Daily Loaf

To truly understand my outrage at U2 front man, Bono, accepting knighthood from the queen of England, allow me to put it into historical context.

England calls herself the United Kingdom these days. It sounds better than the English Empire. “Empire” got a bad rap in the Star Wars trilogy so for international marketing every scam kingdom on earth now refers to itself as United, like the United Arab Emirates which is a collection of U.S.-hating mongrel sheikhdoms that have a population just over two million people but we kiss their asses just the same.

Bono with his hand up Tony Blair’s ass.

England has killed a great many people in her history, England has looted and decimated many cultures and destroyed many languages and belief systems that she deemed to be inferior to her own.– The United States likes to tout itself foremost as a place of religious freedom in reaction to English repression, but in reality england miscalculated her own sons when it came to the Americas. England had a wonderful formula to maintain control over inferior people, but her own citizens, when left without proper supervision, realized they could just steal the land and franchises awarded to them by their King. To do this they had to spin their project to reflect something noble like freedom of religion and taxation without representation so that commoners might be willing to die for them. Our founding fathers, land owners and franchisees of the Crown crafted two of the most clever pieces of advertising copy every wrought, the Preamble to the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And it worked to gain the support of the working masses, the same ones who do the fighting and dying now.

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the Meridians, photo healingfabrics.com

An acupuncture study conducted in Seattle, released this month by the Archives of Internal Medicine, that substituted acupuncture needles with toothpicks to stimulate the meridian points, has acupuncture physicians and other Natural Health practitioners scratching their heads. The study used pointed toothpicks to stimulate the body’s meridian or acupuncture points and the results in pain relief were nearly identical to the cases where acupuncture needles were used.

“This study missed the point, ” said Acupuncture Physician Dr. Christy Giallourakis of  the Center for Oriental Medicine in Tarpon Springs, Florida. ”The problem with Western studies of traditional Chinese medicine is that the person conducting the study has to use experts on the placement of the meridian stimulus so that any results will be accurate.  There are 26 meridians but there are many, many, extraordinary points and these points can be inadvertently stimulated by someone who does not understand the system.”  What is used to stimulate the points has little effect on the outcome of the stimulation. “If you put any kind of stimulation to the point you will have a reaction.”

Acupuncture is based on the energy meridians of the body: these meridians are pathways of subtle energy that connect and compliment every organ and function in the body. Along these pathways is an interconnected system of subtle energy that can interrupt pain or enhance sensation depending upon the combinations of stimulated points. The interruption of pain is an important factor in healing. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the mainstream media has shoved off to cover the last moments of America’s Next Top Model and the finals of the American Idol competitions, I want to bring you up to date on the Swine Flu. 

First of all it is important to understand that in the USA’s rush to make the naming of this virus politically correct and to protect the flagging pork industry, they settled on H1N1 virus. H1N1 is a group of viruses, influenza A(H1N1).

Viruses are not typical and change often so by using this general title for this virus, Public Health has dumbed us down. Other groups of influenza viruses are A(H3N2) and B/Yamagata and B/Victoria viruses but the list is massive and complicated. To call this virus H1N1 is like using the term car to categorize a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. Yes it is a car but, there are many cars and among cars the 612 Scaglietti is most unique.  This “swine flu” is an A(H1N1) but it is not the only A(H1N1) virus. Read the rest of this entry »

The Canadian manufactured performance enhancement diet supplement Hydroxycut, used for weight loss and body building, has been pulled from the market in a voluntary recall at the request of the US Food and Drug Administration.

This is technically not a drug and is advertised as a “Diet Supplement”. The distress to the liver caused by this supplement has caused 23 reports of liver problems including the death due to liver failure a 17 year old boy. In at least one case a person survived their trouble by receiving a liver transplant. Read the rest of this entry »

It turns out that not only is fish a great source of Omega 3 fatty acid, fish is easily fortified with pharmaceuticals that treat anything from high blood pressure or the risk of unwanted pregnancy to high cholesterol and bipolar disorder. How, you ask?

Waste waster treatment plants used to be called sewage treatment plants but no one wanted a sewage treatment plant on the banks of their river so we began calling them “Waste Water Facilities”. Waste water facilities do well at allowing the human waste collected for treatment to reach a neutral state of organic activity with out the spectrum of bacteria and viruses that are present in raw sewage. Treated sewage is used many ways, some of it is processed beyond the “treatment” stage by breeding worms in it and then capturing the discharge from the worms to use as organic fertilizer; what happens in Orlando, and other cities in Florida, is that this worm step is not taken — the treated sewage is released into the river. Read the rest of this entry »

This new and exciting strain of swine influenza has Mexico running in circles looking for a US Citizen to blame for the epidemic.  The CDC is running in circles hoping that this flu strain is just a late bloomer and will not become an historic event that exposes the limited control Public Health actually has over the public’s health; and the rest of us, hungry for yet another reason to fret, hang on every word that is being scrawled or belched about this airborne death. Read the rest of this entry »

Having a child can gratify the deepest needs of a person, the inability to conceive can crush a person’s spirit.

This is National Infertility Awareness Week.  Families with fertility challenges are targeted by this week long awareness; success stories of conception and birth abound, proponents of high tech, high science, invasive and medical methods to induce conception are touted by experts and all in all everyone challenges the other guys’ methods.

The first stop on the trip to a challenged conception is to adjust one’s thinking, the fact that this is called National Infertility Week is tugging at failure. It should be called National Infertility Solutions Week and have that be. National Fertility Week would be good too. Those who are able to conceive wouldn’t give it much notice and those who are having issues with conception would still be targets.

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Top row: Forest Service Law enforcement Officers Walt Bliss, Mike Casey. Bottom row: Ramon Polo, Chiwa, and Matt Knudson receive national award for marijuana eradication. In 2006 the team eradicated 405,399 marijuana plants from 55 illegal marijuana sites on the Mendocino National Forest.

February is the month when we reflect on Black History; we celebrate both the physical and metaphysical hearts; with spring break closing in the condom companies begin their public service to encourage those hedonist college hipsters to wrap that rascal.

February is also WEED month; POT month. It is my opinion that we really don’t need a whole month to consider Marijuana.  The stoners over at NORML consider marijuana every day at 4:20.  The research on Marijuana is based on smoking habits akin to cigarette smoking and so, like cigar smokers who inhale, pot smokers who smoke at the frequency used in these terror statistics, are in the minority.  What has always bothered me about the prohibition on pot is that when something is outlawed the law can not touch it.  We have not made a dent in the drug war on pot in thirty years.

I can speak with authority on the pot war as I was a participant.  I was very in to retiring smugglers.  I was on the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Sagebrush when we arrived in Jacksonville with a prize ship named the Heidi.  In every compartment on the Heidi there was pot and after the GSA and Customs and the DEA got finished keeping each other honest, the published weight of the content was 137 tons.  That is the record for marijuana on the east coast of the USA.  The reason the record haul was way back in 1979 is that there is no reason to import bulk marijuana anymore.  North eastern Kentucky is to pot what the Napa valley is to wine.  Mexico imports truck loads of pot into the States – a benefit of NAFTA.

Photo Phil Cameron, US Coast Guard Cutter Sagebrush W399; 10 tons of pot

Most of the best pot on earth comes form the USA.  I know there are those who have toured the Middle East and were in Vietnam who will challenge me but I must say that great pot is grown in every state by the best science known to the world; and it is much stronger than even the legendary pot from Vietnam and Cambodia back during the war.  The coveted Colombian Gold of the early to mid ‘70s is rat-pot compared to the stuff being raised in grow-houses in quiet neighborhoods.  Now with so much surplus property sitting empty, grow houses are springing up with the added advantage of ganging their power demand among four vacant houses on a block and delivering the power to one address.  This makes it tougher to look for power spikes as evidence of a grow-house operation.

But the point of my reflection on pot is not to talk about the Yankee ingenuity used by pot heads to further their buzz lust; it is to consider how much money we have spent to irritate a market that could, if managed properly, deliver heavy taxes to the National Debt.  The subterranean economy of pot is expansive.  I debated this issue with the late Governor Lawton He-Coon Chiles as he was insistent that pot is an advent drug.  That is to say that people who shoot crystal methamphetamine were encouraged to it by hippies at Grateful Dead concerts who were selling balloons of nitrous oxide and joints (The interview was a long time ago).

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead with a Blunt

We have spent a butt load of money on keeping pot out of the USA when it is in the USA that most of it is being produced.  We have spent money on something that should be protected under the first amendment like any other thing that might impress the Darwin theory into play.  Willie Nelson is the poster child for NORML.  He is old.  He is real old.  He’s still here, that’s all I’m saying.

I don’t think pot is good for a person but if we are so bent on being free that tobacco and alcohol are legal we should consider the profit in it, and stop considering the loss.  So what if your kid smokes pot?  Mine kid doesn’t so why should I be deprived of the tax profit as a result of your poor parenting?

Just some thoughts on Pot since, it’s February and all.

KCO’D

Deadly Sophisticated

One by one, city by city, smoking bans have edged out the agitated and the addicted.  There was a time when cigar bars were a sure ticket to safe smoking pleasure and the promise of smoking freedom but it turns out that cigars are carcinogenic.  Cigar smoke is concentrated and the monoxides and tars that end up in your lungs surpass those in cigarettes.  The cigar rollers will tell you that this is not true, cigar lovers will tell you that they are fortified against disease because they do not inhale and they allow no cigar juice to go down their throats; cigar smokers are laboring under this shared fantasy, but the research stats do not support their collective chimera.  The second-hand smoke of cigars is much more rich and just as deadly as second-hand cigarette and pipe smoke.  A minority of cigar smokers can not resist the rich flavor of fired burly leaf and inhale, this is really risky.

There is a strange feature of our society that most people don’t breathe deliberately unless they are smoking.  My smoker friends breathe deeply every time they have a cigar or cigarette but when I have encouraged them to breath as deeply with out the tobacco, they cough like Marines coming out of the teargas hooch.  In offices I am always amused to see smokers in the fresh air while their non-smoking colleagues toil in the artificial air of the office building.  Living irony.

The clove cigarette was a sign of intelligent life in the ’90s.  Sophisticate, artsy types began smoking clove cigarettes because they were naive enough to believe that someone would produce a smokeable product that was made purely of herbs and cloves.  There is tobacco in clove cigarettes.  People soon became addicted and abandoned the clove cigarette for more concentrated delivery systems like American Spirit cigarettes.  American Spirit claims that they are the cleanest of the cigarettes on the market. I have read their propaganda and while they might not add a portion of the 599 elements that are included in the recipes of other cigarettes, trying to build a reputation of wholesome cigarettes by comparing your product to the average cigarette is like pushing the argument that a .22cal bullet entering your skull is somehow more safe than a .32cal bullet entering your skull.  (The burning of tobacco creates 4000 chemical compounds)

"Mike, pass the strawberries."

Since 2005, hookah bars have been bubbling up all over the place.  A hookah is a big water pipe that has many tubes coming off it so that many people can have a social experience by breathing in the very same mixture of herbs and spices and, oh yes, tobacco.  People believe that this hookah smoke is less harmful than cigarette smoke or cigar smoke or clove cigarette smoke because they have been told it is less harmful.  Your hookah smoking experience can be enhanced by having a piece of sharp, dark chocolate to nibble on to counter the sweeter flavor of the apple brandy that is wafting through your olfactory and lungs.  Yes, there are many ways to enjoy this more safe style of smoking; except that it is not safe.

"I wish I hadn't given my strawberries to Mike."

Research is suggesting that one who is smoking from a hookah is getting more of all the things we loath about cigarettes, more of the vile stuff than even cigarettes can deliver; And, the smaller the hookah, the greater the delivery of monoxides and nicotine and carcinogens.  In fact, water pipes deliver the highest levels of carbon monoxides, much higher levels than those of average cigarettes the kind of cigarettes that American Spirit’s promoters like to use as a watermark for comparison.

It comes back to the ease of delivery.  According to a 2005 report that was published by the World Health Organization, a person takes between 5 and 7 minutes to smoke a cigarette, during this time a cigarette smoker drags on the cigarette between 8 and 12 times and fills his lungs with up to 0.6 liters of all the legendary, cancerous junk that has made cigarettes one of the greatest health risks in the World.

According to the W.H.O. research, hookah smokers take between 50 and 200 drags off the pipe in a comparable smoking session and inhale up to a full liter of smoke.  When you allow the statisticians to boil all this down, the hookah smoker will get as much smoke in her lungs in 5 to 7 minutes as a cigarette smoker will in the same amount of time, provided the cigarette smoker smokes 100 cigarettes.