Posts by Peter Ashby
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
@Islander
There is nothing wrong with takeaways, eaten occasionally. Everything in moderation, including moderation. My wife and I occasionally eat haddock and chips from the takeaway down the hill. We sit and watch the birds in the bay either from the car or the benches outside while eating them, the food being only part of the enjoyment. A life without joy is not worth living.
But many have forgotten that joys taken too often not only lose their lustre but they may be bad for you too. We eat takeaways about once every six weeks on average, as main meals, never as snacks. And we enjoy them very much.
We are not the sort of people for whom every meal must have all the food groups in the mandated proportions or it is inherently unhealthy.
I am gluten intolerant and at the moment I am an engaged in working out how to make a passable GF water pastry for the simple reason that I seriously miss pork pies. So at the moment I will be imbibing rather too much saturated fat (though the running will deal with that). When I reach the best result possible within the constraints (needs some gram flour I think, how much will be the next question). Once I have solved the problem (and my initial attempt was promising (no egg wash, it made the top rock hard) I will eat a small one at most once a fortnight, pulled out of the freezer. A nodule of joy returned to my life. Unhealthy, yes but tolerable within and because of the rest of my lifestyle.
So the good life can be lead including things that are not good for us. They are paid for by how we live in between enjoying them. They are not banned outright, or shouldn't be.
I am regularly accused in here of lecturing or setting myself up as some sort of superman, but I am just a man, with Gilbert's syndrome, flat feet, short sightedness and various other strikes against. Where I am rich is in knowledge, understanding and hard won experience. All I am doing is trying to spread that and say if it is possible for me there is no reason it can't be possible for others.
After all, what use is knowledge kept to oneself?
-
The attempted furore over endocrine disruptor 'chemicals' ignores the fact that there are potential endocrine 'disruptors' in just about everything we eat. You do not have to eat hormone riddled beef to get a hit from a diet high in beef. Neither do you have to eat unprocessed soy to get a hit from the phytoestrogens in your tofu.
There may be issues of longer persistence from the 'artificial' compounds, but that is cancelled out by the higher dosage from our food, eaten 3 times a day, 7 days a week.
In addition I fail to see the epidemiological data that indicates that we are actually suffering a lowered longevity from being exposed to them. More people for eg get cancer now than in the past both simply because they are not dying from other things so are living long enough and because we are much better at diagnosis. More people are surviving cancer too.
Put against the problems caused by the holy terror combination that is obesity, inactivity and alcohol abuse environmental toxins fade into insignificance. The reality is that tackling those involves hard choices about lifestyle that many are not prepared to make or even to listen to. Environmental toxins push easier buttons, they feed into the organic nutribollocks natural purity thing many have these days and they are bogey 'chemicals' that are easy to point a finger at. That is not enough however. Show me the bodies and prove that is what killed them, and not the obesity, heart disease, metabolic disorder and dodgy liver.
Here in Scotland obese poor kids are growth stunted because they are eating truly empty calories, I have no reason not to expect that situation to be different in anything other than degree in NZ.
It's like people obsessing about the truly miniscule residues from pesticides remaining on our fruit and veg. The only reason we know they are still there is because science's ability to detect them is several orders of magnitude better than it was. Parts per trillion? easy as pie. If you gave some modern 'non-organic' produce for analysis back when Rachael Carson was writing Silent Spring they would pass it as 'organic' (assuming they had such a concept back then).
We are living in a time that is no longer able to tolerate even the tiniest risk, regardless of the potential benefit. We are totally risk averse and so we created this thing called Organic Food which is just agriculture from the 1930's set in aspic. Why then? because they had developed a number of useful tools, like copper sulphate and spraying BT. It's a magnificent marketing success, but that does not mean 'organic' has any actual meaning in terms of human health and wellbeing or environmental for that matter since it is also an environmental state set in aspic.
-
I strongly and sadly suspect that the reason the people of Bamiyan have not had the sort of aid and reconstruction they want is because their province is peaceful so the powers that be do not feel that their loyalty and peacefulness need to be bought with overt displays of generosity.
They obviously need to sacrifice some of their young men (and wedding parties) and go attack some GI's (attacking NZDF personnel would obviously not lead to the same end).
Recent history is replete with the lesson that taking on the US gets you reconstructed into economic power house status. Just ask Germany and Japan. Hard to see it in Iraq or Vietnam, but the US took them on, so it obviously doesn't work both ways.
The Taliban via Al Qaidi took on the US, so it should be looking for Afghanistan, its just that the goodness is not evenly distributed.
There was an article in the Grauniad here recently on ski tourism in Bamiyan and from it I understand the road in is being markedly upgraded, as is the airport. There are locals being trained as ski guides too. It's getting on for summer up here in the NH, now but pencil Bamiyan in for your off piste enjoyment later in the year.
Does John ski? maybe he should be encouraged to go back then.
-
A Whole hour once a week of intelligent media? Must be worth thinking about coming home then. I feel the tug already. Well done.
-
directly or indirectly, derived a benefit from significant criminal activity
Not to mention defence lawyers
-
@Russ and others
I was not preaching, only responding to a post complaining about not being able to relax after a hard day at work. Using drugs, legal and otherwise to deal with that is a route to dependancy at least. I am no one to deny someone their pleasures (thanks Ben for noticing), but everything in moderation and don't dismiss the powers of the sorts of alternatives I offered. Just be careful out there, that's all.
-
I should add that I am not against cannabis use and have been known to drink a bit, and brew my own wine and beer. Which brings me onto another hypocrisy, NZ is about the only Western country where home distilling is legal. Brought in because Customs and Excise when asked to identify savings offered up its distillation equipment monitoring regime in expectation that it would be refused. The govt said: fine we'll cut that and found it had legalised distilling at home.
I am not averse to the idea of home distillation, one of the attractions of moving back sometime would be the chance to try my hand at making whisky (if I can source some peat smoked malt), but the potential for harm is high unless you are careful.
Sure it was a little silly when the man from Customs used to come to the lab once a year and check that the seals on the distilled water equipment were still intact but it is inconsistent.
-
@Steve Barnes
After work you could, oh read a good book, write a good book, go for a run, cycle, aerobics class, enjoy a hobby, have fun with the family, chat to people online. Any number of things that are more life affirming than mind altering substances (alcohol included).
The answer to the ennui of life is not soma.
-
@Islander
As a scientist who is also wont to put words on the page as verse I know what you mean. Many of my poems are just musings aloud and may never be read by another, that is not their purpose. Not to mention that I have never been brave enough to deny a poem its birth when I feel one looming up from the depths of my internal darkness and hammering on the back doors of my mind for release.
Scientific work on the other hand screams for release to the world, that is its purpose. Before publication it will have been spoken at group meetings, seminars, conferences and with visitors to the lab as well as long suffering spouses and children ;-)
-
When we moved into this brick pebbledashed 3 bed semi here in Dundee there was this mountain gum in the front garden, in the corner. The problem was it had been planted mighty close to the front wall (3 blocks high) and was leaning on it, there was already a scar across it. The prevailing westerlies were rocking it causing the roots on the west side to pull out of the ground and the other side then to rub on the wall.
So I got a couple of beefy stakes (no, not steaks) and some of that rubber interlinked plant strapping and hauled the gum back from the fence to allow those roots to get some purchase. The years passed, the roots got their purchase and I removed the stakes, one at a time. The tree flourished and grew. I pruned it so most of the mass was pulling it back over our garden. It grew again and this northern winter I was going to prune it again. Except that it snowed and froze and snowed and froze and I was not going to try and ground a ladder in that lot.
So enter the equinoctical gales, only this year they were from the NE, opposite to normal. I got up the next morning, Saturday and looked out the window: why can't I see all the gum tree? move closer and the gum tree was solidly IN the front garden, and the neighbours having part demolished the low boundary wall and taking out half the rhododendron and the cable connection (net, phone, tv all gone).
As we chopped it up and extracted the stump it became clear that it had no, absolutely no, roots against the front, Eastern wall. It had a big root running North and a smaller but still substantial set South under the boundary wall. So blown by the NE it just rotated around those two roots and fell.
By rescuing it in the first place and thus allowed it to grow I had pretty much ordained that this was going to happen sooner or later. It's replacement (possibly a nice blue conifer) will by much further back from both walls.