July 29, 2011
July 28, 2011
Cat & Crow
A cat and a crow as friends! Wow! Amazing! Wallace and Ann Collito were fortunate to see and experience what they did!!
I don’t know what the latest news is, but, in 2008, Linda Faber wrote a story, “KITTY CORNER: Update on an unlikely friendship” (The Sun Chronicle (34 South Main St., Attleboro, MA),
Monday, July 21, 2008 2:38 AM EDT), talking about the animals. Linda wrote:
In August 1999, Wallace and Ann Collito’s home in North Attleboro was buzzing with activity. It was the place to be! The streets were full of curious neighbors, camera crews and photographers.
So, what was all the hoopla about, you ask? People were there to witness the unthinkable, something that defied all the laws of nature: A kitten and a crow engaged in a most unusual nurturing relationship. It’s a known fact that cats & birds are arch enemies.
I first witnessed the unlikely twosome on YouTube about six months ago and simply could not believe what I was seeing. You can see for yourself by going to YouTube.com and typing in “crow & kitten are friends.” Obviously others were amazed by what they saw as the video has had 4,634,309 visitors to date and has a five star rating. More pictures can be seen at www.earthlings.org/kin/kinship.html. The story made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but left me wondering whatever became of the kitten and the crow. It was now nine years later and I just had to find out.
©Copyright 2010
Read the rest! Nice story, good article.
You can see Cassie and Moses also in a video clip on the National Geographic‘s Unlikely Animal Friends.
Update (7-28-11; 5:25 PM)!! Being *very* interested in Cassie’s fate and hoping all was well, I emailed Linda Faber, and — thank goodness, even though the email address I found might have been years out of date — got a response! Linda said I could publish her letter. She said:
Hi Michael,
You’ll be happy to know that Cassie returned home on 8/14/08 unscathed. She was gone for 3 1/2 months. Mr. Collito spotted her, put food out on his side deck, she came right up to the door, ate it and walked in the house like she had never left.
They spend their winters in Florida visiting Mr. Collito’s son and return to N. Attleboro in the spring. They are both doing well.
Last summer, Mr. Collito built a screened in porch for Cassie and she loves it. She can now feel like she’s outside without ever getting lost again.
You can rest easy knowing that the story had a happy ending.
Linda Faber
Kitty Corner/The Sun Chronicle
What a relief to hear that, after losing Cassie for a while, Mr. Wallace Collito and Cassie were reunited!! Thank goodness! But poor Moses!! 
And I hope it did not hurt Cassie too much, losing Moses!!
I was going to wait until tomorrow to put up this post, but, at Linda’s request, I put it up today. She wanted it today, and, since I owe her big time for telling me about Cassie’s fate — done!
Friends: An Owl And A Cat
Watch Fum & Gebra playing! Amazing! There is even a Website for them!
July 27, 2011
Mineral Water
Yay Gerolsteiner mineral water!! Delicious!! Especially on a hot day in the Houston summer!! I’m glad at least this mineral water has the chemical breakdown listed! Nice.
July 26, 2011
A Healthier Office
In “The Ultimate Office for Athletes and People Seeking a Healthier Lifestyle,” David Teten writes about what a healthier office would and should look like. He says:
The way in which most people stay in shape is fundamentally broken. They work a desk job for 8-12 hours, and then go to a gym three times a week for 45 minutes to (supposedly offset) that desk job. As the New York Times recently wrote, sitting kills.
According to research done by the Vermont Board of Education, exercise is not only healthy for you, but it also increases your productivity. Increased blood flow leads to greater cognitive abilities — the Greeks knew this. The idea of making the white collar office a healthier environment has started to enter mainstream social consciousness. A small number of offices across the country have slowly begun to endorse the idea of exercising while doing a white collar job (not before or after), e.g., walking on a treadmill while doing your job at Mutual of Omaha.
…
First, here are our core operating principles:
- Healthy alternatives should be truly viable alternatives, not luxury products. Almost all of our ideas cost the same or less than setting up a conventional office.
- Motion is better than no motion; stasis kills. (I would call that a life principle, not just a fitness principle.)
- Standing is healthier than sitting. Excess sitting can even shorten your life.
- Standing on a flat surface is healthier than standing on a distorted surface.
Mr. Teten then goes on to provide some detailed ideas to make your office/workspace — and hence yourself — healthier. Check out the article!
July 25, 2011
A Student Speaks
” ‘Use logic in math’ is my motto.” — Sophia S (October 31, 2010)
That, and persistent, hard work, are why she gets mostly As. I love that quote.
July 22, 2011
More birds!!
Sea eagles with eggs!! Nice!! The site says that two eggs were laid by this pair of eagles: one egg on July 4th and the other on July 7th. They also say:
The White-bellied Sea-Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) is the second largest bird of prey in Australia with a wing span of 1.8-2.2 metres (6-7 feet). It measures 75-85cm (30-33 inches) in length and can weigh up to 4.2kg (9 pounds), the female being larger and heavier than the male. Sea-eagles are found around the coast and along the major rivers of mainland Australia and Tasmania, New Guinea, South East Asia and as far west as the coast of India.
Our eagles started to build a new nest in May after the tree in which they had their old nest for several years fell down in February (see Channel 7 News Story from February 2011). They usually lay two eggs at the end of June or early July and incubate them for forty days before hatching in early August. The young remain on the nest for approximately three months until they are ready to fly at the beginning of November. They then spend most of their time away from the nest but, if the adults are still bringing in food, they may occasionally be seen at the nest up until January the following year. The young birds may take up to six years to reach maturity, gradually losing their brown juvenile plumage and gaining the characteristic grey and white plumage of the adults. Sea-eagles may live for up to 30 years. Their diet is mainly fish but also includes birds, reptiles, mammals and carrion. Our eagles take fish from the nearby Parramatta River and surrounding wetlands of Olympic Park but when the eaglets are approximately 1-2 months old, a large part of their diet is made up of Silver Gulls caught from a small breeding colony on the wrecks in Homebush Bay.
© 2011 Ustream, Inc. All rights reserved.
July 21, 2011
Diet, Health, and Mental Health
In “An Unconventional Approach to PCOS,” Peggy Emch writes about how powerful a factor diet is for health, mental health, and well-being.
When I was 14, I went to the emergency room with 4 cysts which had ruptured on my ovaries in unison (utterly agonizing pain). But after the ultrasound confirmed that the cysts had ruptured, the doctors said I should be fine and those too were ignored.
I had other signs that something was wrong with my body. When I was 12 my hip joint fell out of its socket and I had to go to the ER to get it put back in place. They didn’t know why it happened so they sent me on my way (my hip and my shoulder continued to do this until I was 26, when I quit eating gluten).
Once I had a head ache so bad it sent me to the ER. The pain that day was worse than childbirth. The spinal tap showed nothing and so it too was ignored.
I looked so healthy despite the symptoms
I guess it might have been hard to take me seriously since I was such a pretty young teen. How could anyone so pretty and thin be such a wreck? And so, I was eventually diagnosed with mental problems. All the cramps, the diarrhea, the pain, the joint problems, the feeling of being out of control were all in my head.By the time I was 12 it would become the job of psychiatrists to fix me, but they didn’t do a bit of good for someone whose mind suffered as a result of malnourishment and hormonal imbalances. (Even today it seems psychiatrists are mostly clueless about the connection between the mind and the body. Depression and mental problems are totally avoidable and correctable. Emily Deans is aware of this. I wish she had been my shrink.)
…
Like with every other modern health condition PCOS can be avoided and controlled by diet and lifestyle changes. (Genetics can predispose a person to develop the condition but genetics are rarely the cause of disease. Check out this article on Mark’s Daily Apple for more information about the relationship between genetics and disease.)
After learning about grains and sugars, I discovered Loren Cordain’s book, The Paleo Diet. My health improved immediately and within 3 months I was pregnant. It was amazing that I was starting to get my hormonal problems under control but, unfortunately, a return to an evolutionary diet was not the whole solution for me.
So I started taking vitamins, minerals, and hormone balancing herbs. I stopped over-exercising. I did all the things that I read should take care of the problem. But I still didn’t fully recover – many of my thousand symptoms improved but not all of them. For years, even after going Primal, I struggled with (minor by this point) PCOS symptoms.
Read the article to find out what else Mrs. Emch did to return to health — to a natural state of physical health, mental health, and well-being. Very interesting read!
July 20, 2011
July 19, 2011
Some Dangers of Conventional Health Advice
In “Hope Warshaw’s Pepsi Challenge,” Tom Naughton writes:
In my last post, I commented on a reply from Hope Warshaw — the diabetes educator (ahem, ahem) — to a reader of this blog in which she pooh-poohed his “experience of one” with using a low-carb diet to manage diabetes.
The same reader emailed me that he conducted an “experiment of one” in recent days to compare his blood sugar after drinking a 12-ounce Pepsi versus eating some of the foods Hope Warshaw recommends for diabetics. Take a look:
Food Carbs BG before BG at 60 mins
12-ounce Pepsi 42 g 89 156
Oatmeal, milk 40 g 113 163
Whole wheat bread 48 g 93 141
Whole wheat toast, milk 36 g 103 173Perhaps those numbers don’t look scary to you, but they do to me. Here’s what Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic wrote about post-meal glucose levels awhile back:
Even the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists is now recommending that post-meal blood sugars never be allowed to rise above 140 mg/dL. Unfortunately, less informed groups like the ADA haven’t caught up with the science.
The consequences of this are severe. Nerve damage occurs as blood sugar rises above 140 mg/dL. Prolonged exposure to blood sugars above 140 mg/dL causes irreversible beta cell loss (the beta cells produce insulin). 1 in 2 “pre-diabetics” get retinopathy, a serious diabetic complication. Cancer rates increase as post-meal blood sugars rise above 160 mg/dL.
