earners. Then in 1913, income taxes finally became a constitutional amendment. Since then its been all downhill and the tax code has grown to employ over 90 thousand (!) IRS workers which has an annual operating budget of over 11 BILLION dollars a year. To put the code into perspective, the bible has about 770,000 words. the tax code has well over 9,000,000 words! Who is actually going to read that crap? Not me! It has been estimated that it would take an average reader over 300 hours a year to read the tax code because it is ever changing, and that's assuming you understand it. But the lawyers that work for that famous 1% probably know it really well. Want justice? Want to make the playing field more "fair?" The tax code should be cut to the bare minimum and that means that it should be something we can all read and understand. No more lobbyists should affect the code and be able to add their cryptic 30 pages here and there to help buy an election. Then maybe the little guy and the middle class will be able to determine what is and isn't "fair" for themselves.
Friday, November 04, 2011
The Best Thing I've Heard in Years
"The more you know, the less you need."
There's something comforting about that statement. I think that's one of the reason this mindset appeals to me. The more I know, the more I feel prepared to deal with anything that comes my way. Therefore, the smarter I am, the fewer tools and "stuff" I need to survive, or even live comfortably. For some reason, I've known that instinctively all my life, but when I heard that this morning, something just clicked. We now return you to your normal consumerist lifestyle.
There's something comforting about that statement. I think that's one of the reason this mindset appeals to me. The more I know, the more I feel prepared to deal with anything that comes my way. Therefore, the smarter I am, the fewer tools and "stuff" I need to survive, or even live comfortably. For some reason, I've known that instinctively all my life, but when I heard that this morning, something just clicked. We now return you to your normal consumerist lifestyle.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Reference my post on January 17, 2010...
Dear, sweet house,
Even though sometimes some of your more outdated features worry me a tad, I'm still whole-heartedly in love with you. Thank you for being such a good, safe, beautiful haven. Right now, your gardens remind me of why I fell for you in the first place. And now that you have central AC, you're so comfortable to cuddle with on a hot summer night. I'm so glad you were loved enough to have such a temperate nature later in your life. I love the way your cork flooring feels so warm on a cold winter morning and the way a little fire is enough to keep me warm in your butterscotch onyx fireplace. I love how people congregate in little intimate circles in different rooms when we have parties, yet everyone knows your heart is in that kitchen because that's where the late-lingerers congregate. Good night, dear house. Thank you for caring for me as I care for you.
All my love,
Your primary resident
PS. I love your zombie pod people poppy plants. ;)
PSS. I promise to keep trying with that lawn.
Monday, November 29, 2010
A While Ago
I wrote this about three months ago but never posted it for some reason.
~~~
I joke around a lot about how I like to surround myself with people who are smarter than me. It’s not really a joke though. I honestly do enjoy learning and the most fun way to learn is to listen to smart people have intelligent conversations. I’ve long had a theory though, and this goes back to my days as a pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons nerd. For the uninitiated, when you play D&D, you create a character that you will play in a story that is written by the Dungeon Master (or Game Master). How the characters behave and perform is up to the discretion of and is dictated by the choices of the player characters. It’s a collaborative way to tell a story that involves a lot of pizza, Doritos and Mountain Dew as well as cooperative problem solving and a little bit of math all marinated in a nice broth of too much time on one’s hands.
Just like in real life, there is some randomness that dictates what a character will be. It’s the beautiful fickleness that nature gives us that makes one person’s eyes blue, and one person’s eyes brown, and another person have one of each. In an attempt to mimic this randomness, dice are rolled and the numbers modified in one way or another to determine if a character will be super smart or dumb as a box of rocks, super strong or a 90 pound weakling, super good looking or if they hit every branch on the way down the tree that grows the ugly sticks. There are several categories such as charisma, strength, constitution, dexterity, wisdom and intelligence that these numbers may be assigned to. You’ll roll 3 six-sided dice and write down the totals several times, then assign those totals to the various traits. For instance, if you want a Conan the Barbarian knock-off, you could assign the highest total you rolled on 3 dice to strength and the lowest total to intelligence. Some DMs will actually allow you to redistribute a few points to really skew your character in one direction or another, the theory being that the best stories are told about people who are both truly great and truly weak at the same time. Think Superman with his little problem with a certain glowing green crystalline substance.
So my theory is that real people are much the same. We’ve all distributed the possible points to different aspects that make up who we are. A bookworm who spends all his time in study can get pretty flabby around the middle, and likewise, a jock who spends all his time working his deltoids probably doesn’t get a lot of time to contemplate the finer points of string theory. Many of my friends tend to be heavily weighted in the intelligence and wisdom aspects and have traditionally lacked in the strength and constitution and even sometimes the charisma sections.
That seems to be changing for some reason though. Most of my friends are still smarter than me, but they seem to be becoming stronger, more adventurous and rugged. These pocket-protector-wearing nerds are doing things like white water rafting and very technical mountain biking. They’re hunting and fishing and planting edible gardens. Best of all, they’re approaching these new aspects of their characters with the process-oriented intelligence borne of high intellect. They’re not just getting on a bike and hitting a trail, they’re doing serious research about what kind of bike to get, how to maintain them, and the best techniques for finishing the trek without killing themselves. They’re researching knots and discovering which lures the fish are hitting in a specific river on a specific day on their wifi-capable portable devices.
They’re also looking in different places for new wisdom. We recently picked up a new member of the team that in no way resembles the pale, flabby geeks we normally hang out with. He listens to country music and is an incredibly experienced outdoorsman. He hunts, he fishes, he seems like an extension of the wooded places he frequents – in D&D parlance, he’s a ranger in a party of wizards.
This seems almost unnatural to me, but I love it. What if you could fuse Conan with Dumbledore? Maybe our characters have just all reached such high levels that the differences in character class have become a little blurry.
~~~
I joke around a lot about how I like to surround myself with people who are smarter than me. It’s not really a joke though. I honestly do enjoy learning and the most fun way to learn is to listen to smart people have intelligent conversations. I’ve long had a theory though, and this goes back to my days as a pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons nerd. For the uninitiated, when you play D&D, you create a character that you will play in a story that is written by the Dungeon Master (or Game Master). How the characters behave and perform is up to the discretion of and is dictated by the choices of the player characters. It’s a collaborative way to tell a story that involves a lot of pizza, Doritos and Mountain Dew as well as cooperative problem solving and a little bit of math all marinated in a nice broth of too much time on one’s hands.
Just like in real life, there is some randomness that dictates what a character will be. It’s the beautiful fickleness that nature gives us that makes one person’s eyes blue, and one person’s eyes brown, and another person have one of each. In an attempt to mimic this randomness, dice are rolled and the numbers modified in one way or another to determine if a character will be super smart or dumb as a box of rocks, super strong or a 90 pound weakling, super good looking or if they hit every branch on the way down the tree that grows the ugly sticks. There are several categories such as charisma, strength, constitution, dexterity, wisdom and intelligence that these numbers may be assigned to. You’ll roll 3 six-sided dice and write down the totals several times, then assign those totals to the various traits. For instance, if you want a Conan the Barbarian knock-off, you could assign the highest total you rolled on 3 dice to strength and the lowest total to intelligence. Some DMs will actually allow you to redistribute a few points to really skew your character in one direction or another, the theory being that the best stories are told about people who are both truly great and truly weak at the same time. Think Superman with his little problem with a certain glowing green crystalline substance.
So my theory is that real people are much the same. We’ve all distributed the possible points to different aspects that make up who we are. A bookworm who spends all his time in study can get pretty flabby around the middle, and likewise, a jock who spends all his time working his deltoids probably doesn’t get a lot of time to contemplate the finer points of string theory. Many of my friends tend to be heavily weighted in the intelligence and wisdom aspects and have traditionally lacked in the strength and constitution and even sometimes the charisma sections.
That seems to be changing for some reason though. Most of my friends are still smarter than me, but they seem to be becoming stronger, more adventurous and rugged. These pocket-protector-wearing nerds are doing things like white water rafting and very technical mountain biking. They’re hunting and fishing and planting edible gardens. Best of all, they’re approaching these new aspects of their characters with the process-oriented intelligence borne of high intellect. They’re not just getting on a bike and hitting a trail, they’re doing serious research about what kind of bike to get, how to maintain them, and the best techniques for finishing the trek without killing themselves. They’re researching knots and discovering which lures the fish are hitting in a specific river on a specific day on their wifi-capable portable devices.
They’re also looking in different places for new wisdom. We recently picked up a new member of the team that in no way resembles the pale, flabby geeks we normally hang out with. He listens to country music and is an incredibly experienced outdoorsman. He hunts, he fishes, he seems like an extension of the wooded places he frequents – in D&D parlance, he’s a ranger in a party of wizards.
This seems almost unnatural to me, but I love it. What if you could fuse Conan with Dumbledore? Maybe our characters have just all reached such high levels that the differences in character class have become a little blurry.
Friday, June 04, 2010
The Noxious Weed of Hope Springs Eternal
It was an ugly little bugger. Then it was an ugly big bugger. And there were a lot of them. Surrounded by lovely understated flax, dramatic bunches of tulips, and comfy-as-a-pair-of-old-jeans columbine in every possible color combination, it was an outright eye-sore. The pale green leaves were covered in sharp spikes, as were the stems and finally the egg-sized pods that emerged on top of each stalk. To say it was an intimidating looking plant is an understatement. Not only did it whole-heartedly warn you not to even think about pulling it out without wearing a Kevlar suit, but the pods were reminiscent of something from a sci-fi movie. It invoked images of shambling ur-beings – resembling humanity in every physical way, but bent on our ultimate and final destruction. Undoubtedly, the dandelions stealthily poking leaves out from behind clumps of succulents shuddered at such a hideous weed that they now found sharing their bed. They must have been confused when I pulled them from the garden and left them to dry in a heap on the flagstones while such an unsightly creature continued to take up more and more space in the beds. I know I was.
Friends would shake their heads and say I should pull them immediately. One friend suggested with some certainty that they might be “noxious weeds” that would undoubtedly bring ruin to the tranquility of my back yard oasis. I considered getting elbow-length gloves to simply take care of the unpleasant job so that the mint and chives might yet survive the onslaught. Yet I hesitated. Tom and I had agreed not to pull anything out our first year in the house. I have made an exception with things that are growing outside their containers and the aforementioned dandelions. These were different though. They obeyed the containment of the low stone walls of my beds. One of them was even contained in its own small white wire fence… or it had choked the poor creature that had once occupied that space. As the irises blossomed and began nodding their dark purple heads to the rhythm of a music only they could hear, the pregnant pods swelled with future life. But what could possibly come from such a beastly delivery mechanism? The pods became larger and larger and the prickly outer petals of the pods began to peel back, and yet I thought I had days left. I was wrong.
When I came home yesterday, in a rush of self-preservation, one of the brutal looking pods had spewed forth its terrifying payload: The most beautiful crimson poppy I’ve ever seen, with its paper-like petals fluttering in the wind. Now this is my kind of noxious weed!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Spring is here! ... I think.
The buds have finally popped on a few of the trees! Yay! I have exactly 1 tomato sprout in my sprouting tray that my friends Alison and Rob gave me for a housewarming gift. It's a Roma. I saw 2 bunnies on my run yesterday. The robins are so fat, they have to waddle for a few steps before they can take off. I got a sunburn the other day on our 5 mile hike in Ute Valley Park. And then we get winter snow warnings. Son of a...!
So speaking of fun-filled activities in the spring-time sunshine, progress is being made on the zombie apocalypse training. I started the Couch to 5K program again this week now that I can (usually) see the sidewalks. 1 week down, at least 8 weeks to go. This first week was three days of a brisk 5 minute walk, followed by 20 minutes interval training: running for 60 seconds, then 90 seconds of walking, then running then walking etc. until the 20 minutes is up. Then I've been doing a 5 minute cool down walk. This upcoming week's mission is 5 minutes of warm up walking, followed by 90 seconds of running, 2 minutes of walking and on like that for 20 minutes. Then another 5 minute cool down walk. Today was hard, but not as hard as the first day, so it's progress. I'm hoping to get into a 5K race some time this summer!
Weekend before last, Tom and my friends Terra and Logan went for a nice 5 mile hike. Apparently, as long as you tell Terra that we're two-thirds of the way there, she won't mutiny, no matter how obvious a lie you're telling her. Good to know! Terra, you owe me more money... don't worry, keep doling it out, you're two-thirds of the way there! :) Actually, it's a pretty good trick to play on ones self now that I think about it. Maybe I'll tell myself I'm already two-thirds of the way to being able to run a 5K and two-thirds of the way done with my weight loss goals... Yeah! That does feel better!
Speaking of weight loss, I've also started the (oh so controversial) Atkins diet again. I have gotten so much crap about it! I'm not sure why that is. The first time I did this diet, I lost like 40 lbs, and kept it off for a couple of years with everyone cheering me on until I moved to Kuwait. There, I couldn't get my thyroid meds, was working 12 hour days, commuting for about 2 hours a day in completely hellish conditions and ate at a chow hall for most of my meals where they actually ADD carbs and sugars to the food so the soldiers have the energy they need. I had zero chance. Anyway, now that Atkins has fallen out of favor, everyone has started screaming at me about how I'm going to die. I've lost 6 lbs my first week and I'm doing really well. I have tons of energy, am never hungry and I'm actually eating more leafy greens than I normally do left to my own devices. Whatever. Shut up haters. Did I mention I lost 6 lbs? And I've already lost an inch off my waist and another inch off my bicep? That's right. Shut it.
Sarah Connor, here I come!
I also got my concealed carry permit. Don't be scared though, Smith and Wesson is still building my pistol, so I won't be actually a danger to myself or others for quite some time.
Happy Spring Equinox all! I'm going to get some much needed sleep, but first I'm going to pack my fat and protein and phytonutrient rich lunch for tomorrow.
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