BunWat 's comments (member since Jul 13, 2008)

BunWat 's comments from the True North group.

Sorry Larry, I don't know how I mixed you up. Your previous avatars must have been similar colors or something. Yup, 70 to 25 to 10

::Slips some beer to the crowds in Jim's head. Sits back and waits for developments::

Cleveland, St Louis, Tulsa, Albuquerque, Tucson, LA, Jim. Old route 66 for part of the way.

We could construct some smarm kicking robots. The challenge is going to programming the smarm detection software.

::Runs around selling popcorn and peanuts to the crowds in her head::

I don't know about the children of the sun, but this child of my parents still has her internal clock on east coast time. Very confusin.

Stephen I drove because I have a big dog who wont fit under an airplane seat.

Ha ha. Jackie told you I was away from my computer, so you know I wasn't kidnapped. Unless you mean Jackie is a mad librarian, which I assure you she is not. Well, only north north west.

I was driving to California. Not a lot of posting from the road. But now I am in California and will likely be around more.

Ruth, who used to come around here at times did some book art.

I had a psych professor in college who claimed that humans don't have maternal instincts and the belief that we do is largely a myth. I argued it out with her and ended up being pretty much convinced by her arguments. As far as I can see our "mothering instinct" is largely a set of learned behaviors.

So if your family of origin doesn't teach and model it to you, its not likely its going to just spontaneously develop on its own. Of course since it is learned, you can teach it to yourself if you want to. I learned most of my "mothering" from my father, who was a very nurturing person and the oldest of six kids so he had lots of experience too.

Well you can get protein from vegetable sources Sher. Apologies if you know this already but: Basically there are eight amino acids for adults and twelve for kids that have to be taken in from diet because we can't synthesize them. Any food source that contains all eight is a complete protein. Meat, dairy, eggs contain them. But the point is, there are amino acids in vegetables too - just there aren't very many vegetables that contain all eight in the same food. But one will contain four and another will contain a different four, so if you eat a good variety you can still meet your protein needs just fine.

It used to be thought that you had to combine different grains, beans etc. in the same meal to get a complete protein but now research has shown that isn't necessary. Your body will take them in from different sources and store them so you just have to get a good variety over the course of a few days and it works fine.

Also you can eat much more cheaply if you eat lower on the food chain. It takes a lot of inputs to raise a big animal for meat, and the price reflects that. So if you lean more toward grains, beans, vegetables - and then use meat, eggs, dairy as a flavoring rather than as the center of the meal, you get much more bang for the buck. Like the buffalo chili. You're actually getting some protein from the beans so you don't need to add as much meat. If you eat it with rice and cheese then you need even less meat because those two will add proteins too. Then you can cut back the meat to just what you need to give the chili a little flavor. There are lots of wonderful vegetable stews that you can do the same with.

Plus practically every peasant staple food in the world is a combined protein that gets to a balanced meal without using a lot of meat. Beans and rice, lentils and flatbread, noodles and tofu, bulgur wheat and yogurt cheese...

Give me a decent kitchen and a little time and I can absolutely beat McDork's prices and produce much better food into the bargain. It wont be the same food, but that's okay, I don't like chicken nuggets anyway.

Sadly I saw first hand a couple of different doctors come out of school full of enthusiasm for preventative care and patient relationships and then over the course of eight or nine years just get worn down by patients who just wanted pills and insurance companies who just wanted to pay for pills. In both cases I started out working with them and liking it and gradually the consulations became more perfunctory and the prescription pad came out faster and faster. It got to the point where I'd have to say, hey, wait a minute, its me, remember? Focus... focus... come back...

Oh Sher, the trick is to buy unpopular food. Tomatoes are two bucks a pound but sweet potatoes are 99 cents a pound, kale is 79 cents a pound, squash is around 99 cents. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are $3.50 a pound but chicken thighs are $1.20 or less. Barley, rice, less than a dollar a pound.

Sadly my computer glitches when I try to get past the first page of the review. Perhaps another hour it will work. I have been seeing previews for this movie and am really unsure whether I want to see it or not.

This part from the Washington Post article

offer preventive care first, reactionary second

YES PLEASE!!

I think medicine really needs to keep on moving in that direction. Vaccinations, better plumbing, health and safety regulations in the workplace, improved surgical techniques etc and so on mean that at least in the first world the major threats to health have changed from what they were 75 years ago. Infectious diseases, epidemics, bacterial infections, accidents and injuries aren't the big killers they once were. Much more likely to see patients suffering from "diseases of civilization" heart disease, diabetes, cancer, endocrine disorders etc etc, which have really significant lifestyle components. So focusing on preventative care is what will work.

US health care is far too dependent on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical companies. Who appear not to care very much whether their drugs are truly helping so long as they can sell more and ever more of them. Its another area in which corporations seem to me to have run amok and be doing a stumbling Godzilla and stomping on buses and buildings.

Absolutely agree that I can't work with a doctor who doesn't respect me enough to listen to my take on what I think is happening. I want some mutual respect because we both have something useful to bring to the interaction, I'm not just a passive object. Yes, you've been through eight to ten years of study plus an internship, fair enough. But I've been living in this body for 48 years and I am not stupid.

Well Amazon can't do it without agreement from the authors can they? I think it would be actionable for a bookseller to change the text of a book without the author's permission.

Well if it wasn't is going to be!! When the poets swarm Amazon corporate headquarters in a ninja like fashion.

Just another bit of evidence that Amazon does not care to understand what it is they are selling and how it works. They keep on running their business as if shoes, or books, or birds, or cameras or oatmeal - don't matter, they're all the same, they're just units to be moved around. I want the people who sell me things to have some understanding and preferably some liking for that which they sell. So once again Amazon, you fail.

It was a perfectly normal childhood. The gentle breezes rocking my pod high in the wurummba foliage, the sweet singing of the pikapik birds as they plucked my foster father's eyebrows in the evening, the butterflies in my stomach as I prepared for the communal coming of age butterfly regurgitation ceremony ... the usual stuff.