Friday, December 20, 2013

World Food Supply Threat

In case you have been asleep in Sleeping Beauty's castle for a century or so, there are other threats, besides climate change, to our future world supply and our freedom and life itself. 

One of these other threats to all of the above is the Monsanto Corporation. 

"How", you might ask, "Can a mere chemical corporation be such a threat to our food supply, freedom and our lives"?

One of the names for this threat by Monsanto, is called, "frankenseeds". Monsanto is not satisfied with the money they already make. They make more by making genetically altered seed for food crops. Part of the alterations they make to the seeds is by making them pesticide and herbicide resistant. 

This does not sound that sinister at first. The nastiness of this Monsanto tactic takes a bit to really understand how bad it is. 

By making the seeds resistant to pesticides and herbicides, farmers are forced to spray the H out of their crops in order to compete with other farmers.

You may already dislike eating lots of pesticides on your food because of well-known health risks. The sneaky part about the herbicide resistance is that since the plants are resistant to herbicides, Monsanto can sell enormously larger amounts of herbicides. This kills off the weeds that are not resistant to herbicides. Some weeds that are already somewhat resistant to herbicides reproduce and make bigger and stronger weeds, which allows Monsanto to sell even more herbicides. Monsanto makes stronger herbicides and more herbicide resistant food seeds.... and so on.

There are several delayed bombs in this Monsanto approach. One is that it can take a lifetime on longer to begin to fully understand the health damage caused by eating chemicals. The US Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, does not test for effects that take that long, not even close.

Another delayed Monsanto bomb is the genetic changes in the food plants they develop to be resistant to their herbicide and pesticide chemicals. Genetic materials from all sorts of plants and animals are used to make the Monsanto Frankenseeds. Rattlesnakes, insects, and lots of other unsavory things can turn up in Frankenseeds. 

Even if you don't mind what kinds of genetic materials show up on your plate, your own body and those of your children and grandchildren may not be happy.

Every generation of people has more people in it who have allergies than the last generation. There are no labels on Frankenseeds to let you know that it has genetic material in it from something that you are allergic to. 

Some people are so allergic to a particular food that they go into anaphylactic shock when they eat even a tiny amount of that food. Some people who are allergic to peanuts can die from eating something that is prepared in a factory that ever made food with peanuts in it. 

Allergies to a particular food like peanuts can get worse with time. Someone can have only a slight problem when they eat the peanuts or other allergen and have a worse problem every time they eat something with the allergen in it. This can continue until they go into anaphylactic shock. 

Here is the definition of anaphylactic shock: Anaphylaxis 
Definition
Anaphylaxis is a rapidly progressing, life-threatening allergic reaction.
Description
Anaphylaxis is a type of allergic reaction, in which the immune system responds to otherwise harmless substances from the environment. Unlike other allergic reactions, however, anaphylaxis can kill. Reaction may begin within minutes or even seconds of exposure, and rapidly progress to cause airway constriction, skin and intestinal irritation, and altered heart rhythms. In severe cases, it can result in complete airway obstruction, shock, and death.

This definition comes from this site: http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Anaphylaxis

There is more about anaphylactic shock on the same page in case you want to find out more.

As if all the above is not bad enough, there is an even greater danger to us, our freedom and our lives. That is random genetic changes in plants. 

Pollen from a Frankenseed can be carried by the wind, or insects or birds to other plants that are not Frankenseeds. You can be minding your own business eating organic broccoli and go into anaphylactic shock because it was exposed to a bee that buzzed into a field of Frankenseeds with, who knows what genetic material in them.

One of the sneakiest bad effects of Frankenseeds is to our freedom. Monsanto and other nasty giant companies are busy patenting their seeds. They can sue you for growing plants that have their patented genetic material from their Frankenseeds in them. They have done this to organic farmers whose seeds were contaminated with pollen from the Frankenseeds planted nearby. Many organic farmers have been put out of business by lawsuits of this sort. 

This is only the beginning. The Frankenseeds are engineered to be sterile. This means you can not save seed and grow more next year. Every year you have to buy more Frankenseeds from Monsanto and their buddies. 

What do you think will happen to the price of seeds and food as more and more people are forced out of business and Monsanto and their buddies are the only ones left?

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Medicinal Herb Use In the Bible

Most Christians are unaware that Gd told us all over the Bible that he made herbs to heal our ailments and that we are meant to use them for that purpose. 

Please feel free to ignore this post if you are not Christian. It is intended for Christians who only like things they can find in the Bible. 

I don't have any problem with only liking what you find in Gd's Word. I just think it is not a good idea to be that way if you don't bother to find out what is in Gd's Word. The stuff in Gd's Word about herbs starts in Genesis, but the part that caught my attention about it comes later. 

It was where Daniel and three other young Hebrew men were held prisoner by the Babylonians. The Hebrew men did not want to be defiled by eating and drinking the rich food and drinks of the Babylonians. They asked to eat plain vegetables and drink water instead. 

The Babylonian in charge of their care let them demonstrate the effectiveness of their chosen diet for ten days. After the ten day test period, the four young Hebrew prisoners had gained more weight and looked healthier than those who ate the usual Babylonian diet.

The Bible verse that convinced me to study this matter more was Psalms 104: verse 14. "He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and vegetation for the service of man, That he may bring food from the earth. This is from the New King James translation of the Bible. Looking this up in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible is difficult. 

This is because Nelson's 1982 NKJV says "vegetation", which is not listed in Strongs. I was able to find it in Strongs by looking up "service", which is in the same verse. Service, in Strong's has the word, "herbs" instead of vegetation for the same verse. :Herbs, in that verse, is listed as word number 6212 in the Hebrew dictionary part of Strong's.

Herb, as word number 6212 in Strongs, says: " 'eseb, eh'seb; from an unused root meaning, to glisten (or be green); grass (or any tender shoot):- grass, herb.

I will tell you that the word, "herb" is listed in Strong's 19 times and the word, "herbs" is listed 18 times. The reason I tell you this is because words in the Bible can give you an idea of their importance to Gd by how many times they are used. This is quite a bit compared to many other words.

If you honestly care about knowing what Gd wants to tell you, it is a heads up, when a word is mentioned as often as, "herb" or "herbs". 

I have mentioned that it is good to know about medicinal uses of herbs for emergency preparedness, but I like to use them all the time. I don't simply stash herbs in some corner for emergency use only. Part of my reason for this is because of what I have read and studied about them in the Bible.

Another part of my reason for using herbs all the time is that they work. They cause less side effects and problems than pharmaceutical drugs and have additional health benefits. Herbs may be less flashy and quick than pharmaceutical drugs, but they can cure things that drugs do not cure.

Herbs are cheaper than drugs most of the time and you can usually grow them yourself. When you grow something yourself, you know exactly what is in it or on it. That can stop a lot of problems.

The more processed a food or other substance is, that you ingest, the more chance there is that you could have problems from it.

The most memorable example of the problems from drugs is Thalidomide, for me. I am old enough to remember a lot of the hullabaloo from the horrible problems Thalidomide caused.

It was a drug given by MDs to pregnant women to cure headaches. Many or all of the babies born to those pregnant women who used Thalidomide, were born with horrible birth defects. Some only had small parts missing, but some had no arms or legs.

Herbs can cause problems, but it is usually due to user error. Herbs are slow and gentle and if you have bothered to study the ones you choose to use, they are pretty safe compared to drugs.



Thursday, November 14, 2013

Why Cyclones/Hurricanes Are Getting Worse - Protect Your Posterior

Here is a link to a video about why hurricanes or cyclones, are getting worse. Human behavior is causing this to happen, along with other events due to climate change. 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/climate-change/july-dec13/storms2_11-12.html#disqus_thread

Two prominent weather scientists are interviewed on this video to help us understand what is happening and what we can expect to happen in the future. 

Suggestions are offered on what we can do and must do to deal with the dangerous side effects of climate change. One of these is changes in building codes to lower death rates from weather changes. Another suggestion is to stop making climate change worse.

I hear lip service to stopping climate change for the sake of our grandchildren, but am not seeing much action to match.

I think people need to quit spouting garbage about caring for their grandchildren. If people were really worried about them, they would be acting differently. Admit you don't really give a load of manure and what you are saying is just a load of masculine bovine fecal matter.

If you do that we can get down to serious business. We need to think about our own posteriors. We can stop climate change to save our own sorry posteriors.

Sure, climate change will be much worse after we are long gone, and our grandchildren will have to deal with that to survive. They will have a very bad time of it and a lot of us will never have great grandchildren because of it.

The nasty reality that we have to face during most of own lifetimes is bad enough to give us reason to stop making climate change worse right now. Most of us will face our elder years shivering with not enough fuel to keep us warm, while extreme cold weather rages around us. 

The longer we delay behavior changes to stop climate change from getting worse faster, the worse the bad weather and fuel shortages will be. It is high time we get busy with action instead of talk about saving our grandchildren. We need to save ourselves. 


Monday, September 30, 2013

Hard Times Come Here No More

One of the potential disasters I keep an eye out for is economic disasters. The USA is a sitting duck for that one. 

I am far from an economic expert, so I look at what the economic experts have to say about what the fiscal forecast is for the USA, and the rest of the world.

Many of the financial gurus who have a good track record of warning about past economic downturns are saying that we are due for a really bad one very soon. Some of them talk about 90% inflation that will hit suddenly. 

I am not just taking these guy's word for this stuff. They do provide facts and figures that back up their bad news predictions.

One of these bits of information that made me start paying more attention is about our national debt. The interest on what we owe has passed the amount of money that the whole country makes every year. The interest is now at 106-107% of the US GNP.

The coming financial bloodbath in the USA will make the Big Depression that my parents experience, look puny, according to the financial pundits.

Not being independently wealthy makes me think about food and being able to eat during very bad times. I am firmly attached to being able to have enough to eat at all times. I would like to be able to keep eating regardless of what the weather, the politics, or the economy is doing.

That means that part of my preparedness has to do with how to manage to keep eating if the economy heads for the basement. 

I have already mentioned that I think that being able to grow food is one of the best sources of security for most anyone. This is not something that can happen overnight. Even if you already have the knowhow and the supplies to grow enough food for yourself and your loved ones, it takes a while to get from seed to eating the produce from that seed.

Many of the people in the world, particularly those who have the wherewithal and knowhow to be reading this blog post, do not know squat about growing their own food. If you wish to keep on eating, you may want to get busy filling your knowledge gap in the growing food department.

I have previously posted on growing sprouts, microgreens, and small potted plants, even for apartment dwellers. I think it would be good for anyone, who is fond of eating, to get busy with these methods of learning through practice for growing your own food.

I have also previously posted on hydroponics for food production. I am planning to see if I can grow enough food to feed myself by using a vertical, or tower style, hydroponics system.

I sincerely hope that you, dear reader, will also investigate ways to feed yourself in emergencies, natural or otherwise.

















I am not just staking 

I am not just

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Taking Care Of Yourself First Helps Everyone

I have a story that I often tell people. I do it so much that they get tired of hearing it. Now you get it.

If you have ever flown on a plane, you have experienced the obligatory safety lecture. The part that we need here is where they tell you about the oxygen masks.

During an emergency oxygen masks will drop down from the ceiling above each seat. The steward or stewardess giving the safety lecture will tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first, even if your child is sitting next to you gasping.

The reason they give for this is that if you are not breathing well, you can't help anyone else. 

You put your own oxygen mask on first, so that you will be healthy enough to help put someone else's oxygen mask on them. Even if they lose consciousness, you will still be able to get their oxygen mask on them. 

If you lose consciousness because you put their oxygen mask on first, they may not be able to help you. You may not even finish putting their oxygen mask on before you pass out, if you try to put their oxygen mask on first.

This lesson is very applicable to many emergency situations. You can not help anyone else unless you are okay. 

It applies even to daily life. Taking care of your personal health is very important at any time, but even more so when medical help is scarce during an emergency. 

The above is what I have been doing lately. I have been working on taking care of myself. I have had some serious health problems that have required a lot of my attention and energy. That didn't leave me much to keep writing on this blog. 

I think I can rest on my laurels a bit here since I have over 500 posts on this blog now. I think there is enough to help anyone who is interested in basic information on emergency preparedness to get a good start on finding out what they need to know.

I apologize for not having this blog better organized, but you can use Google searches to find subjects that interest you on this blog. I use tags for each post and that makes searches more efficient on many subjects. I expect I will write a post that goes into more detail on how to do this.

With climate change happening so fast, we all face many more and much more serious emergencies than have occurred in human history. It only makes good sense to be prepared for emergencies.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Safety Alert For Cat Lovers

One of my cats is close to 24 years old. I gather that works out to over 100 years translated into people years. I really love him and take the best care of him that I can manage. I expect that has something to do with him reaching this advanced age in good health.

Two things that I watch out for especially with his health care are how he is doing with his poop and his urinating. I believe problems with these two health indicators kills most cats before they need to go.

I do all kinds of things that I have already mentioned in previous posts to make sure my cats can urinate and poop without health problems preventing it.

One of these things is cat litter. I make sure my cats like their litter okay and once I find a good litter that both my cats and I like, I stick with it for years. 

I have run into a problem with a cat litter that my cats and I have liked and used for several years. The litter is called, "Scoop Away". It is made by Colgate corporation. I liked it because not only did it meet kitty approval, but it also came in bags instead of plastic buckets that they had used before. This container is less polluting than the pails, even though considerably more awkward to carry and store at home.

Scoop Away seems to have made a change in their litter. This change is not good. It no longer clumps as well and it is not possible to get the litter as clean as it was before their change. My cats do not like it and started trying to hold in their poop and urine in order to avoid using the litter box because they dislike it so much.

This can cause health problems that can kill a cat in a short time. It is life threatening. 

I called the company and left a message with their customer service as soon as I noticed this problem. There has been no response. I believe this is because they have probably been inundated with complaints about their litter. 

They do not care enough about their customers or their cats to even respond to a serious complaint about their
Scoop Away cat litter product.


This reminds me of a huge mess a few years back with cat food. Several companies bought a cat food ingredient from China that had been deliberately contaminated to increase profits. This contamination caused the suffering and death of many cats. 

A friend had cats that ate the contaminated cat food and suffered permanent health damage from it. She had vet bills that ran $1,000.00 a month for several years until they finally died from it. Many owners sued the cat food companies over this problem. My friend did not have enough proof available for her to feel that she had a chance to win a lawsuit over her cats being injured by the cat food companies' products. Instead, she paid thousands of extra dollars to keep them alive for a little longer.

I believe that Scoop Away makers are doing something with their litter that is probably even more harmful to cats than the cat food debacle. 

I did not post about this problem without a lot of thought. I finally decided to do this post because I will not feel right if I do not share information that may help others to protect the health of their cats. 

I am changing the brand of cat litter that I use for my cats because I care about protecting their health. I am posting this to allow others to consider doing the same.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Evidence That You Will Probably Face Record Tornadoes And Hurricanes Because of Climate Change

It can be extremely difficult to get people to understand that climate change will affect their own lives. I notice people talking about how they need to stop climate change for the sake of their grandchildren. I also notice that most of the people who say things like this still drive around alone in their cars. Grandchildren dying when people are dead does not seem to be enough motivation to actually take effective steps to stop climate change.

I believe we will not get enough people acting to stop climate change before it is too late to do any good, unless people understand that their own comfort and maybe even their lives are at stake because of climate change. 

I want to use this blog post to show people some things that are happening that might help them to understand that they may die and certainly will have a miserable time surviving unless they make major changes in how they live, in order to slow and stop climate change from getting so out of control that it will not be possible to prevent the Earth from becoming difficult or impossible to keep humans alive here any more. 

Even if you can't get motivated enough to change your behaviors that are making climate change get rapidly worse and kill off the human race after you die, these links I intend to give you in this post should help you to understand that you may not be able to survive your normal life span, or will have a very hard time living as long as you are meant to, unless you make big changes in what you do now.

The first link is to a story about an enormous glacier, the biggest on Earth, that is breaking up much faster, than even the most pessimistic scientists expected it to. The reason that this matters to you is that this glacier is in the Antarctic. The polar regions affect weather all over the world. Such a large chunk of polar ice will affect your weather in a very bad way. It will make the storms that you get now, much worse and if you thought you did not need to worry about tornadoes and hurricanes in your area, you will soon get them.

Another bad thing about this glacier melting is what the amount of water in it will do to the oceans of the world. It will speed up the rise in sea levels. That will force more people than ever in history to move to keep from being drowned. 

When large numbers of people find themselves forced out of their homes, this usually causes wars. We already have plenty of wars, but this will mean a great many more of them. It is hard for any country to stay out of wars if they are nearby. Climate change means that so many people will be forced to run for their lives that it is unlikely that many countries will be able to avoid being drawn into wars.

Here is a link to information about the giant iceberg that broke off in Antarctica.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/26/us-antarctica-iceberg-idUSTRE61P15H20100226

Here is a link to an artist who uses altered photos to show what west coast cities will look like as the oceans rise. http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/nickolay-lamm-west-coast-sea-level-rise-pictures-20130711

He already did illustrations of what the east coast will look like as sea levels rise. They say in the accompanying text, that these photos are what it will look like IF sea levels continue to rise. They only go up to 25 feet. Some scientists think sea levels can rise up to 50 feet. 

We can be quite certain that sea levels will go up over 5 feet no matter what we do, because it is already too late to prevent that much of a rise. All that we can manage, if we make serious changes overnight is to stop sea level rise from getting to the highest levels, like 25 feet or more.

Chances for an overnight change of behavior world-wide, don't look too good for now. The longer we wait to change what we are doing now, the worse the sea level rise will be.

I have already posted about how sea level rise is affecting the world right now. An example of this is what is happening where I live in Alaska. We have over 180 villages in Alaska that will be flooded by the currently expected rise in sea level. Two of them, Shismaref and Kivalina were already scheduled to be evacuated over two years ago. Some of their buildings have been falling into the ocean every time there is a big storm.

The villages in Shismaref and Kivalina have not evacuated because they want to save their villages by moving them to the mainland. The state of Alaska does not have enough money to move all of the threatened villages. The state wants to move the villagers to bigger towns on the mainland and let the villages die. If you want to know more about it, you can look at my posts about it. This is happening in other places in the world, but not as fast. Climate change is faster in Arctic regions like Alaska.

The next link is only a sample of what can be expected because of climate change. The link is to a tornado in Oregon. This has not been a normal occurrence in Oregon. It will, be though. There are lots of other places that are getting their first tornado and can expect to get more of them because of climate change. Places that are more used to tornadoes, can expect to get a lot more of them and worse ones as well. 
http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/oregon-tornado-mcminnville-jun2013-20130614

This post is already a bit longer than my old ones used to be and it would become a book if I put in a lot of examples of places that need to get used to tornadoes. I will probably do a post that is only on this subject. You need to look them up yourself, for now though. 

Scientists do not know exactly what weather will do because of climate change. They only know ideas of major trends that will happen. This is because having polar ice melt so much and so fast is already causing unpredictable weather. It will only get more unpredictable. 

An example of what could happen is that areas that are dry could become wet and vice versa. Oregon rainforests could become deserts and Florida swamps could become dry. The Mojave Desert could become wetter and so could the high plains desert in Nevada. If you live in areas of the world besides the USA, just think of the places that you know of that have extreme climates and imagine them going to the opposite extreme, or back and forth and in between.

Having schizophrenic weather will make it so much harder to raise enough food that millions more people will starve and even people who have comfortable incomes will feel the pain in their wallets. This will put more elderly people at risk of hunger, and as Baby Boomers retire, if that is you, you could be hungry too.

In the USA, elders are having to choose between paying for medicine or food. It will only get worse as climate change makes food production harder and more expensive. The increasing scarcity of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal will cause power costs to increase which will make for an even larger jump in food prices along with everything else getting more expensive because of transport costs going up.

There are other problems that climate change will make worse in the near future, but they can be harder for an average person to understand. I will see if I can start explaining it here for anyone who want to know. I am a bit discouraged about doing this because so few people do want to know. The majority of the human race seems to prefer ignorance to understanding and working on our problems. We do not have long before this approach will prove fatal to the human race. We won't all die right away, but it will be as certain anyway. 

I posted a while back about a comparison of the human race treasuring it's ignorance, making us too much like a sheep that drowned in a creek that went through an alfalfa field that my family owned. The sheep died unnecessarily in spite of great efforts by me to save it. I am afraid the human race is preparing to die in the same way, through stubborn stupidity.

This blog is part of my efforts to try to keep the human race alive. My health problems are getting worse, so I don't know how much longer I can continue this part of my efforts, but I will do so as long as possible and I gather it will live on as long as Google does.  :-p I hope it helps. 

If you are reading this, you can be part of the solution to this problem of climate change. Learn to walk lightly on the Earth and take better care of it.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

500th Blog Post

Today I am celebrating my number 500 post on this blog. Sorry for the slight premature vacation last Wednesday.

I wanted to talk about preparedness by working on being self sufficient. Those of you who have been regular readers for a while already know that I am a fan of hydroponics for this purpose. 

I am still in the experimental and research stage for hydroponics, so I don't know all that much about it from personal experience. I still have toothpicks holding some lettuce plants over plastic yogurt containers of water. 

I like aquaponics even better than hydroponics because you don't have to worry about finding and buying nutrients for your plants if you use the fish water for the plants. The cycle is kind of beautiful. You feed the stuff that comes out of the fish to the plants and the stuff that comes out of the plants to the fish.

I believe that aquaculture and hydroponics and similar methods of raising food are the way that humans can keep eating in spite of climate change. 

Climate change has caused strange weather all over the world and this will only get worse. Agriculture is very dependent on weather. Having unpredictable weather is not good for keeping a good food supply going.

Most of the people in the world now live in cities. When you live in a city you can lose touch with nature and understanding of what it requires for you to be able to go to the market and get food to eat.

Most of the city people in the world today do not realize how serious a threat to their continued comfort and even existence, that climate change presents to them.

It is not our grandchildren or even our children who need be concerned about climate change. It is us. 

Unless you are deathly ill, with one foot on a banana peel an the other in a grave, you are already facing the consequences of climate change. It can make you starve to death, or at least be very hungry in the near future.

Hydroponics and aquaponics are ways that we can grow a lot of food regardless of most things the weather may be doing to us. That does not mean it will be easy. 

We have been so thorough about wrecking the Earth that we have squandered world oil and gas resources in a short time and are now starting to run low on them. We need fuel to run lights and heat and pumps to do hydroponics and aquaponics. 

We have to use ways of stretching the resources that we still have left, to grow enough food for the people of the world, when the weather makes it impossible to grow it outside in the traditional ways.

Growing plants is the most common spiritual gift. Most of the people in the world have that one. There is a good chance that you have this spiritual gift. You probably have a "green thumb" whether you are aware of it or not. You will never find out unless you try growing things. 

You are denying yourself a great pleasure that could some day save your life, if  you do not try growing plants. I think hydroponics or aquaculture are practical ways to use this spiritual gift. It does not matter whether you have a religion or belief system. You are hard wired with your spiritual gift or gifts anyway. Make yourself happy and grow something.




Wednesday, June 26, 2013

How To Adjust Spices In Recipes

 If you have read my posts about preparedness food you already know that I consider spices to be an important part of your preparedness food. A good selection and use of spices will allow you to keep eating the same things repeatedly without getting tired of it during an emergency.

I gather from my reading that many people do not know how to adjust their spices for cooking. This can be serious if you are depending on spices to give you a variety of tastes for your storage food both in your everyday diet as you use and replace your food storage and in emergency use.

This post is to help you learn how to adjust your spices to your personal tastes. The first part of this process is to examine what you like. Do you find yourself adding a lot of pepper and salt to your food when you use the recommended amount of spice in a recipe? If that is the case or if you think it is tasteless or bland, then you can probably increase the amount of spices called for in ordinary recipes.

Some exceptions to watch out for are Szechuan, or Sichuan Chinese food. That is the extra spicy Chinese food. They use the hottest peppers in the world. I believe  eating the Szechuan food could substitute for a tonsillectomy. When I go to a Chinese restaurant that serves Szechuan food, I ask them to go easy on the spices. I don't even use Szechuan recipes, but if you do, like most people, you will probably need to reduce the spices called for in the recipes. 

Some recipes have the taste of the spices in it as an important part of the entire recipe and in those you WANT to taste the spices. In other recipes the spices are meant to be subtle and you don't even want to be able to specifically notice a particular spice taste standing out from the background taste.

My pineapple/blueberry smoothie is one of those. If you taste the spices, I think you have too much spice in it. In that recipe, the spices should just give it a little bit of a wild berry taste so that you don't especially even notice that it has spices in it.

One of the problems with getting spices correct for a recipe is that there is a tremendous variation in how strong spices can be. If you get your spice from a grocery store, it can have been on the shelf for over a year. That will mean that spice will be weaker in taste than a fresher spice. You will need to use more of the grocery store spice to get the same amount of spice taste. That could mean doubling the amount of spice that you use to get the same taste.

I have been increasingly using bulk spices from health food stores instead of supermarket spices. The health food store spices are usually much fresher. I believe that this is healthier as well as more tasty. The variety in a health food store's bulk section may be less than is available in the grocery. This means that you will have to get some spices from the grocery.

If you think food is usually bland and tasteless, then you might want to start out a new recipe by increasing the spice called for in it. My personal preference is to use a recipe the first time, exactly as written. Once I know how the author meant it to come out, then I feel free to adjust it to my preferences. That is the point where I add or reduce the spices. I think that 1/8 teaspoon or less is a safer increment to adjust the amount of spices in a recipe. 1/8 teaspoon measuring spoons can be hard to find, but they are available. If this is too difficult you can take a 1/4 measuring spoon and estimate what half of that would be.

A pinch is an old measurement for spices. It is the amount of spice that can fit held between your index (pointer) finger and your thumb. The size of your hand can really make a difference in this measurement. If you have a very large hand you will probably do well to assume that it is best to go scant on your pinch for a standard recipe. A pinch can help you be consistent in adding spices to your recipes. I kind of use an eyeball method, which has its drawbacks. If you spice directly into the recipe, it can vary quite a bit and make your cooking unpredictable.

You can reduce this unpredictable element by shaking your spice into the lid of the spice container or the palm of your hand so you can control the amount before it hits your recipe.

Emergencies are kind of miserable to live through anyway. It could make you and everyone who eats your cooking during an emergency feel nibbled to death by ants if your cooking is wildly variable. It might be safer to learn to shake your spices into the container lid or palm of your hand before you actually put them into your recipe.

Basil is my favorite herb. I will use it as an example to explain what you are dealing with on herbs. You can take seeds from the same packet and grow them up into a plant to use for cooking. Each plant from that same packet can produce leaves that will taste noticeably different. The difference can include stronger or weaker basil taste. Each plant will taste different depending on whether you use the leaves dried or fresh.

How you dry the leaves and how you store them and how long you store them can all affect the taste and strength of the basil taste when you put it in your food.

When you have all of those variable and more affecting how your food tastes when you put basil on it, you can see that using spices can require more than automatically putting a half teaspoon of a spice or herb into your food.

You have to know how that spice you want to use tastes. I have learned to have a pretty good idea of how an herb will taste by smelling it. I don't believe that this ability is very common, but if you can develop it, it saves a lot of trouble. If not, then you will need to taste your herbs before you use them. If a dish turns out to be too strong tasting for a particular herb or spice, then you know to reduce that herb or spice a little the next time you cook. 

I dislike taking the chance that I will ruin an entire dish by really over-doing the spices in it. That means I make small adjustments each time I cook it until I get the spices where I want them. 1/4 to 1/8 teaspoon is about as fast as I like to go to adjust my herbs or spices in a recipe. I usually keep the herb or spice adjustment even smaller than that, though. Spices can really change a dish for better or for worse very fast. 

A post-it note or a pencilled-in notation on the recipe can help you to work out the change you need to make for that herb or spice the next time you use the recipe. Once I get the spice adjustment down to where I like it, I like to change it in my computer and on my hard copy recipe book.

Every person has different taste preferences. This is even more true for cooks. It is often possible to tell who cooked a dish by the herb or spice "signature". Every chef has a special palette of herbs and spices that they like best. Once you get used to adjusting herbs and spices to your own tastes, you too will develop your own herb and spice signature.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Save Money And The Earth By Keeping Cool Without Air Conditioning

There are lots of things you can do to keep cool during hot weather without using air conditioning. If you live in a very hot climate and are used to air conditioning, you may have to reduce your use of air conditioning gradually. I quit suddenly, with at least once a month  using air conditioning. 

This is because I rented a place that had an air conditioner along with it. If you don't run an air conditioner at least once a month, without special preparations, the seals can go bad and even ruin the air conditioner.

The thing that makes the most difference in coolness is a combination of plants grown in front of the window, a mister on the plants at night, and a double fan with one set to exhaust warm air on top and the bottom fan to intake cool air. I kept the window shut during the day time. I closed the window right before it became hot outside.

This combination was enough to lower the temperature inside my home enough to make it chilly and necessary to use warm blankets and warm clothes at night. Getting it this cool at night made the coolness inside my home last most of the day, with no other things done except running a few fans, and shutting windows to keep the coolness inside

Here is a link to a post about how to stay cool without air conditioning: http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/noacok.htm

There are a couple of things you can easily make that will help you to stay cool as well. They are known to me as, "Okie Air Conditioners". Both of them involve fans. 

I have not made the more complicated version, but I have made the easier one. That one involves an insulated ice chest. Styrofoam is cheapest, but unless you can find one made of  biodegradable styrofoam, it is not that environmental.

You also need a small fan, and something like a piece of pvc pipe with an elbow to direct the flow of cool air where you want it, like your face. I just taped a couple of used cardboard toilet paper rolls together at an angle, after trimming them to fit first.

You will also need ice for the inside of the chest to cool the air going out the elbow to your face. I get my ice by putting a plastic bucket with water into my freezer to make a large chunk of ice that doesn't melt too fast. If you live in a very hot place, you will probably want to have at least two plastic buckets so you can have an extra piece of ice ready when the first one melts. I refill my bucket as soon as I take out the chunk of ice and put it back in the freezer. It takes a while to freeze a big chunk of ice.

Ice cubes work also and seem to make cooler air come out the elbow, but they also melt faster.

I also wet a towel in cool water and wring it out pretty thoroughly. Then I put it on a hanger with built in clamps like a skirt or pants hanger or use a pin or clothespin. Then I hang the whole thing in front of a window that is open with a slight breeze coming through it. This does not work as well if a lot of sunlight is hitting the window. The air coming through the wet towel is cooler. 

If the window has a lot of sunlight on it, you will need to re-wet the towel much more often.

If no breeze is available, I put a fan near the window so the air is directed into the room to be cooled.

My cats can seem pretty miserable in hot weather, so I usually direct my air flow out of the okie cooler where the cats can lay in the cool air right where it comes out. They sit and wait for me to put fresh ice in it and turn the fan back on.

I cracked the bottom of one chest by letting the chunk of ice hit it too hard. Since then, I take the lid off of the ice container and set a large dinner plate on top of the container with the ice in it. Then I flip it all over so the ice slides out onto the plate. Sometimes it is necessary to run a little hot tap water on the outside of the ice container to loosen up the ice inside in order to get it out of the freezer container. I use a large plastic bulk ice cream bucket for my freezer container. There are a lot of other things that can also be used, but this is what I had handy.

Next I turn the ice chest on its side and position the plate with the ice on it next to the open top of the chest. I scoot the chunk of ice into the ice chest very gently to avoid breaking the styrofoam. Last, I gently turn the chest upright with the ice chunk in it and take it back to where I use it and put the lid on and turn the fan back on.

I also bathe my cats' ears, faces, and necks with cool water to help them stay comfortable. They objected at first, but now they come to me to get it done.

There are lots of other things you can do to stay comfortable in hot weather without using an air conditioner. Even if you feel you absolutely have to use an air conditioner, you can do these things to reduce how much you use it. This will save both your budget and the Earth. 

It is kind of ironic that we can be making the Earth get even warmer, by using an air conditioner to stay cool. lol. It seems a bit counter productive to me.





Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Explaining The Spiritual Gift Of Music To Christians

It seems a shame to me that many Christians are completely or largely ignorant of the existence of spiritual gifts. I believe our spiritual gifts and learning to use them are a large part of the reason why humans exist. That is why it is so bad that Christians should be unaware of this major connection to Gd.

Music is a very special spiritual gift, yet I have spoken to Christians who deny that it is even a spiritual gift. One reason for this is the narrow definition of spiritual gift accepted by many Christian religions. 

Here are a few Bible passages that are most commonly accepted by more Christian religions about spiritual gifts:

Romans 12:6-8
1 Corinthians 12:4-11
1 Corinthians 12:28-31
Ephesians 4:7-13
1 Peter 4:10

There are many more Bible verses that are accepted as describing other spiritual by smaller numbers of Christians. 

Music is not one of these. I believe that we are told rather clearly in the Bible, nevertheless, that Music is a spiritual gift, and a very important one to Gd, at that.

Here is a quote about what the Bible has to say about singing: The Bible contains over 400 references to singing and 50 direct commands to sing. We're commanded twice in the New Testament to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). This quote comes from here: http://www.christianity.com/newsletters/features/what-happens-when-we-sing-in-worship-11627945.html

Musicians were scheduled to play in the Jewish temple around the clock. The job of these musicians was to keep music going at all times. This happened when having enough laborers to grow food was important. During this time, a large number of people were taken away from raising food to make music instead. This demonstrates how important the music was. Gd told the Jewish people to have the musicians play in the Temple all of the time. That means it was important to Gd. 

One way to tell how important something was to Gd was to see how often it is mentioned in the Bible. We already saw that singing is mentioned in the Bible over 400 times. That is only one word about music. If you add in the mention of music and musical references, you can see how important music is to Gd from the Bible.

Another way to see how important music is to Gd is through scientific discoveries. One reason for my love of science is that it tells me about Gd. 

When you love someone, you want to know about them. One of the best ways to know about someone is to look at what they make. This is especially true of artists, including musicians. You only have to watch one sunrise or sunset to know that Gd is an artist.

The Bible also tells us that Gd is a musician. It talks quite a bit about inanimate objects singing. Psalms 19, for example, has things about hills being joyful and skipping. Some versions of the Bible equate this with singing.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, since it is especially dear to my heart and I have studied it quite a bit. I need to get something posted on my blog to avoid letting down my readers by a very late post, so this will have to do for now.






Wednesday, June 5, 2013

What Is A Diagram?

This question comes up in search queries for my blog often. Most readers will already know the answer to this, but since so many do not, I am going to answer it in an extra post. I am also going to refer you to other posts connected to it.

In case you wound up on this post without reading the title, the question is: "What is a diagram?" A diagram is a simple picture that helps to understand ideas more easily. That is my own definition of a diagram. I am going to give you a link to a dictionary definition of it also. I hope that you will be able to look up any words you don't understand after you read this. I have posts on how to use the internet to look things up. You might want to read those also.

Here is a dictionary definition in red:


di·a·gram
[dahy-uh-gram] Show IPA noun, verb, di·a·gramed or di·a·grammed, di·a·gram·ing or di·a·gram·ming.
noun
1.
a figure, usually consisting of a line drawing, made to accompany and illustrate a geometrical theorem, mathematical demonstration, etc.
2.
a drawing or plan that outlines and explains the parts, operation, etc., of something: a diagram of an engine.
3.
a chart, plan, or scheme.
verb (used with object)
4.
to represent by a diagram; make a diagram of.
Origin:

1610–20;  < Latin diagramma  < Greek:  that which is marked out by lines. See dia-, -gram1

The definition above comes from this link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diagram

You can use the dictionary or others online to look up other words you don't know. You can type the word you want to find out about into your search engine or browser with "def" after it (short for definition) and you will usually get a lot of different dictionaries with their version of the definition. I think it is good to try different dictionaries to see which ones you like the best.

I believe that the most important diagram among my posts on this blog is about what happens when a nuclear bomb explodes. My diagram is not that great, but it gives you some idea of what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes and makes it easier for readers to think about it. This makes it possible to make a plan to live through a nuclear war. I do not care what side anyone is on who reads this information. I think it will be hard to keep enough people alive to save the human race after a nuclear war starts, so the more people who live, the better.

Any survivors will be so busy trying to stay alive, that continuing a nuclear war will not be a priority. I think we will need all of the genetic diversity we can get. We certainly won't have enough people left to kill off more after a nuclear war. I hope that a few more people will do emergency preparedness, including for nuclear war because of my blog.

I have other diagrams on my blog for things like a cheap, easy-to-make solar oven and for a rocket stove that is basically a fancy hole in the ground, but takes very little fuel. If you look at these diagrams and study them a little, you will be able to take the ideas and make your own versions of a solar oven or a rocket stove with the materials you have available. I put lots of links into my posts to help you understand and use the information in my posts.

I started this blog as a public service to as much of the world as possible, to help more people live and thrive in spite of the damage that humans have done to the Earth. 

I believe that people are capable of behaving much better than we have so far and hope that this blog and all of its posts will help us to become better humans. First, we have to stay alive.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

What Will Climate Change Do To You And Other People?

I am going to try to put this information into words that are easy to understand for normal people who are not rocket scientists. I think it is a bad idea to leave out most of the people on Earth from understanding this important stuff that affects all of us. 

I am not telling you this to discourage you. It is the opposite. I think that there are things we can all do about this problem. I am not saying it will be easy, or that we will like doing them. We need to do them anyway, in order to survive.

I got this information from my class on the Health Effects of Climate Change. It is taught by a Medical Doctor who takes care of children and a scientist who has been studying what is happening to our air for about 35 years. Both of them want more people to understand this stuff also. 

There is a problem with them doing this. They are very very smart and have a hard time putting things into language normal people can understand. I am having trouble myself, but I already knew a lot about it before, so that helps me out some.

This particular bit of information that sorts out what will happen to us because of climate change was written by another Doctor, Anthony J. McMichael. Here is a link to it in case you want to see it yourself: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1109341

The part that I am basing this on is in a little part that you have to click to see in the article. It is in a table, that you can make full screen on your computer so that you can see it better. It is called, "Table 1. Categories of Climate-Change Risks to Health, According to Causal Pathway.

The table sorts the health problems that we will get from climate change into three areas. 

The first one is called, "Primary" health problems. This is things that climate change does that will get us and our health directly. His categories for this are: heat waves, extreme weather events, and temperature-enhanced levels of urban air pollutants.

Not everyone will understand about what heat waves do to your health. I have been in more than a couple of record-breaking heat events. If you have not, I can guarantee you won't like them. The first one I was in was in a town where we got a 30 day long triple digit or higher spell of hot weather. That means it was 100 degrees Farenheit for 30 days in a row with no cooling off.  (100 degree Fahrenheit = 37.7777778 degree Celsius).  As if that wasn't bad enough, the same place set another record for 40 days of triple digit heat while I was still there. I could not get out of there fast enough.

You may think you don't have to worry about this in your area. Wrong. Climate change is going to cause record heat all over the world. You are not likely to escape it, especially if we don't get busy and stop making climate change worse.

"Extreme weather events", means we will get more, and worse, of the kind of weather we already hate. These are weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, floods, etc. An example of the kind of "extremes" we will be dealing with are hurricanes like Sandy. 

Sandy set all kinds of unpleasant records for size. In case you don't already know, Sandy reached all the way from the East Coast of the USA to our far inland state of Ohio. This is an area bigger than many of the countries in the world.

I believe it was last year, 2012, where the USA set a world record for tornadoes. We had over 800 of them. We not only got more tornadoes, but they did more damage and covered a much bigger area than is usually affected by tornadoes. People got hit by tornadoes, who thought they would never see one.

Whatever weather we are used to is getting hotter, colder, wetter, bigger and worse in every way we can imagine and climate change will keep making this worse and worse for the rest of our lives.

"Temperature-enhanced levels of urban air pollutants means that if it is hotter, breathing polluted air in cities will make you sicker and kill more people than it already does. There was a woman who lived in that city with the triple digit heat records who was killed this way. 

She already had asthma and other health problems. She was the single parent of three little children, the oldest a toddler. She was found dead in her home with her children crying over her body. This one incident is almost enough to make me cry while I write about it. She is only one person and her children are only three more people. There are more like them and there will be a lot more. 

We need to stop climate change from getting worse so we don't get endless numbers of children crying over dead mother's and father's bodies or parents crying over dead children. We can work to stop this sadness from continuing and spreading.

The next "Causal Pathway", is the secondary risks that get us indirectly. The ones mentioned are, "food yields, water flows, infectious-disease vectors, and intermediate-host ecology". This means things like the drought that hit over 90% of all of the agricultural land in the USA last year. The USA normally exports food and feeds people in other parts of the world. The USA is not even doing a good job at feeding its own people because of that drought. That means people in other countries are going hungry because of our drought.

The drought in the USA also caused food prices to go up all over the world, because there was less food to go around.

Water flows does not mean only drinking water. It includes things like water for growing food, or cleaning,
or manufacture. 

"Disease vectors", means things that carry a disease to you. An example of this is the bubonic plague a long time ago in Europe. Rats were supposed to have carried fleas that carried the bubonic plague germs inside them. The rats took the fleas wherever they went. The fleas jumped off of the rats and bit the humans. When the fleas bit the humans, they gave bubonic plague to the humans. Vectors are the "middlemen" of disease. 

When climate change warms up places that used to be colder, it makes it possible for animals that could not live there before, to start living there. That can include disease-carrying vectors, like rats.

"Intermediate host ecology", Whoops. Sorry. The fleas are the prime vector and the rats that carried them were intermediate hosts. The fleas only stayed on the rats for a short while. The normal home of those fleas was another kind of rat. That short stay of the fleas on the European Roof Rats made them intermediate hosts.

The last category of bad things that climate change can do to your health and the health of everyone else, is called Tertiary. That means, "thirdly". The third group of bad climate change health effects can be things that are harder to pin on climate change, but still would not happen without it.

This third group of climate change bad health effects are things like, "mental health problems in failing farm communities, displaced groups, disadvantaged indigenous and minority ethnic groups". There is a subset of this third group, that I will cover next.

I get to see a lot of the mental health problems similar to the ones mentioned. Alaska still has a lot of people who live in small remote communities, who have never been to a big town and who live lives that are not a lot different than before Alaska was invaded by white people.

Over 180 communities in Alaska are being flooded out by rising ocean waters. Two island communities have already been scheduled to be evacuated. Their houses have been falling into the ocean every year when the winters storms hit them. 

Big chunks of their land disappear with the storms and even without the storms. These two islands will probably be completely underwater soon. These two island villages are called, "Kivalina", and "Shishmaref". I have already posted about them. Both are trying desperately to raise money to save their communities.

The government of Alaska just wants to move these people into the big cities. The people who live in these flooding villages mostly do not like this idea. Some of them speak their native languages as the main language in their villages. They are afraid that their languages, customs, and ways of life will be swallowed up by the big cites just like the ocean is swallowing their villages back home.

Some of the villagers who are being flooded, have already ended up in the city where I live. I see them on the bus, and at the bus stops and in the stores. 

They often have a dazed, lost look their faces. Some of them hide it better. Some have never seen a bus, let alone ridden one, or figured out how to do it. They can have the same sort of trouble shopping in a huge department store for the first time, or times, or even forever.

I believe this is culture shock. I have probably experienced a little of this sort of thing myself. It was not as bad for me as it is for the villagers. I had already moved around a lot when I was a child and seen lots of different things. It was easier for me than it is for them. It was enough so that I have some idea of how they feel. It is only a small reflection, though.

This same sort of thing is happening all over the world. Some Pacific islands have already gone under the ocean, and only have bits sticking up for a few months out of the year. The people were evacuated to New Zealand and other places. One of these islands was Tuvalu. I already posted about it, and the people I met in New Zealand.

The last part of the third group of health effects from climate change are called, "consequences of tension and conflict owing to climate change-related declines in basic resources (water, food, timber, living space). This is a fancy way of talking about war and the kinds of things that go along with it. 

Not many people are going to simply give up when they see their homes being gobbled up by the ocean, or they see their children going hungry and starving to death in front of their eyes. They will fight to get what they need. They will kill other people, or die trying to get what they need to stay alive.

It is something we have to expect from climate change. Lots of people will die fighting over what they need to survive. This will get worse and worse as climate change gets worse and takes away more of what more people need to survive.

You can try to hide from all of the bad health effects of climate change, but it will not work. If you want to have a decent life much longer, you will have to change what you do. 

Almost everyone on Earth is now making climate change worse. We are doing it very fast. Even the most pessimistic, depressing predictions of what climate change would do in the future have turned out to be too optimistic. We are wrecking our home, the Earth, very fast. It is happening much faster than even expected.

Because of the speed with which we are making climate change worse, we do not have much time to make our changes before it will be too late to fix it. We will all have to work together to do fix climate change. First we have to stop making it worse. 

The changes that we need to make in what we do are not Rocket Science. They will not all be changes that we will like, but we can't live without the changes. It is time for us to get busy making them.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Save Yourself fFom Starvation As You Age

As you grow older you will probably become less able to work and earn money. This is normal. This does not make it good or something for you to look forward to. There have been scandals in the USA where it was (re)discovered that elderly people were forced to buy dog food to eat themselves because of not being able to afford meat for humans.

Social safety nets, that give food to people who would have starved to death in the past, have increased worldwide. You may be depending on one of these safety nets to keep eating as you age.

This is not a good idea. Climate change is already making food prices go up all over the world. This will get much worse. As prices continue to rise, there will be more need for the food from social safety nets because of more poor people needing food, and less food and money to spare for social safety net programs.


When you do things to stop climate change you are protecting your own food supply, now and in the future. 



We need more people who understand, care about, and are willing to act to stop climate change. It is in your own best interests to be one of these people. Your own future depends on it.

Climate change is raising the average temperature of the whole Earth. One of the easily predictable results of a rise in the Earth's average temperature is drought. Your food supply will be harder to keep coming to you when there are more droughts.

Plants need water. If you want to eat plants or animals that eat plants, you need water for those plants. This is true even if your food does not come from your own area or country.

In 2012 the United States had a very bad drought. Ninety percent (90%) of the cropland in the USA had a drought last year. This used up all of the food stored up by the government to give to poor people. It was not replaced. Food banks all over the country are already running out of food to give poor people from only one year of drought.

Since the United States is a food exporting country, this has driven up food prices all over the world. This situation will last at least the rest of this year without another drought, because of limited supplies to food manufacturers in the United States. We can expect a continued rise in overall food prices for the rest of this year.

This is just a sample of what we face with our food supply as droughts occur
more often and in more places in the world. If you want to keep eating, you need to learn more and take action to stop making climate change worse.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Learn How To Stop Climate Change

There are realistic things that you can do about climate change. You do not need to try to hide from it. 

Climate change can be overwhelming because it is such a big problem. It is a vast relief to find things that give one hope about fixing the problem of climate change. We do not need to give in to despair over the size of the problem compared to our abilities.

I treasure any glimmer of light in our polluted darkness. One of these is a free online class. The awesome respectability of the class and its teachers is in itself a little overwhelming to me. 

The class is given at Harvard University, one of the finest colleges in the world. They have other classes available on many other subjects, of course. Some of the other classes are interesting, but none has the importance of this one. It is, "Human Health and Global Environmental Change". It starts today. It is not too late to be included in this ray of light.

If you want to consider taking this class, you can look it over here: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/PH278x/2013_Spring/about

One of the professors of the class is an MD, a pediatrician at a famous hospital. The other professor has been studying the "quality" of our air for many years. 

A book by one of the professors of the course, "Sustaining Life, How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity", is optional reading for students taking the course. The book is offered on Amazon, in both a hard copy and a digital, Kindle version. You can read these without even taking the course.

There are plenty of links to strong, useful information. There are lots of graphs and charts to make this information easier to understand and be able to explain to others.

The lectures are broken down into short video segments. You can use the materials at your own speed with a few exceptions. The course is broken down into sections and access is restricted to the current and past sections covered, to keep the eager beavers with the rest of the class. 

There is a lot of information to be covered in the course. I am definitely glad that I refrained from taking other courses simultaneously. This is all information that I want to understand very well, and it is clear that this will require a lot of time.

I hope that some of my readers will join this class, now or later on, as it is repeated. The Earth and the people and the rest of the life on the Earth, need your attention, interest and actions. 

We can not continue to exist in the face of indifference to climate change, and we need everyone who is willing, to get busy learning and acting to stop climate change.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Medical Alert Cats

I have mentioned in earlier posts that I have been plagued with a lot of mini-strokes, or TIAs. I am still having that problem, but I am getting some help with it from my cats. 

I can not always tell when I am having a stroke for a while. My older cat seems to be able to tell when I am having a stroke long before I know. He has started letting me know. He may have been doing it longer than I knew about. I only realized what was going on very recently.

I have read about cats and dogs alerting people to someone having seizures, but this is the first I have known about any animals alerting to strokes.

Since my older cat is very old for a cat, 23 years old, I was thinking that it would be good if the younger cat would learn this also. 

Today, the younger cat demonstrated that he can already alert to strokes and he even had to do even better at it than the older cat.

I have had at least four TIAs today. It can be hard to keep count with so many because it is difficult to separate when one ends and the next one starts. I think I got overlap today.

The older cat was alerting a lot of the day today. Since cats have to sleep most of the time, he had to take breaks. 

During one of the older cat's breaks today, the younger one took over. I guess they decided to do shifts, or something.

The younger kept standing a little ways off from me and yelling at me. I got up to see what his problem was and he led me to a bag of aspirin that I had not put away after getting some out to put in my daily medicine boxes. 

One of the things my doctor told me to do for my health is take aspirin when I think I am having problems. I had already taken my evening dose of low-dose aspirin, so I wasn't planning to take any more. My cat thought otherwise. lol.

That really weirded me out. I did not realize that the younger cat knew what goes on around here that well. I also had no idea that he knew about strokes, or could communicate so clearly. I am still having a hard time believing that he even knows what aspirins are and when it might be a good idea for me to take some.

I am fairly used to the idea that animals know a lot more and can learn much more than most people expect. This incident has even managed to shock me. I am still trying to adjust to this new knowledge of what my two cats are able to do. 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Climate Change And Health

Many of you readers are interested in your health. This is a good thing to be interested in. It is hard to enjoy good health if you don't learn what is required to get good health and keep it.

Sometimes people do not make good sense in their choices for their health. An example of this is people who decide to lose weight by drinking diet soft drinks. I am not going into the hazards of this idea on this post. This is just an example that many people already know is not that great a choice for good health.

Another bad health choice that many people make is not paying attention to what is happening to the planet we live on. We need the earth for our health. If we destroy the earth, we get things happening like the effects of climate change. 

We agree that breathing bad air is unhealthy. Some of us take care of the bad air problem by buying an expensive air purifier. We may be doing this when we drive many miles every day in a gas guzzling vehicle that does a lot to make the air worse. 

We may make sure that our food is healthy and organic and buy a house on a piece of land that used to grow organic food. We might put in a tennis court or swimming pool on that land and our neighbors may do the same.

We may be concerned about climate change when we see enormous hurricanes killing people and doing record setting damages. We may take yoga and meditate to help stay calm and not worry that the next hurricane might hit our area. We may be doing this when we are part of the cause of the climate change that brought us these super storms.

Yes, it is not that fun to think about climate change. It is even less fun to think about what we, as individuals are doing to make climate change speed up and get worse. 

Sometimes we have to think about unpleasant things to avoid them. It can be scary to think about the consequences of poor nutrition choices, but it is necessary to learn what bad nutrition can do to us so that we can make better choices. The same is true for bad climate choices. 

We do not have very long before climate change is irreversible, and goes into an ever-worsening spiral. It is time to learn what bad climate choices we are making so that we can make better choices and protect our health. 

You can be the healthiest, fittest person on earth and not outrun a natural disaster.