And the busy-ness goes on! All the visits we've paid, and the visits paid us.... All the new restaurants we've tried.... All the coming and going and stress with our backyard makeover.... ALL THE DIETARY CHEATING I'VE DONE ... and i haven't gained! As the man said in "High Spirits": there IS a god!
Yes, i've been pretty "bad" this spring and summer. I ate things i usually eschew. I even took in more grains than i usually allow myself (before, about one serving per month), protected by the hint i got from Dr. Kharrazian to double-down on my glutathione supplement* and also the generous daily portion of gelatin/collagen i take religiously.
One thing i do "right" consistently, though, is minimize meal numbers and eliminate snacking. That boils down to drinking black coffee for breakfast, having one good-sized meal, and having another usually smaller. Therefore, i end up with one long fast, and another 6-8 hour one, every single day. It's been working.
Yesterday i put on a pair of jeans for the first time in quite awhile -- i've been almost living in shorts all summer. And since i'm not a fan of shopping, these were shorts i've had several seasons, a size larger than my jeans (which are also a couple of years old). To my absolute delight, they didn't require sucking-in to get fastened. No muffin-top action going on, either. :-) There HAVE been times in my life when i've had to lie on my back over the bed to get jeans zipped ... but not now. Them size sixes jus' FLOWED on.
It has to be the fasting. And it shows that even such a metabolic train-wreck as i CAN reprogram my body to pretty effortlessly switch fuels like a normal person. Indulge myself, have nothing but coffee and water for 18 hours, and go back to normal....
Don't misunderstand: I didn't eat the FOUR HUNDRED grams of carb that some people advocate, but there were days when i certainly ate over ONE hundred. And if i did it every day, the results wouldn't be pretty -- i'd definitely be retraining my body to operate off glucose to the detriment of my fat-burning ability. I also think it would be dangerous to try, for a person prone to diabetes.
I'm absolutely the LAST person who would claim that "if i can do it, anyone can." I reject that notion utterly! But the power of fasting as a metabolic and hormonal regulator seems to have an almost-magical effect on fat storage, as Dr. Fung has been insisting for quite awhile now.
_________
* It DOES seem to help protect the gut, but i'd be surprised if it would work if i hadn't already healed.
Monday, September 28, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
is America's biggest problem the result of being TOO kind to children?
Amidst the worst social problems in the USA -- shootings and environmental destruction and the abolishment of "safety nets" -- the biggest barrier to solutions tends to be ... STOOPID PEOPLE.
It's SP who think that their right to carry weapons everywhere trumps your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's SP who believe that all the unfortunate amongst us deserve their hardships It's superficial scientific understanding that makes even intelligent people underappreciate the human contribution to climate change, because the history of the earth shows many climatic ups and downs, but it's SP who say that "global warming" isn't real at all. It's SP who make SP famous. It's SP who make it possible to say things like that idiot preacher did -- that if the bible said 2+2=5, he'd believe the bible over the demonstrable fact that it ISN'T.
I'm coming to suspect that the late-20th-century tendency to coddle children's self-importance may be at the bottom of it all.
In the desire to make sure our kids know we love them, and to make sure their self-confidence isn't too impaired to allow them to aspire in life -- to me, important goals -- some parents go WAY too far. Those children learn that they're the center of their parents' world, but are never taught that they're NOT the center of the WHOLE world. When they give an incorrect answer in school, they're not told they're WRONG as often as applauded for saying SOMETHING -- teachers often bend meanings and contexts around, to make an answer seem partially right. Children are given a trophy for participation, regardless of the quality thereof. Why should they study, or practice, or TRY to excel, when they can get the approval they need simply by showing up and going through the motions?
Now that the first generation of this kind of treatment has reached adulthood, we have a society full of people who think that their beliefs and opinions are on equal footing with verifiable facts. We have people who think "faith" is as good as science. We have fucking idiots running for president, who say that you don't have to obey laws if you don't think they're "right."
^^^I'm not kidding you.
We have a problem.
I've read that the 20th century's me-first issues started in the 1920s. The war-to-end-all-wars (hahaha) was over, and women were acknowledged as actual human beings with a right to express themselves, and the world looked like a promising, exciting place -- even common people saw an opportunity to be a bit self-indulgent. Laissez les bon temps roulez! Unfortunately, because of the moronic morality-based ruling known as PROHIBITION, millions of people had to defy the law in order to enjoy a simple, civilized glass of wine with their dinners. We now have organized crime which was perfected during that era -- talk about unintended consequences! I hope Carrie Nation and her cohort are currently roasting in hell!
The generation born in that decade came of age to fight WWII. I believe that was the last time that Americans felt "ownership" of any national action -- home folks grew victory gardens and participated in drives to collect scrap-metal, rubber, ... even cooking fats! If you ask me, THAT was the pinnacle of America being "great" or "exceptional." It's all over now, though, even if some people still claim it. When that war ended, veterans and civilians alike had tough adjustments to make. The former felt rebellious and entitled, and the latter (ESPECIALLY women who kept industry going in the absence of the men) felt disenfranchised. Gotta get out there and grab your share!
Baby-boomers, to whose generation i belong, had it both good and bad -- America enjoyed a great deal of prosperity and the widening of opportunity across many demographics, but all that caused us to have an exalted sense of what "normal" is. One income in the family was enough to thrive on, and television showed us that no matter how complicated a problem was, it could be solved within an hour ... with time out for commercials.
Our schools and infrastructure blossomed during this golden age, but all that is gone to hell now. Moneyed interests have managed to exert their powers with the help of Saint Ronnie. (Trickle-down economics = large corporations and rich people pissing on the rest of us.) Booming post-war business is no longer paying its share of holding things together, nor are the ultra-rich, and our middle-class is buckling under the strain just like our roads and bridges.
Pop-psychology, which really took off in the first half of the century, came to fruition with bad interpretations of Freudianism heavily influencing child-rearing practices. Pop SCIENCE, based not on tried-and-true experience but on academic hypotheses, influenced schooling and home behavior alike. We must not break their little spirits by holding them back, if they don't do adequately in an age-appropriate classroom! We must not make the lowest-performing students feel "different" by shunting them into "special" classes! No, we should advance them with others their age, and hold back the rest of the class, so that the VERY SLOWEST set the pace for everyone, in the steadily-growing class sizes. Teachers must warp the performance of all their students by making allowances for the kids diagnosed with ADHD and autism ... who MUST be allowed to take part with the "normal" kids.
And here we are. We have antisocial behavior ruining everyone's experiences, in schools, restaurants, shopping venues, and outdoor spaces. We have classrooms in which teachers have NO control over the bad behavior of a few, no matter how it impedes the education of everyone else, AND where lessons are dumbed-down so that there is "no child left behind" -- no, no ONE child is left behind, ALL OF THEM ARE, when compared to global standards.
I believe that the answer to the question posed in the title of today's post is YES. America has raised several generations of selfish, immature, stubborn, besotted, and willfully-ignorant swine ... and now the problem has come home to roost. The country is a hotbed of stoopid assholes, and not a one of them know it -- they have the delusion that their failings are actually virtues, and hide behind notions like "faith" and "patriotism" instead of the less-flattering labels the rest of the civilized world would use.
It's SP who think that their right to carry weapons everywhere trumps your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's SP who believe that all the unfortunate amongst us deserve their hardships It's superficial scientific understanding that makes even intelligent people underappreciate the human contribution to climate change, because the history of the earth shows many climatic ups and downs, but it's SP who say that "global warming" isn't real at all. It's SP who make SP famous. It's SP who make it possible to say things like that idiot preacher did -- that if the bible said 2+2=5, he'd believe the bible over the demonstrable fact that it ISN'T.
I'm coming to suspect that the late-20th-century tendency to coddle children's self-importance may be at the bottom of it all.
In the desire to make sure our kids know we love them, and to make sure their self-confidence isn't too impaired to allow them to aspire in life -- to me, important goals -- some parents go WAY too far. Those children learn that they're the center of their parents' world, but are never taught that they're NOT the center of the WHOLE world. When they give an incorrect answer in school, they're not told they're WRONG as often as applauded for saying SOMETHING -- teachers often bend meanings and contexts around, to make an answer seem partially right. Children are given a trophy for participation, regardless of the quality thereof. Why should they study, or practice, or TRY to excel, when they can get the approval they need simply by showing up and going through the motions?
Now that the first generation of this kind of treatment has reached adulthood, we have a society full of people who think that their beliefs and opinions are on equal footing with verifiable facts. We have people who think "faith" is as good as science. We have fucking idiots running for president, who say that you don't have to obey laws if you don't think they're "right."
^^^I'm not kidding you.
We have a problem.
I've read that the 20th century's me-first issues started in the 1920s. The war-to-end-all-wars (hahaha) was over, and women were acknowledged as actual human beings with a right to express themselves, and the world looked like a promising, exciting place -- even common people saw an opportunity to be a bit self-indulgent. Laissez les bon temps roulez! Unfortunately, because of the moronic morality-based ruling known as PROHIBITION, millions of people had to defy the law in order to enjoy a simple, civilized glass of wine with their dinners. We now have organized crime which was perfected during that era -- talk about unintended consequences! I hope Carrie Nation and her cohort are currently roasting in hell!
The generation born in that decade came of age to fight WWII. I believe that was the last time that Americans felt "ownership" of any national action -- home folks grew victory gardens and participated in drives to collect scrap-metal, rubber, ... even cooking fats! If you ask me, THAT was the pinnacle of America being "great" or "exceptional." It's all over now, though, even if some people still claim it. When that war ended, veterans and civilians alike had tough adjustments to make. The former felt rebellious and entitled, and the latter (ESPECIALLY women who kept industry going in the absence of the men) felt disenfranchised. Gotta get out there and grab your share!
Baby-boomers, to whose generation i belong, had it both good and bad -- America enjoyed a great deal of prosperity and the widening of opportunity across many demographics, but all that caused us to have an exalted sense of what "normal" is. One income in the family was enough to thrive on, and television showed us that no matter how complicated a problem was, it could be solved within an hour ... with time out for commercials.
Our schools and infrastructure blossomed during this golden age, but all that is gone to hell now. Moneyed interests have managed to exert their powers with the help of Saint Ronnie. (Trickle-down economics = large corporations and rich people pissing on the rest of us.) Booming post-war business is no longer paying its share of holding things together, nor are the ultra-rich, and our middle-class is buckling under the strain just like our roads and bridges.
Pop-psychology, which really took off in the first half of the century, came to fruition with bad interpretations of Freudianism heavily influencing child-rearing practices. Pop SCIENCE, based not on tried-and-true experience but on academic hypotheses, influenced schooling and home behavior alike. We must not break their little spirits by holding them back, if they don't do adequately in an age-appropriate classroom! We must not make the lowest-performing students feel "different" by shunting them into "special" classes! No, we should advance them with others their age, and hold back the rest of the class, so that the VERY SLOWEST set the pace for everyone, in the steadily-growing class sizes. Teachers must warp the performance of all their students by making allowances for the kids diagnosed with ADHD and autism ... who MUST be allowed to take part with the "normal" kids.
And here we are. We have antisocial behavior ruining everyone's experiences, in schools, restaurants, shopping venues, and outdoor spaces. We have classrooms in which teachers have NO control over the bad behavior of a few, no matter how it impedes the education of everyone else, AND where lessons are dumbed-down so that there is "no child left behind" -- no, no ONE child is left behind, ALL OF THEM ARE, when compared to global standards.
I believe that the answer to the question posed in the title of today's post is YES. America has raised several generations of selfish, immature, stubborn, besotted, and willfully-ignorant swine ... and now the problem has come home to roost. The country is a hotbed of stoopid assholes, and not a one of them know it -- they have the delusion that their failings are actually virtues, and hide behind notions like "faith" and "patriotism" instead of the less-flattering labels the rest of the civilized world would use.
Monday, August 31, 2015
new favorite brunch casserole!
:-D ...Cuz my old favorite, while delicious, is a pain in the rump to prepare....
Again, it's a personalization of a Dana Carpender creation In her HoldTheToast blog-post called EGGS! she outlines an infinitely-variable egg casserole -- she's a big afficionado of those things. Me, i tend to not have my appetite satisfied by eggs, even in the presence of bacon or sausage, but when a steak is added, obviously it's THAT which makes me feel full and fed.
But i do love me a simple breakfast that can be prepared in advance! I never was a morning person, though i CAN function at dawn if i need to. If i were living in more primitive conditions (as extrapolated by camping experience) i COULD rise with the sun and turn in with it too, but i enjoy my civilized habit of waking when i've had enough sleep, regardless of the hour, and slowly readying myself to face the world with the aid of coffee, interesting reading material, and COMPLETE LACK OF CONVERSATION. ;-) Call me spoiled....
While my guests were in town i thawed a pound of breakfast sausage, with the intention of preparing my daughter's recipe for stuffed jalapenos, but alas i was "enjoying" one of those periods when just running around drains me out; i never made them, or contracted to have L or J do it for me. Thus i had a pound of thawed Jimmy Dean's Natural to use up.
I fried it up and drained it well, and set it aside. This morning, i remembered it and added a couple of tablespoons of Dijon mustard, about 1/4 c. of boxed Chianti and a little filtered water, and let the liquid simmer down to nothing.
Then i cracked 6 eggs into the food-processor and added about a cup of cottage cheese and a little salt, and beat the hell out of them. Greased an 8x8 baking dish. Poured in about half the egg mixture. Sprinkled on the sausage, then about a cupful of grated cheddar. Topped evenly with the rest of the eggs. Placed in a preheated 350-degree oven. Baked 45 minutes. Served with salsa.
YUM. My husband liked it, too. We discussed possibilities, and decided that the innards of a Denver omelette would be our next try, with italian-sausage-and-peppers-and-mozzarella-with-marinara definitely on the must-do list. Then maybe bacon with tomato and mushrooms like my favorite Spanish omelette recipe ... and also bacon-avocado-swiss with a creole sauce.... INFINITELY variable.
Making omelettes for more than two people at once is awfully time-consuming: i think this will be the perfect alternative. And compared with my sister's outstanding breakfast casserole, SIGNIFICANTLY less work.
Again, it's a personalization of a Dana Carpender creation In her HoldTheToast blog-post called EGGS! she outlines an infinitely-variable egg casserole -- she's a big afficionado of those things. Me, i tend to not have my appetite satisfied by eggs, even in the presence of bacon or sausage, but when a steak is added, obviously it's THAT which makes me feel full and fed.
But i do love me a simple breakfast that can be prepared in advance! I never was a morning person, though i CAN function at dawn if i need to. If i were living in more primitive conditions (as extrapolated by camping experience) i COULD rise with the sun and turn in with it too, but i enjoy my civilized habit of waking when i've had enough sleep, regardless of the hour, and slowly readying myself to face the world with the aid of coffee, interesting reading material, and COMPLETE LACK OF CONVERSATION. ;-) Call me spoiled....
While my guests were in town i thawed a pound of breakfast sausage, with the intention of preparing my daughter's recipe for stuffed jalapenos, but alas i was "enjoying" one of those periods when just running around drains me out; i never made them, or contracted to have L or J do it for me. Thus i had a pound of thawed Jimmy Dean's Natural to use up.
I fried it up and drained it well, and set it aside. This morning, i remembered it and added a couple of tablespoons of Dijon mustard, about 1/4 c. of boxed Chianti and a little filtered water, and let the liquid simmer down to nothing.
Then i cracked 6 eggs into the food-processor and added about a cup of cottage cheese and a little salt, and beat the hell out of them. Greased an 8x8 baking dish. Poured in about half the egg mixture. Sprinkled on the sausage, then about a cupful of grated cheddar. Topped evenly with the rest of the eggs. Placed in a preheated 350-degree oven. Baked 45 minutes. Served with salsa.
YUM. My husband liked it, too. We discussed possibilities, and decided that the innards of a Denver omelette would be our next try, with italian-sausage-and-peppers-and-mozzarella-with-marinara definitely on the must-do list. Then maybe bacon with tomato and mushrooms like my favorite Spanish omelette recipe ... and also bacon-avocado-swiss with a creole sauce.... INFINITELY variable.
Making omelettes for more than two people at once is awfully time-consuming: i think this will be the perfect alternative. And compared with my sister's outstanding breakfast casserole, SIGNIFICANTLY less work.
Friday, August 28, 2015
detox?!
I participate in a ZC facebook group -- compared to many nutrition groups I've read, this one is outstanding. Most of the people there are kind and supportive, even though some are pretty dumb and others pretty hard-line; thanks to great leadership, people who aren't truly ZC (like me) are tolerated, and potential trolls are given the benefit of the doubt until they get really obnoxious. Just as is my policy here, ASKING a sensitive question (hello, Charles) is not the same as being a jerk ("Christopher," why do you even try).
Over and over again though, on that ZC page, people report problems with how their bodies respond to what they're eating. The page-owners leave their experienced-and-knowledgeable replies in amongst the comments of -- ahem -- people with considerably less of both qualities. One of my "favorite" excuses for unpleasant bodily responses is DETOX!!! "Your body is detoxing!"
Our bodies detox CONSTANTLY. That's what the liver and kidneys and other systems do -- filter out potential trouble-makers and send them out of the body. That's one reason we get the runs and breakouts of our skin, sure, but I subscribe to the thriftiness hypothesis -- the simplest, most obvious explanation is often the best one.
The kind of detox I mean is the sort in which bad fat-soluble substances get stored in our fat cells, and when we start burning fat, they get released again into the body. Those kinds of detox symptoms are logical -- and I wouldn't call them "detox" as readily as I would "RE-tox." With any kind of luck, our bodies are now more capable of filtering them out and successfully eliminating them than it was the first time around. But when other people talk about detox it seems to describe a situation in which one is killing off the bad actors in one's system, and they then respond by throwing a riot -- a Herxheimer reaction to candida die-off sort of situation.
I'm not saying it CAN'T happen, I just suspect it's an "easy explanation" of a much more complicated response. You've been getting pimples? "Your body is detoxing through the skin" seems much more far-fetched than "you're sensitive to modern dairy products" or "you're STILL getting too much omega-6 in your diet," when it comes to a VLC-eater. Most of them eat conventional meat, for convenience or economic reasons, and those meats are heavier in O6 than is ideal -- ditto when it comes to cheese and cream.
Okay, in the case of newbies to LC, we can expect a goodly amount of learning curve -- and those who start burning decades'-worth of stored fat WILL set free undesirable contaminants and PUFAs as their fat-cells shrink. What tends to really get my panties in a bunch is when detox products on the market are touted by people who should know better. How many programs as "Dr" Oz promoted in the course of his television career? :-P
Wanna detox your liver, really? Go on a fast, a good long one. Drink very clean water. When you get off of it, eat pristine paleo with lots of grassfed saturated fats. No fructose AT ALL. No alcohol. No oxalates or hormetic-response foods. Don't stuff yourself with more food than your stomach feels comfortable with digesting in a few hours.
Hmmm, I think I just described a cleaned-up version of Strong Medicine....
Over and over again though, on that ZC page, people report problems with how their bodies respond to what they're eating. The page-owners leave their experienced-and-knowledgeable replies in amongst the comments of -- ahem -- people with considerably less of both qualities. One of my "favorite" excuses for unpleasant bodily responses is DETOX!!! "Your body is detoxing!"
Our bodies detox CONSTANTLY. That's what the liver and kidneys and other systems do -- filter out potential trouble-makers and send them out of the body. That's one reason we get the runs and breakouts of our skin, sure, but I subscribe to the thriftiness hypothesis -- the simplest, most obvious explanation is often the best one.
The kind of detox I mean is the sort in which bad fat-soluble substances get stored in our fat cells, and when we start burning fat, they get released again into the body. Those kinds of detox symptoms are logical -- and I wouldn't call them "detox" as readily as I would "RE-tox." With any kind of luck, our bodies are now more capable of filtering them out and successfully eliminating them than it was the first time around. But when other people talk about detox it seems to describe a situation in which one is killing off the bad actors in one's system, and they then respond by throwing a riot -- a Herxheimer reaction to candida die-off sort of situation.
I'm not saying it CAN'T happen, I just suspect it's an "easy explanation" of a much more complicated response. You've been getting pimples? "Your body is detoxing through the skin" seems much more far-fetched than "you're sensitive to modern dairy products" or "you're STILL getting too much omega-6 in your diet," when it comes to a VLC-eater. Most of them eat conventional meat, for convenience or economic reasons, and those meats are heavier in O6 than is ideal -- ditto when it comes to cheese and cream.
Okay, in the case of newbies to LC, we can expect a goodly amount of learning curve -- and those who start burning decades'-worth of stored fat WILL set free undesirable contaminants and PUFAs as their fat-cells shrink. What tends to really get my panties in a bunch is when detox products on the market are touted by people who should know better. How many programs as "Dr" Oz promoted in the course of his television career? :-P
Wanna detox your liver, really? Go on a fast, a good long one. Drink very clean water. When you get off of it, eat pristine paleo with lots of grassfed saturated fats. No fructose AT ALL. No alcohol. No oxalates or hormetic-response foods. Don't stuff yourself with more food than your stomach feels comfortable with digesting in a few hours.
Hmmm, I think I just described a cleaned-up version of Strong Medicine....
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
quiet house
Back to the post i was writing before that infuriating newsletter started pushing my buttons....
Whoa, that was a busy week! Before school started, our daughter and SIL and their two kids came to visit for a week. Our backyard project is far from complete, but the interior of the sunroom is at least "functional," and they wanted to experience it. We also got a visit from our "borrowed daughter" and her fiance -- LM lived with us for a couple of years, because she was in an abusive home from which she moved out when she turned 18. Her mother left her and her sister with a MONSTER when she divorced him, and LM was strong enough to get out as soon as she legally could; we were delighted to help her.
Well, we toured and feasted and hot-tubbed and went through a case of wine! I put on fat -- i can feel it -- but am now back on the VLC wagon, to my great physical relief. Even amidst all the jollification, i learned things:
Whoa, that was a busy week! Before school started, our daughter and SIL and their two kids came to visit for a week. Our backyard project is far from complete, but the interior of the sunroom is at least "functional," and they wanted to experience it. We also got a visit from our "borrowed daughter" and her fiance -- LM lived with us for a couple of years, because she was in an abusive home from which she moved out when she turned 18. Her mother left her and her sister with a MONSTER when she divorced him, and LM was strong enough to get out as soon as she legally could; we were delighted to help her.
Well, we toured and feasted and hot-tubbed and went through a case of wine! I put on fat -- i can feel it -- but am now back on the VLC wagon, to my great physical relief. Even amidst all the jollification, i learned things:
- The warmth-thyroid-carb connection is far more complicated than anyone has ever written about, to my knowledge. My carb intake was highER, but not high. I felt as warm as i usually do -- uncomfortably so a few times. On the other hand, i had some symptoms i haven't felt for awhile, including puffy eyes. I would have a burst of energy right after eating which faded into increased fatigue, leading me to the next point...
- FATIGUE. Granted that on a few days i was sleep-deprived, this was the kind of fatigue that made me sequester myself to recharge. It was the kind that kept me less communicative for a full 36 hours after everyone left. And it was the kind that had me pawing among my sporadically-used supplements for a boost. Guess what helped? High-dose sublingual methylcobalamin. I was getting "enough" from my liquid vitamin and diet, but some of us just don't absorb it in the digestive tract well enough! More evidence that malnutrition (this time, via malabsorption) is a cause of some symptoms of hypothyroidism....
- Ten thousand steps is a HELL of a lot of exercise. We went to the City Museum and a special event at the Missouri Botanical Garden and covered a LOT of ground ... and i never reached the goal according to my fitbit. As i mentioned before, its accuracy isn't perfect, but probably pretty close. On the museum day i logged 26 flights of stairs (a flight being defined by it as walking upward ten feet)! We all arrived home completely tuckered out, and the step count was only eight-thousand-something....
- That hot-tub is going to be a very good sleep-promoter! :-)
The " California Contingent" flew back home on Friday afternoon, but the Texas bunch stayed till Saturday morning; the last evening's dinner was a beginning sushi-rolling party. J and i had practiced a little beforehand, but for L and S it was new. It was a moderate-carb night, what with the rice, but at least we didn't make the sweet sauces that can be found on the restaurant rolls. Our technique has improved to the point that i'm ready to try the riceless rolls, made with grated vegetables in place of the starch. Starting with smoked salmon or even leftover meats, this could turn into a favorite quick supper for us! A bowl of broth with a little miso stirred in, plus some mushrooms or green onions or seaweed, a few rolls ... i'm getting hungry just thinking about it!
Once again, fat-fasting is a lifesaver for reestablishing a ketone/FFA metabolism. I can understand why some people dare not increase their carb intake during holidays and vacations -- the temptation to continue the practice is strong. After the van took off southward, i napped and coffeed and ate LC leftovers like pork rinds, guacamole, tapenade and deviled eggs till dinnertime when we cooked up a couple of steaks to go with our SF coleslaw ... or was it the red cabbage that evening? :-) No matter -- we're back on the Atkins wagon, and completely happy about it!
Monday, August 24, 2015
"i'm only human!"
Right, left and center, the biggest PATHETIC EXCUSE out there has got to be "I'm only human! I make mistakes! Haven't YOU ever made a mistake?"
The big problem, of course, is that the only people I'VE ever heard using this line are always falling back on it when their attempts to bully or assault from a "higher moral plane" didn't work. Their dumb-ass bleats being stood-up-to with courage and/or logic, they ALWAYS excuse themselves with the "human and fallible" defense. Do you suppose they'd "forgive those who trespass against" them, if their adversaries used it? HAhahahahaha.....
The "I'm only human" excuse actually reminds me of the CICO argument -- superficially true but a million miles from being significant. They're weasel-words, designed to gain our acquiescence without getting us anywhere. YOU are human? Technically. "You" are trying to create a bond where one does not exist -- you're trying to say that you and I are on the same team, just long enough to wriggle out of the underdog-position you find yourself in. The quarter you would NEVER grant to an adversary, you try to claim from me, because i'm a human being, and "you're only human" too.
NO. Just NO.
An email from Robb Wolf's kingdom talks about how, oh sure, there ARE lousy medical practitioners out there, but they're maybe like FIVE PERCENT of the total. And ya know, doctors are like ONLY HUMAN. A quote:
Oh, the POOR THING! Having set himself up to do this job, he resents it that the patient actually expects HELP! Expects to be HEALED! And they're EMOTIONAL! WHAT A NIGHTMARE!
Excuse me a moment while I go throw up.
The medical nightmare is what medical laissez-faire made it. The AMA -- YOUR professional association -- is responsible for this mess, not your patients. Dig your own way out with your colleagues who also helped create your "nightmare" ... and don't expect the sympathy of the people you KNOW you're not giving quality in exchange for their money.
The big problem, of course, is that the only people I'VE ever heard using this line are always falling back on it when their attempts to bully or assault from a "higher moral plane" didn't work. Their dumb-ass bleats being stood-up-to with courage and/or logic, they ALWAYS excuse themselves with the "human and fallible" defense. Do you suppose they'd "forgive those who trespass against" them, if their adversaries used it? HAhahahahaha.....
The "I'm only human" excuse actually reminds me of the CICO argument -- superficially true but a million miles from being significant. They're weasel-words, designed to gain our acquiescence without getting us anywhere. YOU are human? Technically. "You" are trying to create a bond where one does not exist -- you're trying to say that you and I are on the same team, just long enough to wriggle out of the underdog-position you find yourself in. The quarter you would NEVER grant to an adversary, you try to claim from me, because i'm a human being, and "you're only human" too.
NO. Just NO.
An email from Robb Wolf's kingdom talks about how, oh sure, there ARE lousy medical practitioners out there, but they're maybe like FIVE PERCENT of the total. And ya know, doctors are like ONLY HUMAN. A quote:
Today’s Medical Nightmare: A Day in the Life of a Practitioner
Imagine you’re an M.D. in modern medicine. Showing up to work, you know you have a fully-packed day. Every minute is scheduled, from the moment you walk into your office or hospital. Your staff is stressed and the paperwork from yesterday still isn’t done.You’ll be lucky to have a lunch break today.The patients start arriving in pain, sick, and upset. Most expect you to “save” them in the 15 minutes allotted to each appointment time. The responsible ones expect you to stay longer than 15 minutes and talk about every possible option.Almost all of them have no desire to spend more money than what their insurance company covers and the company says 15 minutes is what you get.The appointment starts…Right away, you must try to defuse strong emotions that accompany their pain. You quickly scan their health history, listen to symptoms, and do some physical checks.Now, you have 5-7 minutes left.The patient is staring back at you waiting for a miracle. Your gut tells you, you need more time. You need to tell them all kinds of things…But the medical insurance industry, laws, and malpractice insurance dictates what your next move is… so you push those thoughts deep inside and lock them away.Instead, you write a prescription or order further testing and tell them to come back in a week.There are 2 minutes left, so you quickly skirt their questions because you know you are already behind for your next appointment. You have to go, to be fair to the next sick person.So you walk out, even though the look on their eyes is saying “Wait, but can’t I get more help?”You now have 30 seconds to reset your mind and prepare to tackle another case. And you know deep down, if you miss something critical someone might get very sick, even die… and you could be faced with a lawsuit at any moment.
Oh, the POOR THING! Having set himself up to do this job, he resents it that the patient actually expects HELP! Expects to be HEALED! And they're EMOTIONAL! WHAT A NIGHTMARE!
Excuse me a moment while I go throw up.
The medical nightmare is what medical laissez-faire made it. The AMA -- YOUR professional association -- is responsible for this mess, not your patients. Dig your own way out with your colleagues who also helped create your "nightmare" ... and don't expect the sympathy of the people you KNOW you're not giving quality in exchange for their money.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
steam release
RANT HERE ;-)
I was all ready to write a general "stoopid people" rant this morning, because i couldn't on facebook. Oh, i COULD, but when some of the nicest people in real life write mind-bendingly stupid things, it makes one terribly conflicted -- you want to say "WILL YOU LISTEN TO YOURSELF? Are you REALLY that dumb, or just blindly sentimental? How do you manage to stay employed, if your grasp of logic is so tenuous?" I like DJ, DM and GL, but some of the stuff they post is ... astonishingly brainless. "If i can get 1000 likes, my daddy will stop drinking!" ...WHAT???
But then i thought, i'm not the only one. And it's not easy to find the right place to vent -- it's gotta be somewhere "they" can't accidentally find it. So i offer you the opportunity to get shit off your chest! :-D Wanna "out" your boss' or MIL's vacuousness? The comment section is open! Have at it!
I was all ready to write a general "stoopid people" rant this morning, because i couldn't on facebook. Oh, i COULD, but when some of the nicest people in real life write mind-bendingly stupid things, it makes one terribly conflicted -- you want to say "WILL YOU LISTEN TO YOURSELF? Are you REALLY that dumb, or just blindly sentimental? How do you manage to stay employed, if your grasp of logic is so tenuous?" I like DJ, DM and GL, but some of the stuff they post is ... astonishingly brainless. "If i can get 1000 likes, my daddy will stop drinking!" ...WHAT???
But then i thought, i'm not the only one. And it's not easy to find the right place to vent -- it's gotta be somewhere "they" can't accidentally find it. So i offer you the opportunity to get shit off your chest! :-D Wanna "out" your boss' or MIL's vacuousness? The comment section is open! Have at it!
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