Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Coffee coffee coffee (and oreos?)

from Improbable research:

Coffee and the Wellbeing of Mice

It is concluded that caffeinated coffee increases… inhibition in mood-related areas bolstering wellbeing of both males and females, with increased sociability in males and hierarchy struggling and self-care in females.”

so could coffee help the blue haired cat ladies adjust to today's world?

Glenn Miller plays an Irving Berlin tune from the depression days of 1932 right before FDR turned things around and raised the morale of the country.

 

hmm... those lyrics could be about today's changing mood in the US to optimism. And check the second verse is in Spanish. Heh.

and maybe add some Oreos to that snack:


Explaining a strange idea: The Oreo Cookies Diet

Monday, November 18, 2024

We are okay

 the typhoon went north of here, so we had very very heavy rains all night but the wind was not bad: Even the banana trees are still standing (two fell in the last typhoon). I haven't been outside to see if the streets are flooded. This morning I woke up with the dawn: The sun is shining and it is partly cloudy.

So we survived another typhoon. Later this morning Kuya will check if it destroyed the remaining rice left that hasn't been harvested yet, and if the packed rice is okay and not wet.

....however, the cook says a lot of the Christmas lights and decorations in the Plaza nearby were blown down. Sigh.

News about the rice farmers was bad;

Sunday, November 17, 2024

battening down the hatches

Mild rain and windbut we are now signal 4 
 .......................... 
5pm the storm is north of us. Heavy rain and wind but not as bad as previous storms. 

the danger of course is the heavy rain combined with the rain run off coming from the mountains entering the local rivers will cause flooding.

 https://zoom.earth/places/philippines/

Saturday, November 16, 2024

waiting for the storm

,,,

the bad news? Might hit us Sunday afternoon.

Kuya is busy drying the rice he harvested yesterday before the rains hit.

This harvest has not been good because they were dredging the irrigation canal so we had to wait for the monsoon to plant, and that delayed planting for a month. Then the late harvest was damaged by heavy rains.

The problem is that this typhoon might not just be rain but might go right over us late Sunday afternoon/evening. Sigh.

Friday, November 15, 2024

Another typhoon in the next few days

the last typhoon was north of here and only gave us some heavy rain, so no problem. But this one might go right over us.

....

the Times they are a changing

 

,,,,,,,,,

this is both good and bad.

often medical studies push the expensive drugs but the old ones work. Or in the name of saving money they push and older drug that has a side effect (sedation, impotence) that no one wants to notice. But the censorship of Ivermectin and HCQ during the covid epidemic using bad studies (given too late was a major flaw in studies showing they didn't work) while pushing expensive drugs that worked but not too well. But no feedback allowed? That is what annoyed me.

as for food: Yes the chemicals in the environment induce metabolic syndrome (Plastics) and allergies, but if the alternative is short shelf life that causes food shortages, is this good? We sell organic rice. it is healthier. But the shelf life is shorter than white rice, which in the past caused beriberi epidemics. Older methods used to keep food from spoilage (smoking, salting) has side effects: stomach cancer, which was once common in the USA and is still common in Japan comes to mind. And in Japan and the Philippines, high blood pressure from the high salt diet is common.

in other words: will healthy food result in massive famines that kill more people than are saved from the chronic diseases of the obese late middle age folk?

But the pendulum has to swing back.

I see every day commercials on TV pushing junk food or expensive milk supplements. And now we see fat kids even here in the rural Philippines.

so let the discussion begin.

----------------------

the reason that I quoted Bob Dylan the times they are a a changing is something that few in the MSM or even the alternative press has noted:  a lot of the folks being picked by Trumpieboy are the MotherEarth types from the 1960s: not the radicals who have since hijacked the Democratic party, but those opposed to unnecessary wars and against a materialistic lifestyle.

For example: 


another opinion: Is Trump's policies good or bad for wars around the world?

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

where Tolkien's story fits into history

 

the themes they discuss is what is missing in the Amazon distortion of the Rings of Power: that power corrupts, the long defeat of civilization, how ordinary people respond to war, and that hope continues even when in defeat. They also point out the echoes of the Bombing of England during the war.

Monday, November 11, 2024

We remember

World War I ended on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.  

In the UK it is a big day of the remembrance of the war dead: and people wear poppies to show this.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ Remembrance960.jpg


why poppies? From this poem:

That war seems distant for GenXer or even baby boomers.

So Peter Jackson took old silent films and combined them with interviews of the soldiers done in the 1930s, and colorized the film as a way to remember the ordinary soldier.

In the UK, the war dead are remembered today but in the USA, November 11 is Veterans day, and not a major holiday.

The day to remember those who died in wars in the US is Memorial day, which started to remember those who died in the Civil War.


but here in the Philippines, the day of rememberance is the Day of Valor: The day remembers the Bataan Death march.

,

Our Plaza has two war memorials: One to a hero of the revolution, and another to the veterans of World War II.

Lolo's brother and cousin fought as guerillas in WWII, and his cousin captured and killed. The aunts have a memorial shrine in their house as a memory. 

Lolo was just a kid, but after Mac Arthur invaded and urged the Philippines to rise up, he joined his brother...so the Philippines recognized him as a veteran, but not the Americans, since his service was short. 

He wouldn't talk about the war, but only said he mainly was tasked to patrol the area to keep civilians safe.

Every year, he would return for the town fiesta, and his friends and him would sit together and drink and play cards and tell stories. They would march in the front of the fiesta parade. Then one by one they got frailer, and rode in a car. Then they all were too old or had passed. Sigh.

The importance of these days is to remember that war is not a good thing, but to remember that those fighting were doing so to protect the civilians and their country.

Family news

 Heavy rain and a thick cloud layer here. It is so dark that I didn't wake up at dawn: The dogs woke me to say hey where's breakfast.

we are signal one or two as the typhoon is far north of us. We might be flooded if the run off from the mountains gets excess.