| Working hard |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|12:10 pm] |
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I've been hard at work for weeks getting up to date on XHTML and CSS so I could make a new web site that does all the spiffy things I want it to do. I've got it just about ready to deploy, at least a first revision. I'm pretty eager to get it out there. Just a few more finishing touches and it should be complete!
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| Organic vs. Factory-Made Tomatoes - How much Lycopene? |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|11:56 am] |
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I did a search for this information because a friend addressed my objection to GMOs and factory-style pseudo-farming, and I used lycopene content in tomatoes as an example. While searching for information about how much lycopene is in a typical tomato, I found this information:
Organic ketchup delivers three times as much of the cancer-fighting carotenoid, lycopene, as non-organic brands. Lycopene has been shown to help protect not only against prostate, but breast, pancreatic and intestinal cancers, especially when consumed with fat-rich foods, such as avocado, olive oil or nuts. (This is because carotenoids are fat-soluble, meaning they are absorbed into the body along with fats.) When Betty Ishida and Mary Chapman at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Albany, CA, decided to investigate whether the lycopene content of purple and green varieties of ketchup was comparable to that of the traditional red, they tested lycopene levels and antioxidant activity in 13 ketchup brands: 6 popular ones, 3 organic and 2 store brands from fast-food chains. Purple, green and red varieties of ketchup all delivered similar amounts of lycopene (although dark red ketchup contained slightly more), but a major difference was discovered between organic and non-organic brands. Organic ketchups far surpassed their non-organic counterparts' in lycopene content. One organic brand delivered 183 micrograms of lycopene per gram of ketchup, about five times as much per weight as a tomato. Non-organic brands averaged 100 micrograms per gram, with one fast-food sample providing just 60 micrograms per gram. Bottomline: It seems highly likely the same rationale will apply to all tomato products, so, for the most lycopene, choose the deepest red organic ketchup, tomato sauce, juice and other tomato products.
from The World's Healthiest Foods |
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| How do we stop evil food industries? |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|05:39 am] |
How do we stop major corporations from poisoning the public, causing cancer, heart disease, obesity, hypothyroidism, birth defects, and worse?
So much of the American food industry has been rapidly dominated by food science gone wild. Hydrogenated oils and margarine are everywhere. Transfats are everywhere. Unfermented soy is everywhere. High fructose corn syrup is everywhere. Beef and chicken and pork produced from factory production instead of farm production are everywhere. GMOs are everywhere. Potatoes that cause learning disabilities, soy that causes hypothyroidism, and worse are in your food right now.
How do we stop it?
If we merely try to pass a law that forces GMOs to be labelled, not banned but LABELLED, the food industry giants stop the laws from being passed. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE A SECRET IF THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT?
How are we going to ban these poisons from our food if the food industry itself has been allowed to grow to the point that they can disrupt the process of government? They have enough money and enough lawyers to stop any well-meaning and honest effort from ending the poisoning of America.
Notice that many nations around the world are fighting against this sort of thing. The EU has maintained a ban on engineered oil and rapeseed since 1997! European opinion of Monsanto has already soured from numerous efforts on their part to cover up their own studies showing the dangers of consuming their products. Why is the United States producing poison, and too stupid to do anything about it?
If someone came to me with a pile of money and said, "We'd like to introduce poisons into the food you and your family and friends will be consuming" I wouldn't take the money. WHO ARE THE PEOPLE MAKING THESE DECISIONS? ARE THEY JUST STUPID OR GREEDY AND EVIL?
On a personal level, how does someone on a budget boycott these products when they're in everything the American diet offers? Grocery stores are supposed to be the healthy and affordable choice versus fast food, but the poison is in the supermarket. Soy-based baby formula, milk with rBST in it, foods with hydrogenated oils and interesterified fats, and a myriad of other toxic substances are in our food, and we're so stupid that we're looking around wondering why Americans are getting more and more cancer and heart disease and hypothyroid conditions and learning disabilities and more.
Our culture is obsessed with stopping people from using drugs to hurt themselves and endanger others, and chasing terrorists and sexual deviants, but we let poisoners sell poison to our children. When are we, as a culture, going to wake up and force our legislators to do something about this?
We have to ban all GMOs until LONG-TERM, UNBIASED studies can be done to determine the possible risks of consuming them, and if the risks reported by scientists in previous studies are still present, we stick to the ban.
We have to turn the FDA into a 21st century super regulatory agency that routinely samples and thoroughly, honestly, and transparently analyzes every product that affects human health. That means the FDA has to analyze every food, every supplement, every drug, every drink, every cigarette, everything that can potentially poison a human being, and openly report their findings. Once the FDA has become a big enough organization to accomplish this, it needs to have the teeth to take down violators. It needs the authority to shut down companies that violate laws and threaten public health.
We have to stop monopolies that control too large a share of the food industry. What if a company like Tyson makes a major mistake like the banks or the car companies? They we'll have to bail them out, and our tax dollars will be paying for them to continue to poison us. Why? We have to fight big business and support small business. We have to support not only organic farming, but organic business, encouraging competition instead of monopolism, which is already supposed to be illegal. To fight monopolies, you have to nip them in the bud, not in full bloom. No single company should be responsible for most of the food of any type. It's dangerous in ways we are now being forced to realize.
It would be so much easier if this stuff was obvious to the typical consumer. If poisoning the chicken turned it green or blue, everyone would notice and wouldn't want it. Unfortunately, the food industry is very aware of how appearances and smells influence consumers when it comes to food. If they had a highly toxic gas that smelled like delicious gravy cooking, I'm sure it would be in our food right now. There probably is such a thing, and it's probably on its way to your plate right now, and in thirty years you'll look back and see that it was the cause of whatever cancer you're suffering from then.
We can stop this right now if we're willing to fight. We have to spread the word about the poisons in the food. Make other people aware of this. If a politician votes against healthy food, make sure voters are aware of that. If a company is responsible for dangerous ingredients in food, make people and vendors aware. We need a grassroots movement against toxic food.
It's no wonder the health care industry is so big now. The food industry has destroyed our health on our money, and now the health care industry can treat the results on our money.
It's time for this to change forever. The biggest threat to your health isn't terrorists. It's monopolists with fat wallets and no morals or ethics. |
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| Macross dub |
[Jan. 3rd, 2010|12:27 pm] |
I've been avoiding watching the ADV dub of Macross for a long time. I was afraid I would hate it because I almost always hate dubs. The dub studios almost never seem to get what the characters are supposed to sound like, and the actors frequently overact and do cheesy voices.
I originally saw Macross in Japanese back in the 80s, and afterward saw the dubbed version retitled Robotech. Initially I was glad that the show at least made it to television in the United States, but as I saw what the dub company Harmony Gold had done with it, I grew to hate it with a passion.
When Robotech was re-released in the 1990s on Cartoon Network, my distaste for the show resurfaced and I made The Anti-Robotech web site to launch a campaign against bad anime dubbing.
I had high hopes for the ADV dub because they got the original Japanese actress Mari Iijima for the voice of Lynn Minmay. I thought maybe they would get it closer to right.
The script is about the best you could do with a dub of the show, so I'm at least impressed with that, but in the end the dub is utterly awful. It's even worse than Robotech.
The voices overall are some of the worst I've ever heard in a dub. They overact. They grunt. A lot. They sound inappropriate to the characters. Worse yet, they mispronounce names that aren't even Japanese.
The name Macross stands for Macro-SpaceShip, despite Egan Loo's forceful assertion that the name was chosen to sound like Macbeth. The English word "macro" is even in the themesong. Despite this, the actors in this call it McRoss (m'cross) instead of Mac-ross.
The character Roy Fokker's name is mispronounced to sound like the Fockers in the film Meet the Fockers. The Japanese version and the Robotech version at least got that right. In this dub he's almost just Roy Fucker.
Despite the easy access to sound technology on any home computer, the Zentradi in this version don't echo at all. In the original and even in the Robotech version these giant aliens' voices echo through their massive ships.
The worst voice of all of them is the main character, Hikaru Ichijo. He's the most ridiculously cheesy sounding character ever. The original character had a very mellow, understated voice. Worse yet, the other characters call him hiKARu, putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.
ADV deserves what they got. They're out of business now. I've seen the excuses posted online saying that they still exist in the form of multiple splinter companies, but they're basically dead.
Good. This dub is an abomination. If I hear the voice of one of these actors in person I'll have to restrain myself, or someone could get hurt.
The more I watch the old Macross series, the more I think it needs to be remade anyway. The animation looks terribly dated and rough. It's a great show, but it was made in a time that couldn't quite pull it off.
I've looked at the 3DCG in more recent Macross shows and they don't look so good either. The anime industry in Japan is failing to advance with the technology. It's a shame. Actually, most of the 3DCG efforts out of Japan have been underwhelming at best. For a nation that has such great intellectual properties to choose from, they're really blowing it. Appleseed looks terrible to me, and I loved the manga. Redesigning the characters in a new style completely misses the point. It's Masamune Shirow's character designs that make it work.
So, the American dub companies are still blowing it, and the new anime coming out of Japan isn't cutting it.
A friend of mine recommended Death Note. I think I'll check that out next. |
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| Soy no more |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|10:45 am] |
I can't believe what a fool I've been. I put soymilk in my coffee every day. After I finally read about the dangers of unfermented soy, I've dumped out the rest of my soymilk, and will never again drink it or consume tofu. Now I'm sure that my recent weight gain was a result of the hypothyroid effects of unfermented soy, and I'll have to supplement with iodine to help boost my thyroid function.
This is going to be a big change for me. I'm going to be so much happier and better off without soy.
Sooner or later people are going to get angry at the way the FDA has failed to protect us from unsafe food products and unsafe drugs, and there's going to be a huge backlash against these evil corporations that don't care what their products do to people. The companies that offer bovine growth hormone, corn-fed beef, plastics containing PBA, and more are going to face a reckoning one day, and they're going to pay for their crimes. They have covered up the studies that proved the dangers of these products, and they're going to be punished for it. Not only the corporations, but the individuals who made these decisions must pay. |
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| Fighting for the future |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|09:38 pm] |
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All the hardships will be worth it when someday the challenges are behind us and everything has finally fallen into place.
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| Treat-release dog toys |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|11:15 am] |
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/treat-release-dog-toys.aspx
How well does your dog behave when you leave him or her to go to work or play -- or to go on vacation? Does your dog turn into a wreck... become hyperactive, or growl or howl? Or does s/he destroy your home in an effort to keep occupied while you are gone? Now when you leave your companion at home, absence might not make your heart grow fonder. The key is to understand that bored dogs are often destructive dogs. |
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| Religious extremists against health care reform... praying... |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|01:49 pm] |
Since I'm sure a rational argument will fail here, I'll use the biblical argument against this kind of public display of prayer.
Matthew 6:5 - 7
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Matthew 14:23
23 And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.
Matthew 26:36
36. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
Mark 1:35
35 And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
Mark 6:46
46 And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray.
Luke 5:16
16 And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.
Luke 9:18
18. And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?
Luke 22:45
45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow, |
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