The secret to a long life

This morning’s Arizona Republic (citing an Associated Press article) reported that the world’s oldest man, 112 year old Salustino Sanchez-Blazquez, died on Friday of this week (Friday the 13th) in Grand Island, New York. Like most of the folks who have lived well beyond 100, Mr. Sanchez-Blazquez did not live an easy life. In his teens, he worked in the Kentucky coal mines, and he later worked in construction and in the industrial furnaces near the Niagara Falls area.

After his wife died, he lived with his daughter until he was 106 years old, at which point he moved into a nursing home. He attributed his longevity to the fact that he ate one banana every day, in addition to six Anacin tablets. His daughter believes the REAL reason he lived as long as he did was that he was an independent, stubborn man.

It is estimated that 30% of America's population accepts the words of the Bible literally. For those folks, the world’s oldest humans were Adam (930 years old) , Noah (950 years old) and Methuselah (969 years old). The specific references to these dates can be found in Genesis 5:4, Geneses 9:29, and Genesis 5:27. After these early humans, the maximum life span shortened considerably at some point in time, and is recorded in the Bible as being 120 years (Genesis 6:3).

For those of us who require factual proof of longevity, the world’s oldest human was a French woman named Jeanne Galmert, who lived to be more than 122 years old. She smoked from the time she was 21 until she was 117, she was a regular consumer of port wine, and she ate roughly 2 pounds of chocolate every week. In her own opinion, she attributes her longevity to olive oil, which she poured liberally on most of the food that she ate, and she also rubbed it into her skin.

Jeanne Calmert is an exception to the general rule that most people who have lived a long time have endured difficult lives, since the majority of them have had some ties to slavery.

Although Ms. Calmert was not particularly athletic, she DID take up fencing when she was 85 years old, and she rode her bicycle until she was 100. In the final analysis, though, it appears that she DID discover the way to have a long life - smoke, drink, and eat chocolate.

12 Angry Men

I don’t spend a lot of time watching movies, and I spend less time than that watching OLD movies. For reasons that I really can’t explain, I decided to watch a movie last night that was released in 1957, when I was still in elementary school.

I may have seen the movie once before years ago, but I have no memory of when or where. Nevertheless, it was a movie that is worth viewing, and its 96 minute total length flew by in a flash.

The movie was shot entirely in black and white, which somehow added the proper mood to the serious topic at hand. All but 3 minutes of the film were shot in a tiny 24 foot long jury room, which eliminated the distraction of gorgeous scenery shots competing with the story line.

The cast, headed by Henry Fonda, includes a number of well known actors, whose combined performance was good enough to get the picture nominated for Academy Award honors for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing of Adopted Screenplay.

Even though it’s an old movie, “12 Angry Men” has lessons that still apply today. One lesson is how to deal with prejudice, and the other lesson is how to deal with conflict.

More than 50 years after its release, it is still a very popular movie. In 2011, “12 Angry Men” was the second most screened film in secondary schools in the United Kingdom. If you’d like to take a trip down memory lane, just click on the link below:

a night at the movies

It’s the end of the world - again

In the spring of 2011, Pastor Harold Camping predicted that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011. Like so many similar predictions, this one turned out to be another false rumor, and most of the people that were on earth at that time are still alive and well. Further details on Pastor Camping’s predictions can be found at the link below:

I feel fine

More recently, the end of the Mayan calendar, on December 21, 2012, led some people to predict that the world was going to end (again) on December 21, 2012. Not surprisingly, I woke up on the morning of December 22, and I was still here, as were roughly 7 billion other people. As of today, the world’s population (according to the United States Census Bureau) is 7. 108 billion, and is projected to reach somewhere between 8.3 and 10.9 billion by the year 2050. If you’ve read Dan Brown’s latest novel, Inferno, you’ll recognize that there are a lot of people who are concerned about those numbers, but that’s a topic for another time.

This morning, I discovered that Mayans can claim title to another proof of immortality, but in an area that you wouldn’t expect.

I’ve long been a fan of good cigars, but now limit myself to roughly two cigars a year, one on Father’s Day, and one on my birthday at the end of August. For the record, I fired up another one this afternoon on the back deck, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Although it’s unlikely that I’ll ever smoke the most expensive cigar in the world, I occasionally check to see WHICH cigars are the most expensive. Traditionally, a company called Gurkha makes the most expensive cigars. For years, the Gold Standard for cigars has been a product called Her Majesty’s Reserve. Soaked in Luis XIII cognac, a box of this cigar sells for $15,000, which means that each cigar in a box of 20 will set you back a cool $750.

As of today, though, these premium stogies are no longer the most expensive cigar. Gurkha also makes The Black Dragon, which sells for $115,000 per box, or $1150 per “stick”, but they still aren’t THE most expensive cigar.

In April of this year, archeologists from Tampa, Florida found a clay pot in Guatemala labeled “sigars”. In the Yucatan language , the term means “ to smoke rolled tobacco leaves and is the origin of the word cigar”. Although the cigars in the jar are 600 years old, they were deemed to be “smokable”. Although the cigars haven’t been sent to auction yet, the pre-auction appraisal value of this stash is said to be worth roughly $200,000, or roughly twice the price of the Black Dragon.

I’m of the opinion that the world isn’t going to end at any time in the foreseeable future, but not everyone agrees with me. If you think that Doomsday is just around the corner, the least you can do is to enjoy a good cigar,

After all, life is short.

seems fishy to me ...

At some point in time, you come to the realization that your kids are smarter than you are, at least in certain areas. In my case, one of those areas is food.

Both of our children have been vegetarians for a number of years. It may surprise you to know that there are actually three main types of vegetarians: (1) vegan - no animal products at all (2) vegetarian (which is what our kids are) - no meat consumed, but they DO consume eggs and dairy products and (3) Pescatarian - same as #2, but they also eat fish.

According to about.com, however, there are several other types as well:

1) Flexitarian/semi-vegetarian - a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat 2) Lacto-vegetarian - a vegetarian that doesn’t eat eggs, but eats dairy products 3) Ovo-vegetarian - a vegetarian that doesn’t eat dairy products, but does eat eggs 4) raw vegan - a vegan who doesn’t eat food that has been heated over 115 degrees 5) macrobiotic - eats unprocessed vegan foods, with a heavy emphasis on Asian vegetables and seafood vegetables (translation: seaweed)

According to the Vegetarian Times, there are 7.3 million Americans who are some type of vegetarian, and another 22.8 million who follow a vegetarian-inclined diet. If you do the math, that’s roughly 10% of our population.

I tried a vegetarian diet for about 3 months a while back, and found that it wasn’t all that difficult to follow. After reading “Wheat Belly” earlier this year, I also tried a gluten free diet as well. It was doable, but not as enjoyable. My wife and I both eat vegetarian meals on occasion, but we also eat a wide variety of meats - with the exception of hamburger, which we haven’t purchased for about 5 years. If you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation”, you’ll understand why.

Most of the time, we’ll eat either chicken or pork, but we’ll also occasionally eat meals from the pizza food group. Since fish is also supposed to be a healthy choice, we’ve generally been dining on fish about once a week.

Since moving to Arizona, we’ve been buying frozen tilapia at Albertsons whenever they have their “buy one - get three free” specials . On one of our trips there, I noticed that the fish was “a product of China”. As I looked closer, I noticed that it was also “farm raised”, and I started to wonder how good this stuff actually was.

As it turns out, tilapia is now the 4th most popular seafood consumed in America, after shrimp, tuna, and salmon. Due to increased demand, most of the tilapia consumed today is farm-raised rather than fresh caught. As of June, 2013, worldwide production of farmed fish now exceeds beef production, and farmed fish production will soon exceed the production of fresh caught fish.

As the link below explains, farmed fish isn’t necessarily inferior to fresh fish, but you have to be careful about where it’s produced.

what would snopes.com have to say about this?

China is now the largest producer of farm-raised tilapia, and 40% of the country’s output is exported to the United States, in the form of frozen filets. Much of the tilapia production comes from small independent producers, and that’s the crux of the problem. In order to save money, the small producers use animal manure rather than expensive commercial feed for their fish. Although the FDA inspects fish coming from China into this country, and has rejected 820 Chinese food shipments since 2007, it’s virtually impossible to carefully inspect every shipment that comes in. In order to meet the increased demands placed on the agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has requested a $4.7 billion budget for fiscal year 2014, an increase of $821 million (or 21%) more than its 2012 fiscal year budget. Unfortunately, the purse stings are controlled by the less-than-responsible House of Representatives (who just eliminated food stamps from the Farm Bill) so the increased funds that are necessary will need to come from increased user fees.

Tonight for dinner, we’ll be eating the last of the frozen tilapia from our freezer, but we don’t plan to buy any more of the “frozen tilapia from China“ from Albertsons - or anyplace else.

It’s probably time to try out a few of those “easy vegetarian recipes”, and I think that our kids would agree. After all, if it's good enough for Bill Clinton, it's good enough for me !

The Ox-Bow Incident

When Richard M. Daley (King Richard II) was mayor of Chicago, the city started a program called “One Book, One Chicago”. According to the website, “One Book, One Chicago launched in fall 2001 as an opportunity to engage and enlighten our residents and to foster a sense of community through reading.”

Years ago, I read “To Kill a Mockingbird’, but the only other book on the list that I’ve read so far is ”The Ox-Bow Incident”, which was the recommended book in the spring of 2005. The book was originally published in 1940, and was made into a movie (starring Henry Fonda) in 1943.

The short version of the story is that a group of vigilantes hang 3 innocent men, but quickly learn of their mistake shortly afterwards, when they return to town.

The story itself is set in the late 1880’s, but vigilante justice existed long before that. More significantly, it continued well into the 20th century. From 1900 to 1931, there were 1595 lynchings of African Americans in the United States. Georgia had the most (302) but Mississippi wasn’t far behind (285).

In the late 18th and early 19th century, our country was a very dangerous place. As a result, laws were passed that reaffirmed the right of people to defend themselves. In essence, they were the first “stand your ground” laws.

Things quieted down for a while, but in 2005, the state of Florida (with the assistance of the American Legislative Exchange Council) passed the first of the modern “stand your ground” laws. Since then, at least 21 other states have passed similar laws, again with the assistance of wording provided by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

One of the first, and certainly the best known, victims of the new “stand your ground” laws was a 17 year old Florida teenager named Trayvon Martin. Even though the man who killed him (George Zimmerman) was not convicted of any crime, at least 2 of the jurors in the case have stated that they felt that he got away with murder, but were unable to press charges due to the way the law was written.

George Zimmerman is a prime example of a modern day vigilante. Even though he had been advised by a crisis center operator to NOT pursue Martin, he still got out of his car, and pursued him on foot. When the unarmed teenager tried to defend himself, he pushed Zimmerman backwards, causing him to fall and hit his head, which resulted in the injuries shown below:

Almost immediately, Zimmerman pulled out his gun, and fatally shot Martin.

Less than a month after the shooting, a picture started making its rounds on the internet that claimed that the man pictured below was Trayvon Martin. Admittedly, he’s a pretty scary looking guy, but he’s NOT Trayvon Martin. He’s actually a 33 year old rapper named Jayceon Terrell Taylor, who goes by the stage name of “Game”.

The picture that you’re most familiar with of Trayvon was taken in August of 2011, seven months before his death, and the picture below was taken 9 days before his death. He’s pictured on the far right of the picture, and he doesn't look very scary to me:

After the jury verdict, many people across the country expressed dismay, but there were no violent confrontations anywhere in the country, a stark contrast to the reaction to the Simi Valley verdict in California in 1992.

Senator John McCain of Arizona recently said that it would be appropriate to review Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which was passed in 2006, and other legislators across the country are saying the same thing about their own laws. At this point in time, though, it’s unlikely that any of the laws will be repealed, due to the fact that they are still popular in many states.

However, the story below will demonstrate why they SHOULD be repealed:

let's pretend he was your white daughter

Regardless of whether any of the laws get changed or not, one simple fact remains:

Vigilante justice was wrong in 1885 - and it’s still wrong today. Where we’ve deviated as a society is that we seem to have lost our sense of conscience. Certain elements of our society are more concerned about “their 2nd amendment rights” than the safety of society as a whole, and they have no concern at all for the victims of gun violence. The most glaring example of this attitude is the heckling that Neil Heslin (the father of Jesse Lewis) encountered when he testified in Hartford earlier this year, which can be viewed at the link below:

Neil Heslin testimony.

In the Ox-Bow movie, one of the men who was hanged (Donald Martin) wrote a letter to his wife, and asked the one member of the posse that he trusted (Arthur Davies) to deliver it to his wife in the event that he couldn’t be saved. Several members of the posse (including Gil Carter, who was played by Henry Fonda) vote to bring the men back to town rather than hang them, but they were outnumbered.

On the way back to town, the posse met the sheriff, who tells them that the man who they thought had been killed by “the outlaws” was still alive, which meant that they had killed 3 innocent men. Back at the saloon, Gil Carter read the letter that Martin had written to his wife to the rest of the posse:

Henry Fonda speaks

The remorse that the men of the posse felt is clearly evident on their faces, and Martin’s words are particularly striking.

At this point in time, it’s difficult to imagine that George Zimmerman feels any remorse at all about killing an innocent teenager, but over time, those feelings will come. When that happens, it will be too late to save Trayvon Martin, but it may still happen in time to provide redemption for George Zimmerman.

In them old cotton fields back home

A week or so ago, my favorite wife mentioned that she didn’t like to wear cotton tops because they didn’t “breathe” as well as the “wicking” shirts that keep her cooler in the Arizona summers.

The way that my head works caused me to do a little more research on the cotton plant, and here’s what I found:

No one knows for sure when cotton first came into being, but cotton seeds dating back to 4500 B.C. have been found in both South America and India. It was first planted in America shortly after our independence from England, but it wasn’t until the invention of the cotton gin (in 1793) that cotton production accelerated in the United States. By 1830, the United States was the largest cotton producer in the world, and cotton exports exceeded the value of all other exports combined.

Cotton is now grown in 17 states. Surprisingly, Texas is the biggest cotton producer in the country, and the state of Mississippi is a DISTANT second. Cotton's business revenue to the U.S. economy is estimated to be $100 billion a year, nearly as much as the PROFIT that the Big Oil companies made in 2012. (As you’re probably aware, us taxpayers are STILL paying subsidies to the oil companies, to the tune of AT LEAST $2 billion a year.

Most of our cotton output (75%) is used to make apparel, although a LOT of it isn’t made here. Out of curiosity, I inventoried my closet earlier today to see how many of my shirts (or sweaters) were made in America. Out of 62 garments, only 3 were made in America. The balance were made in 24 different countries around the globe. Bangladesh and Mexico tied for top honors, at 7 garments apiece.

Today, the world’s leading producer of cotton is China, and India is not far behind. The United States is still in third place, largely due to the fact that the subsidies the cotton industry receives from the Farm Bill (officially known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008) allows them to sell cotton cheaper than they would be able to do so otherwise. Since 1991, the Federal government has paid $50 billion to cotton growers, and the subsidies have averaged $3 billion a year for the last decade.

The country that’s in 5th place in cotton production is Brazil, which has produced an interesting dilemma. If you’ve done any research on the disastrous Smoot-Hawley bill of 1930, you’ll recall that the tariffs that our government imposed to help domestic farmers set off retaliatory tariffs by other countries, and worsened the effects of the Great Depression. Due to the fact that Brazil feels we are “dumping” our cotton in overseas markets, the World Trade Organization has given Brazil the right to charge tariffs of $150,000,000 a year on products exported from America. In order to protect software producers, wheat producers, and other producers who would be hurt by the Brazilian tariffs, our government simply sends a check to the Brazilian government in that amount each year, which we started doing in May of 2010.

The original purpose of the Farm Bill in the 1930’s was to help out small farmers. Unfortunately, the current farm bill largely benefits large, politically-connected farms instead. As a matter of fact, fifteen member of Congress receive subsidies PERSONALLY from the government. One of the chief beneficiaries of the program is Tennessee Representative Stephen Fincher, who received $3.48 million between 1995 and 2012. The family business itself (Fincher Farms) received $8.9 million in subsidies in the last decade, and most of those subsidies are from the cotton program.

In a classic case of Tea Party hypocrisy, Fincher doesn’t believe in the food stamp program (SNAP), which is an opinion shared by Representative Doug LaMalfa of California. LaMalfa’s family owns a rice farm, and it has received $4.7 million in federal subsidies in the last 15 years.

Both Fincher and LaMalfa are on the House agriculture committee, which allows them to “grease their own palm”. Both of them cite Biblical references to justify cuts to the food stamp program. Like most selective readers of the Bible, they ignore passages that are far more applicable. In this case, a careful reading of Matthew 25:31-46 will reinforce the fact that these two individuals are dead wrong in their position on the food stamp program, which currently provides assistance to more than 47,000,000 Americans. In view of the fact that the average net worth of the Senators in Congress is $11,000,000, and the average net worth of the House of Representatives is $6,000,000, our elected officials REALLY need to pay a lot more attention to the words found in Matthew 19:24.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives have loudly proclaimed that the Farm Bill "needs reform". Surprisingly, they're actually correct. Between 2008 and 2012, the Agriculture Department's conservation program sent $10.6 million to more than 1000 people who had been dead for more than a year. In addition, the agency that administers the crop insurance program sent $22,000,000 to 3400 policyholders who had been dead for at least two years.

Their idea of reform, though, isn't the same as the one held by the rest of us. On July 11, 2013, the House of Representatives passed an agricultural bill that ELIMINATED food stamps from the Farm Bill, which marks the first time that food stamps have not been part of the bill since 1973 (when a REPUBLICAN named Richard Nixon got them put in). When asked about the food stamp program, House Speaker John Boehner said, “we’ll get to those other issues later”.

In contrast, this is what Nixon had to say about the issue when he addressed Congress in the late 1960’s:

"That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.... More is at stake here than the health and well-being of 16 million American citizens.... Something very like the honor of American democracy is at issue."

Cotton has had a long and storied history in our country, which inspired a musician named Huddie Ledbetter (whose stage name is Lead Belly) to compose a song called “Cotton Fields” in 1940. Since that time, NUMEROUS artists have recorded the same song. Although the version by Johnny Cash is pretty good, my favorite is the one done by Credence Clearwater Revival (the guys who brought us “Proud Mary” and “Fortunate Son”):

In them old cotton fields back home.

After you’ve had a chance to enjoy the music, take a little advice from the 1976 film, Network. Get mad as hell about the Farm Bill, and write to your Congressman in order to achieve the FULL RESTORATION of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in the Farm Bill.

In closing, here’s the updated version of “American Gothic”, courtesy of Stephen Fincher:

haggis, the horrible

One of my favorite comics strips is the one started by the late Dik Browne in 1973, titled Hagar the Horrible. After his death in 1988, his son Chris continued with the strip under his own name. The strip has done well over the years, and now appears in 1900 newspapers in 58 countries (including Norway) and has been translated into 13 languages.

The strip below was printed fairly recently. By no small coincidence, it happens to be related to “the topic of the week”.

If you’ve done any research on the ancient Vikings, you’ll discover that they enjoyed a healthy diet.To a very large degree, the food that they ate wasn’t markedly different from what we eat today, except for the fact that they occasionally ate horsemeat, and just about everybody drank ale (or mead) instead of water.

The ancient Scots, though, were a “horse of a different color”, and some of their favorite dishes will definitely give you pause.

One of those dishes is something called haggis, which was first consumed in the early 15th century . It’s now considered the national dish of Scotland, and it’s normally served with potatoes and a wee dram of scotch whiskey.

When you read what’s in it, you’ll probably say, “ yer aff yer heid”, which is translated as, “you’re crazy!”. I reviewed a couple of recipes online, and found them to be very similar. Here’s the basics:

You start with a thoroughly rinsed sheep’s stomach. To that, you’ll add a sheep’s liver, a sheep’s heart, a sheep’s tongue, onions, oats, salt, pepper, and spices. After cooking all the ingredients together for about 3 hours, it’s ready to eat!

Until this past weekend, I had never eaten any, simply because it didn’t sound all that appealing. However, since the Celtic Fest was in town again on July 20 and 21, I decided to try it, if only to say that I had done so. Naturally, I ordered a wee dram of scotch to go with it, and (so far) haven’t suffered any ill effects.

If you can envision eating meatloaf that tastes a bit like liver, you’ll have a pretty good idea what it was like.

Would I eat it again? I’m not saying that I wouldn’t, but I’ll also admit to the fact that it took me a long time to work up to calamari, which is actually a pretty good dish, even if it IS fried squid.

Naturally, there's a song about haggis, which I WOULD recommend listening to:

the haggis song