08:57 – “Who are you,” Barbara asked me last night, “and what have you done with my husband?” Yesterday was the first day in more than 40 years that I consumed no soft drinks. None. Zero. Zip. Ordinarily, I guzzle Coca Cola Classic from the time I get up through late afternoon, and Sprite starting around dinner time. Yesterday, I drank tea until mid-afternoon, then drank orange drink mix from the LDS store until about 9:00 p.m., and then filled my mug with (gasp) ice water. It was that last that really prompted Barbara’s comment. She hadn’t seen me drink water at home in the 31 years we’ve been married. Ever.
When Barbara asked this morning why I’d done that, I told her there was no special reason. She was worried that I might be ill. In reality, it’s because I’m writing a prepping book, and one of the fundamental principles of prepping is that you should eat (drink) what you store. And we have lots of tea, sugar, orange drink, cocoa powder, etc. stored, but only maybe a month’s supply of Coca Cola and Sprite. So, although I won’t attempt to dignify what I was doing as “research”, I wanted to see if there would be any physical or mental effects from changing a long-standing habit. So far, there’re no adverse effects, but I’ll continue the test for at least the next few days. Maybe permanently. I like sucrose better than high-fructose corn syrup anyway.
I got most of my stuff out of the living room yesterday and helped Barbara haul up boxes and boxes of Saturnalia decorations, including Bob the Reindeer and Bob the Penguin. As is usually the case when I’m writing a book, I order stuff that I know I’ll need later and then just stack it up until I need it. Most of what was stacked in the living room was of that sort, stuff that UPS delivered that I hadn’t had time to process yet.
09:43 – I’m rather surprised at the lack of media response to the cops shooting and killing a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland over the weekend. Perhaps that’s because, from reading the reports, it appears that this was unquestionably a “good” shooting. The boy had a pistol in his waistband and attempted to draw it when the cops challenged him. It was an airsoft pistol, but many of those are so realistic in appearance that the cops had no way of knowing. Making matters worse, apparently someone had removed the blaze-orange paint from the muzzle.
Which reminds me, I intend to daub the muzzles of our firearms with blaze-orange paint. The situation will probably never arise, but if it does and if that orange paint buys me even a tenth of a second, well, that’s all I need. Besides which, a 1″ band of orange paint on the muzzles of our assault rifles and riot shotguns will make them pretty.
I expect it’ll mostly be psychological. I have trouble doing without coffee during the day, or my evening beer, but it isn’t the caffeine or the alcohol. Really – yesterday, I had decaf coffee and alcohol free beer – which satisfied my cravings just fine. It’s purest habit.
I’m honestly not expecting any effect at all. I’m not really very subject to habituation/addiction. I quit smoking cigarettes accidentally, for example, and didn’t take up a pipe for some weeks or months after that.
Well, I usually drink two liters of Diet Mountain Dew a day. The 13th through the 17th, I drank none. Since then I’ve had a couple of Diet Cokes and one Mello Yellow Zero with only one refill. I haven’t had any headaches.
Although I think I’m with Bob, on not being prone to addiction. When I broke my arm I got strange looks when I showed up 11 days after surgery and when they asked if I need a pain medication refill and I said I stopped taking it 7 days earlier. The biggest effect I’ve noticed from the oxycodone and acetaminophen combination is constipation. The pain relief was nice, but barely worth the price.
I believe you can buy Coke made with sucrose (“Real Sugar” Coke). We always called it Mexican Coke because that is, allegedly, the version of coke they sell south of the border.
Yes, they sell it in bodegas here, but only in those tiny original bottles, and at a premium. I’d go broke buying those.
Which, incidentally, says something about both the sugar lobby and the corn lobby here in the US. Both have a vested interest in keeping sugar prices artificially high, especially since sucrose is superior both as a sweetener and as a feedstock for bio-ethanol.
Wasn’t there a push for cellulosic ethanol several years ago? I remember big talk about switchgrass being much more effective than corn for generating ethanol (drought tolerant, several harvests per year, can be planted on land unsuitable for most food crops, and so forth).
South of the border you can probably get Coke that still has real coca leaves as part of the recipe. 🙂 Though, probably not added to it by The Coca-Cola Company.
Evidently it isn’t easy to turn cellulose to sugar in quantity. Either that or the proponents of ethanol didn’t lobby hard enough for it in Congress.
Cellulosic ethanol has been around for more than a century, including industrial-scale production during WWI and WWII. The problem has always been cost. The raw material is essentially free, but the cost of converting it is very high.
The boy had a pistol in his waistband and attempted to draw it when the cops challenged him. It was an airsoft pistol, but many of those are so realistic in appearance that the cops had no way of knowing. Making matters worse, apparently someone had removed the blaze-orange paint from the muzzle.
The kid is a candidate for a Darwin award.
I would never let my kids have toy guns. My middle son got a working muzzle loader when he was doing Civil War reenactment. He was taught gun safety.
Rick in Portland
None of the new stories mention the race of the kid or the cops. What may we infer from that?
We had toy guns as kids and no one thought anything of it. Modern times have really sucked when it comes to things like this.
“What may we infer from that?”
Being a very cynical bastard, I’d guess it was not a white cop and a black kid. Of course it’s probably more likely that white kids play around with toy guns than black kids, for whatever cynical reasons one may infer about that. Just a wild guess? White cop and white kid. Ain’t no thang, y’all.
Windows guys got the top five done this morning and are now doing the bottom four; a huge improvement so fah. Shutters next week, at least on the sides of the house, like these windows, which face the street. We’ll do the rest next month or after the holidays, I reckon; living room ceiling is next. These new windows not only cut down on the outside noise considerably, but now there is no rattling, and they’re getting the real McCoy test today ’cause the wind is running at 45-55 MPH gusts again. Temps in the low 60s. Very strange for this time of year.
Word has it that a decision was reached by that grand jury out in Missouri.
I would never let my kids have toy guns.
We played with toy guns all through my childhood. Cops and robbers, cowboys and indians. Cap guns that made real popping sounds. Even had one toy machine gun that took rolls of 500 hundred caps, ran on batteries and could run that large roll of caps in short order (specifying a time would be worthless as back then my kid brain sense of time was worthless). No one ever thought about shooting anyone, pointing guns at police. Even got to wear the toy guns to school on special days.
Biggest arguments we had were about who shot who first and who was dead and not just wounded.
Word has it that a decision was reached by that grand jury out in Missouri.
Heard that. News crews have warmed the remote trucks, Al and Jessee are now in makeup, stores boarded up, thugs armed with clubs ready to loot. Should be a fun time in Ferguson tonight. Even the grand jury files no charges Ferguson may not exist tomorrow.
The boy in Cleveland was black. There was a picture of him on the local Foxnews station’s story. No idea what race the cops were. I’d prefer to think that everyone is devastated by the death of a 12-year-old boy but realizes that the cops had no choice.
We had lots of toy guns when I was a kid, and we did the same things Ray mentions. Of course, by the time I was 12 I was making real explosives as well.
I doubt it will matter one way or the other; the grand jury foreperson could march out front and center and announce that they have that cop dead to rights and will be charging him with homicide and the four hundred years of slavery and the presence of Evil among the human race and mob elements will still rush out to raise holy hell anyway.
If I lived there I’d be locked up nice and tight with the dawgs and outside floods on and all ammo’ed up. Ain’t gon end up like them farmers in the former Rhodesia. And South Africa.
But chances are the activities and fun will be focused on a relatively small area that the heroic warrior forces of law enforcement can contain, though one hasn’t much confidence in modern law enforcement these days.
I am well-stocked with Moxie, Dr Pepper and pretzels. And we gots us cable! This should be reasonably entertaining. Idiocy reigns supreme in the land of the twee and home of the knaves.
RE: Cleveland Shooting
I believe the identities of the two officers involved have not been released (it will leak soon enough as they are on mandatory administrative leave following the shooting). However, the kid was a black kid named Tamir Rice.
RE: Ferguson Shooting
On the plus side it’s a cold windy week in that part of the country and come Thursday everyone is going to want to eat, not riot. So, that should hopefully limit the length and intensity of any violent protests.
“No idea what race the cops were.”
If it was a white cop I’m pretty sure the media would be howling like banshees by now. But maybe common sense is prevailing…ya think?
“I’d prefer to think that everyone is devastated by the death of a 12-year-old boy but realizes that the cops had no choice.”
Wow, that’s asking a lot.
We had us some kids running around in South ‘Nam that would be wired up nicely with grenades or toting a satchel and also Charlie would send them though minefields and wire ahead of him. I never had to shoot any of them but know guys who did. They were pretty messed up about it.
One of my late friends was a Green Beret who served in Viet Nam and got a Silver Star for valor. I remember him in tears one time telling me about being on a deep penetration mission and having to kill a little girl of maybe age six or so. With a knife. He said it was by far the worst thing he’d ever had to do, and it haunted him to that day. But he didn’t have any choice. It was the girl or him and his team. She was about to give them away, and they would all have been dead before even attack choppers could have arrived.
It’s like the Biblical injunction from Deuteronomy: “This day thou has set before thee both life and death; therefore choose life.”
That’s probably not exact but close enough. Then you run into questions like that Green Beret ran into; ordinarily the last thing any of us would do is kill a little girl with a knife. So to choose life in this case meant choosing the multiple lives of him and his team and presumably also for what they believed was the greater good in the end of their fight. There are some that would say he should have just died with his guys rather than kill that girl but not me. It’s yet another rotten thing in war and also yet another illustration of why when we choose to fight one, it better be for the right reason/s and justifiable.
On the larger scale, there have been arguments dating from the times they happened, on the Allied bombing raids in Germany and Japan, which ended up killing mostly defenseless civilians. Not to mention the two A-bombs we dropped on the latter. I wouldn’t second-guess our fathers and grandfathers on that but would be comfortable arguing it’s not a war we should have got involved in, like the world war before it. Or any of those after it.
Don’t get involved in these things; look for all possible ways to avoid them; and you don’t have our young men and women having to make shitty decisions like that.
I certainly agree with all of that.
Although he never talked about it, I’m sure my dad was haunted by the thought of how many children the bombs from his B-17 might have killed. They aimed at factories and other military targets, but the so-called pinpoint or precision bombing was a joke. US bombers, dropping during the day, had CEPs of something like a mile in diameter. British bombers, dropping at night, were lucky to get CEPs of 5 miles. My dad flew more than 25 combat missions over Europe, so it’s almost certain that the bombs his B-17 dropped killed civilians, and probably children. I’m sure all the aircrew must have thought about it, and that none of them liked killing German kids any more than German aircrew liked killing British kids. But everyone did what they had to do.
“EU May Try to Break Up Google”
http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/eu-may-try-break-google
Really?
But to be honest, the Germans not only hit British civilian targets first in WWII, they’d done it before as well in the Great War. They started it. This pissed the British off, and one thing I know about my English cousins is that they have very long memories and are the most stubborn people on the face of the planet. Or used to be.
So it was not a big stretch for them, with the Americans, to do those raids all over Germany, and of course know full well they were wiping out civilians below. So naturally the Germans responded again in kind, and both sides kept it up until finally the Luftwaffe was rendered null and void. It was also not a big stretch for us to hit Japanese civilians after we’d seen what they themselves did to civilians and Allied POW’s.
Far better not to get into these things at all in the first damn place.
As I’ve said many times before; the day enemy paratroopers start dropping out of the skies over northern Vermont is the day I’m the first son of a bitch out the door with a rifle. Until then, include me out.
“EU May Try to Break Up Google”
Really?
About damned time! 99% of our problems are from business becoming so big, nothing can stand in its way — not those enemies, the customers; not politicians (so super-easily bought off); not other businesses who are happy to play along, because they get to charge a LOT more for the product than if there was actual competition.
But right. No way the EU is going to force the breakup of a US company. Even M$ takes their whippings and still continues doing what they are not supposed to do. Apparently, they love BSDM, just like Jian Ghomeshi allegedly does.
lol Let’s wait until dark to announce the Ferguson Grand Jury. As one commenter said:
“Why not hand out booze, too.”
And guns and knives.
There is no dealing with small-town mentality. Really.
I never had to kill a little girl with a knife, but I am bothered by a few things I did in the Army. One would certainly be a war crime, except that when one side acts like savages the other side is not bound by Hague and Geneva and whatever conventions, except that the Americans are supposed to play Marquis of Queensbury while everyone else can do whatever the hell they want. I do know that I’m old enough that we didn’t have counselors waiting to help us over the deep, deep trauma. We had a pro forma legal and command review, were told “Yah, it’s cool, don’t talk about it”, and were sent on our way. Overall I think this is better than endless wallowing.
I will say, I’ve never lost a moment’s sleep from any of the people I’ve killed, in the Army or out. I have lost sleep from people I didn’t kill, who then went on to do more or worse than what I’d considered killing them for. I still don’t know what to make of this, and probably never will.
““Yah, it’s cool, don’t talk about it”, and were sent on our way. Overall I think this is better than endless wallowing.”
There is a more or less “happy” medium. Rather than keeping it bottled up tight and ready to pop on whatever trigger from the time of incident/event to the time of one’s deathbed and all points in between, or yammering about it nonstop to whoever will listen. We have guys who haven’t said squat to anybody from the time of the stuff that they did or saw to the present. And that includes the current Sandbox situations going all the way back to the Good War. Yeah. We have 85-year-olds now breaking down and crying about shit. From 70 years ago. They were told to STFU about stuff and keep it inside, “like a man.” It tore their guts out for decades. Ditto Korean and ‘Nam war vets and the endless fucking Gulf and Balkans wars. Other nations’ veterans are finding this out now, too.
The thing to keep in mind is that it is not NORMAL for young people to be stuck in the middle of combat for whatever length of time and come out of it unchanged, and not for the better, either. So their bad reactions to it years or decades later are NORMAL. What is NOT normal is sociopathic behavior that allows someone to not have an iota’s bad feeling about stuff like that.
“…but I am bothered by a few things I did in the Army. One would certainly be a war crime, except that when one side acts like savages the other side is not bound by Hague and Geneva…
Indeed. You are bothered because you would not have normally done those things in the regular course of your life, amirite? And the things you did must not have been copacetic in some way. Ergo, you are bothered. Me, too.
You may go on quite nicely not losing any sleep or having PTSD symptoms, etc. On the other hand, certain “triggers,” as I have personally found, can pop up out of the freaking blue and hit you right between the eyes. May not happen at all; may not happen for decades.
I was doing swell for sixteen years after I left Uncle’s murderous pay, drinking, doping, having a great time, didn’t worry about shit. Then the first Gulf War got splattered all over the tee-vee screens and son of a bitch! My brain went on overdrive, no warning, nothing. Knocked me for a loop. I got real busy with grad school and teaching and so on, but kept drinking and hopefully tamping down those flames every night.
Second trigger was when I drove down to a little informal reunion, from Vermont to Portsmouth, NH, with some fellow former spec ops guys from SEA. Man, that messed me up; Mrs. OFD just recently told me I got back from that and used to sit on top of the hill in back of our house then, “with that thousand-yard stare…just staring off into nothing…” That was in 1998. So I kept drinking.
Took another eleven years, into my late 50s, until I almost died, before I woke the fuck up and smelled the coffee.
And since I’ve been going to the VA meetings, one-on-one and with the groups, things have slowly gotten better. Five years now dry as a bone; don’t even drink coffee or tea. Mostly happier, easier to get along with, nightmares much more rare, anger and bitterness slowly dissipating, but I have the late Paul Fussell to remind me that that never goes completely away.
That all said, yeah, it would bother me and I would still lose sleep if I’d missed whacking somebody who later went on to much worse stuff.
“I would never let my kids have toy guns. ” Ditto. Our Rabbi come to visit when our son was fairly young, and noticed the lack of toy guns. I said that we didn’t allow toy guns – because every gun in THIS house is REAL.
Curiously, he didn’t come over very often after that…..
Wilson exonerated.
They’re not indicting Darren Wilson. Alright, everyone. BURN IT DOWN!
Not much of a gun enthusiast myself, but grew up with them.
Still a decent shot w/ a .22 rifle at targets, though.
Concerning folks here, I’m sure I’m not far off the mark that I was taught at a very early age that even pop-guns or caps-guns weren’t to be pointed at anyone, under any circumstances.
And don’t run with scissors!
OFD, had Skeat’s covered in Mylar today. Just brings me so much joy. Thanks again.
They’re not indicting Darren Wilson.
I am certain that Al and Jesse will be on the news tomorrow saying the grand jury interpreted the evidence incorrectly even though neither one of them have seen any of the evidence. Al and Jesse will be fanning the flames of a fire that should have been put out. Got to keep their careers alive.
I see now where Obama is going to make a statement. I would wager that Obama will be appointing a special prosecutor (black of course) to further examine the evidence. Racist bastard.
Obummer to address the Nation about Ferguson.
Sharpless to make a statement on Ferguson.
Fartinacan smacking down Obummer over Ferguson.
Where’s Jackwagon?
Was there any doubt there would not be an indictment.
@jim` Makes da haht glad to see dat. Very few of us word nuts around anymore. There is also C. T. Onions…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Talbut_Onions
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198611127.do
“Was there any doubt there would not be an indictment.”
The cop has disappeared and won’t be back to work on that department, period.
I still would figure I had a bulls-eye on my back if I was an officer in that department right now.
The night is young…
I am, in fact, a borderline psyochopath. (Or “sociopath”, in modern non-precise parlance.) I’m not particularly a threat to those around me, but that’s mostly because I’m too lazy to kill everyone who annoys me. OK, that’s a joke, but the truth is that my natural responses to many stimuli is waaaay different than
the herdnormal.No indictment? That’s only because the jury was packed with 75% white racists. In a majority-black city, that’s an obvious atrocity!!!!
(This was discussed on the radio as I was driving home. Though the city of Ferguson is majority black, the county is 70% white, and the juries are drawn from the county, not from the city. There is also a very high differential in showing up for jury summonses, with non-whites tending to blow it off. Thus, a 75% white jury pool led, reasonably enough, to a 75% white grand jury. But I’m sure these considerations will do nothing to the claims of raaaaaaacism.)
It begins.
My intel sources report that the protesters/rioters are up against a massive wall of cops, from horizon to horizon out there. The usual riot chit is gonna get stifled in its crib, methinks. But I still wouldn’t wanna be a cop there right now, no matter how great the pay and bennies, which probably suck. After the tee-vee cameras are gone, and the holidays kick in good, that will be that; another “story” will be retailed to us about sumthin or other all over the media and the United States of Amnesia rolls on…
And more boffo laffs from the cops:
“So a cop pulls into a cop shop in Akron, Ohio. As Officer Distracted leaves the cruiser, he mistakenly hits the remote trunk release on his key fob. (ohio.com: “it appears a defective latch allowed the cruiser trunk to pop open after an officer parked near the department.”) A homeless man (and thief) named James Couto Jr. wanders by. He sees an unsecured “high-powered and loaded” M16 – one of 5000 loaned to OH cops by the DOD – in the trunk. Mr. Couto plays finders keepers. The cops freak. The cops catch him dead-to-rights. A judge sentences Mr. Couto to two years in the hoosegow. No word on administrative action against the policeman or woman from whom the M16 was stolen. Fair enough? [Note: this is not the first time this has happened.]”
OFD wouldn’t mind wandering by such an open cruiser trunk some dark night…
As the fine citizens of Ferguson burn their community to the ground, my mind is on other things.
OshitForBrains is ordering Immigration to releases crimmigrants left and right. Do we even need ICE or Border Patrol any more? Think of the savings on salaries and pensions alone! Obummer could give all the hardware to the citizens of Fergson to defend against the Cops and Whitey. RAAAAACIST MrAtoz. Bad boy!
The borders are a joke and have been for many years.
The prison industry keeps nonviolent cons locked up and releases violent predators daily.
We have at least twice to three times the official number of illegal aliens in the country now and there is no way they’re all getting deported so they’re here to stay. Ted Kennedy is laughing his fat drunken whoring ass off somewhere right now. The southwestern quarter of the U.S. will become de facto Aztlan. Habla Espanol, senor?
Meanwhile the inner cities are no-go zones for cops unless they go in with armor and close-air-ground support, i.e., MrAtoz and me in a chopper.
And the national infrastructure is going to be allowed to continue crumbling to shit.
What a country! (as some guy out in Indiana sez occasionally…)
The contractors did eight windows here from 09:30 to about 6:00 PM; I’m sure it woulda gone faster in a nice slick modern phony saltbox colonial with plastic siding, but this is a 200-year-old brick house and every damn window and window frame was different along with the measurements, etc. They did an excellent job and now we can’t hear chit outside and no drafts anymore. Once we do the other eight upstairs here this house will be nearly as tight as a drum; gotta do both front and back doors, though. And get that sheeting up over the back porch screens. But what a huge improvement thus fah.
If no wind tomorrow there is hope I can hang up the kayaks, tie down the old antique canoe and tarp it over real good, and get the sheeting up. If it’s more wind and rain, I’ll work inside on this office and we’ll both do the rest of the house-cleaning for T-Day, which for us this year will be Black Friday, while every other Tom, Dick and Sally will be camped out at all the malls and stores or shopping online.
Wilson is 27. Last month, married a woman working in the same department who is 9 years older than he. If they want a quiet life, they will leave St. Louis.
I’m listening to ABC radio continuous coverage on WLW/Cincinnati. It is fairly comical listening to how they are presenting all of this. If you watched the questions thrown at the prosecutor, the last several demonstrated that the reporter had no concept whatever of the law or the legal system. Real true idiots. These ABC guys all couch the case as the grand jury is at fault for causing all the riots everywhere. Of course, the grand jury could take the 3 autopsies that show Brown was not shot in the back, but conclude he was? The fact that the stolen cigarettes were on Brown’s person meant he didn’t rob the convenience store?
And here is a good one: many schools in St. Louis were canceled for tomorrow. Just now, they are realizing that was stupid. It lets those kids out so they can go demonstrate. What a nutty place.
Police scanner reports now saying that the cops are bailing from certain parts of the city and those are being set on fire by rioters. Perfect.
“These ABC guys all couch the case as the grand jury is at fault for causing all the riots everywhere.”
While that guy in the WH sez the country is not yet “as good as it could be” and “we have a lot of work to do…” and so on. In other words, the wrong decision was made by the grand jury and justice was not served. Ergo, roll yer own.
Two lessons here: Big dumb stupid punk-ass kids need to learn that they can’t just jump on a guy, especially one in uniform with a gun, and keep pounding away. It’s a real good way to get shot.
And: apparently a lotta cops and security bozos need training or a refresher in how not to get overrun and overcome by a big dumb stupid punk-ass kid.
OFD remembers getting such training over forty years ago with the USAF Air Police and again with the MA State Police Academy and numerous MA Criminal Justice Training Council courses. So what, the default now is the taser and then shooting somebody? Nothing less lethal? Do cops even need to be in any kind of shape? Do they get regular self-defense and arrest procedure training? Do they fire for qualification on a challenging course several times a year?
We know the answer to all that, don’t we.
“There’s no money in the budget!”
Oh? How about selling off all them toyz you got from DOD recently? How about cutting back on the cruiser fleet and having guys walk a damn foot beat more often? Etc.
Not sure big dumb-ass kids can ever learn what John Mellencamp preached about authority. And here’s another one: teachers having sex with kids are coming out of the woodwork — literally. They apparently will never learn. Last two months and teachers from 20 to 45, both men and women, having sex with students from PA to DC to OH to England, and everywhere in-between. Shocking that people want to have sex. Shocking I tell ya.
“Besides which, a 1″ band of orange paint on the muzzles of our assault rifles and riot shotguns will make them pretty.”
I thought you’d burried all your guns and forgotten where or lost them in the lake near W-S.
“Shocking that people want to have sex. Shocking I tell ya.”
People wanting is not a problem. People in the wrong positions of trust doing is the problem. Regardless of the ages of any of them.
Latest from Ferguson:
“”No available cars,” the police dispatcher tells a police unit attempting to deal with [another outbreak of] looters. Sam’s Meat Market, a self storage facility and other buildings are burning to the ground without any fire department intervention. There are reports of a gunman in the bed of a pickup truck firing off shots. Store owners are calling police as cars mass for attacks of looting. It’s only a question of time before the National Guard are deployed. One hopes.””
“Yesterday was the first day in more than 40 years that I consumed no soft drinks. None. Zero. Zip. Ordinarily, I guzzle Coca Cola Classic from the time I get up through late afternoon, and Sprite starting around dinner time.” ~RBT~
Bob, you might want to check out this very interesting video on YouTube.com …
Is Sugar Toxic ? ~ CBS News ~ 135,938 Views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B56Gpf1f5_A
Published on Apr 1, 2012
Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on new research showing
that beyond weight gain, sugar can take a serious
toll on your health, worsening conditions ranging
from heart disease to cancer.
I’m assuming that you probably think you’re not
going to get diabetes, or you’d already have it.
Yes, maybe you just don’t have the gene. But
how about heart disease or cancer, or NAFLD ??
To learn more, you can watch Dr. Robert Lustig’s
talk “Sugar, The Bitter Truth”. He really gets into
it, including the gory details of the biochemistry.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth
University of California Television (UCTV)
5,212,075 Views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Uploaded on Jul 30, 2009
Watch “The Skinny on Obesity” with Dr. Lustig: http://www.uctv.tv/skinny-on-obesity
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 16717]
More UCTV videos about sugar: http://www.uctv.tv/sugar
Dr. Lustig’s book (comes out Dec 27, 2012), “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease”
Lots more available on YouTube.com, especially the HISTORY of SUGAR — including the slavery involved in the growing, harvesting, and processing of it.
P.S. Remember, please don’t shoot the messenger.
OFD, Skeat will keep me happy for years to come.
Don’t want nor need No Onions, No Garlic
I’ve been reading about Ferguson, which is mostly a demonstration of the qualities of inner-city black culture. Google “ferguson looting pics” and you see dozens of young black guys looting stores. No sign of actual protest, they’re just taking the opportunity to steal stuff. Not PC, but there you go…
I also had a look at the Cleveland shooting. Whoever called 911 said “There’s a guy in there with a pistol, you know, it’s probably fake, but he’s like pointing it at everybody”.
The kid also tried to draw the gun when the cops approached him. Ok, he wanted a Darwin Award. That said, the police department confirmed that ” the boy did not threaten the officers or point the weapon at them”. Seems like there are two things here that should have gone differently:
– First, weren’t there any responsible adults around? I mean, someone called this in to 911. If I had been at the rec-center/playground with my kids, I would have taken the gun away from him. And it would only be going back to his parents, not to him. Ok, maybe there weren’t any adults around, just some passerby who made the call. That brings us to
– Second, the cops could have recognized that this was a 12-year-old idiot, likely not intent on going on a killing rampage. After all, he hadn’t shot anyone yet, and the caller was pretty sure it wasn’t a real gun. The cops were only 10 feet away when they shot him. Spend another second telling him he’s being stupid, it’s not a game. Or – heck – take a risk, three big steps and tackle him.
Seems to me that the officers were just a tad trigger happy…
Unfortunately, nowadays there’s a good chance that a boy that age would have a real pistol and be willing and probably eager to use it. Drug dealers make heavy use of kids as couriers of drugs and money precisely because they’re minors. And many of those young thugs are in fact armed and just waiting for a chance to shoot someone to enhance their street cred. In that situation, I’d have done exactly what those cops did.
Even middle class parents have learned not to be involved. My female cousin came to the aid of a toddler who slammed his or her hand in a car door. She didn’t get thanks from the parents, but a dirty look. Males are viewed with even more suspicion.
@DaveB: I suppose I know that – comes from not having been in the US for so long. I do remember, about 30 years ago, volunteering to help coach a girls soccer team. My boss’s daughter was on the team, and he told me that they were absolutely desperate for volunteers, so I volunteered. Whisper, whisper, a single guy wanting to coach our young teen girls…whisper, whisper…NO THANKS, YOU PEDO! I suppose it’s only gotten worse since then.
Here, until a couple of years ago, I taught kids (boys and girls, up through their early teens) judo. Lots of body contact, which is kind of hard to avoid, when you’re demonstrating throws and hold-downs. I wonder how judo instructors handle this in the US?
Actually, the whole guy/girl thing is kind of funny in retrospect. In one of the groups I trained with, there were a couple of women in their mid-20s, very attractive. But when you’re wrestling around on the mat, even if you accidentally grab somewhere personal, there is just nothing sexual about it. I admired them in their street clothes, but as soon as they put on a gi, they were just judokas. Dunno if I’m weird, or if others also flip a switch that way…
Back when I was doing Shotokan, I always had trouble sparring with women. I knew my own strength, and I was terrified that I’d hurt them. I know it’s not PC, but women are *fragile*, especially when mixing it up with a 20-year old guy my size. So, yeah, I was always completely aware when my opponent was a woman. Fortunately, there weren’t all that many women practicing Shotokan, at least back then.
True enough, I didn’t go full-strength with the women. But that was pretty normal in our groups anyway. Even among the guys, there was a huge difference in size, weight and strength. There was this one guy, a butcher by profession, and I swear he could have held up a whole cow in one hand, while cutting it apart with the other.
I remember years ago on the DorothyL mailing list (mystery readers and authors) there was a discussion about physical combat between men and women. I said that no woman, regardless of her size, strength, or martial arts expertise, had any chance against a man in a streetfight. With one exception. Men are hardwired genetically to consider women not to be physical threats to them, so a woman had exactly one fleeting chance to kill or disable a male attacker before he realized that she was going to fight.
I also made the point that nearly every man grossly overestimates the strength of women and that nearly every woman grossly underestimates the strength of men. That’s because most people have play-wrestled with a member of the opposite sex. When that happens, the man moderates his power to a tiny fraction of what he’s really capable of, but the woman thinks he’s using all his power. Conversely, the woman uses all her power, but the man thinks she’s holding back because it’s not feminine to be strong. They’re both utterly wrong about the relative strength of men and women.
Many of the other list members–most or all of whom had probably never actually been in a real fight–told me I was a sexist pig and that a competent woman could fight a man on an even basis. But one of the women, a sandan karate instructor IIRC, weighed in to support my position. She was typical girl-size, maybe 5’4″ and 125 pounds. One of her beginning students was a foot taller than she was and twice her weight, all muscle. He was in the habit of grabbing her boobs while they were grappling, so one day she decided to teach him a lesson. She hauled off and hit him with everything she had, a full-power kick to his midsection. She was stunned at the result. She said he absorbed her kick with no apparent result other than him taking half a step back and grinning at her. She said she felt like a cartoon character, standing there vibrating with her foot in his stomach.
Which somehow makes me recall a chart my son showed me recently. It was a series of answers to questions asked of male college students 18 to 22. It is nowhere online that I know about, so I can’t provide a link. My son was helping someone try to find the statistical errors in the answers that might show its relative inaccuracy.
Anyway, these boys were shown porn films to get them aroused, then immediately asked about 50 questions related to their likes and dislikes regarding sex. I remember scanning the questions and noted that something like 51% answered that they would like to tie up a female sex partner before having sex. But nearly 90% responded that they would like to be tied up by the female during sex. Turned-on guys must really trust women.
These things always yield disturbing results. I remember reading of a similar tests done where subjects brains were monitored for sexual arousal and then they were shown a series of photographs. 25% of participants were aroused by photographs of obviously underage girls. Thus concluding, at least in this study, that 1 in 4 adult males is a pedophile (though most have the self control to not act on their urges). Like I said, disturbing results.
Depends on how “underage”. If they were past puberty, the correct term is hebephile or ephebophile, which in biological terms is normal.
What RBT said. Depending on who’s pushing an agenda, “underage” can mean “younger than 25”, which is utterly ridiculous on any biological basis but which I’ve heard propounded by several credentialed experts.
Conversely, if the claim is that 25% of male participants were aroused by pictures of eight-year-old girls, I’d call bullshit unless I saw the raw data.
I agree that these definitions are beyond problematic to troublesome. My first physical connection with a girl that got me aroused was at about 12 (sixth grade), and does that mean I was a pedophile? As I have mentioned before, my paternal grandmother’s parents got pregnant first time when she was 14 and first kid popped out when she was 15 (they had 13 more). Were they both pedophiles? He took over total charge of his young wife’s family’s farm at 19, when the wife’s father died unexpectedly.
If we keep going down the current road of extending childhood, people will be pedophiles until they are 25 or 30. In Germany, parents can be forced to continue supporting their children until they are 25. And the ACA is pretty darned close to forcing that.
“I remember scanning the questions and noted that something like 51% answered that they would like to tie up a female sex partner before having sex. But nearly 90% responded that they would like to be tied up by the female during sex. Turned-on guys must really trust women.”
An American woman I used to play cards with on the Internet told me that if I wanted to be more successful with women I should see if they were interested in a bit of S&M. She said a lot of women are secretly into that sort of thing.
Conversely, if the claim is that 25% of male participants were aroused by pictures of eight-year-old girls, I’d call bullshit unless I saw the raw data.
A lot of physiological responses are based in acquired, learned behavior, too.
Smacking someone of standard Anglo upbringing upside the head with a picture of any naked female past about seven or eight years old is a fair chance to illicit an immediate sexual response, just as it would if you dropped them in a naturist, nudist, park, surrounded by naked eleven and twelve year-old girls and their mothers and older sisters. Give it an hour for one to sort things out, and the sexual responses would certainly be more age-appropriate and appropriate in general to the circumstances. You might still enjoy admiring the younger girls, but it would be an artistic response, maybe an appreciation of potential, almost the same as one would react to a similarly-aged male in similar circumstances, rather than a sexual response.
If she’s got a reasonable set of boobs I might be interested. If not, not.
Miles_Teg, does your 02:46 comment refer to an eight-year-old with boobs or to a woman who wants to restrain you, and has boobs?
You know, I am not sure whether I could actually have relied on either of my wives to tie me up. Since they often did not believe me, what if something they were doing was really beyond my ability to sustain it, but they did not believe me when I asked them to stop it?
Gives me shivers just thinking about it.
A girlfriend quite some years ago wanted to handcuff me to her bed. I’m not exactly the most trusting individual in the world, but she was insistent, persistent, and persuasive so I went along with it “just this once”.
I’m not sure at just what point my conscious mind shut off, but it was around the time when my second hand was cuffed. When I came back to myself, the bed frame was destroyed, my one wrist was sprained, and my girlfriend was in the corner, screaming. We stopped dating right about that time.
Count me emphatically not in the 90% alleged, above.
Geez, you boyz need to brush up on all the contemporary BDSM etiquette, etc. “Safe words,” and suchlike. LOL.
I’ll just stick with BSD here…soon to be installed on the refurbished laptop.
Y’all go ahead and have yer fun…
Chuck, a solution might be a pre-agreed codeword that means “Stop, and I mean it.”
SteveF, I’ve never seen an 8 year old girl with boobs. YMMV. When she was 12 one of my nieces had an 11 year old girlfriend with a very seriously large rack. One that would put most big-breasted adult women to shame (but not Princess, most likely.) My sister said she was only 11, but it was obviously a child’s face on a woman’s body.