Tricolor Facebook?

Maybe I am jaded, but the various memes on facebook are somewhat selective. They fit into certain preset patterns that are predictable. One of these was to show "support" for France by overlaying your profile picture with the three colors of the French flag. Yes ISIS attacked French people going about their own business. With that in mind, let's talk about another attack by ISIS on those minding their own business. 

From Reuters:  

President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up a Russian airliner over Egypt and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria, after the Kremlin concluded a bomb had destroyed the plane last month, killing 224 people. 

So can I conclude that I will be overwhelmed with the number of people announcing they are "supporting" Russia by changing their Facebook profiles with an overlay of the Russian flag? It is the same colors, so no work is necessary for those who already have supported France.

I won't hold my breath.

Modern Educayshun

Fun Video!

I have posted this before, but I always enjoy it and I hope you do too. 

Week 5: Supplement 101

Naturally after ranting against the modern meme of curing all our ills by taking a pill, I will propose you solve your ills by taking a pill. It seems only logical. 

If you are a Caucasian living in the South who is outside with large amounts of skin exposed for at least an hour each day, and you eat a healthy, varied, non-processed diet, from local sources grown in non-depleted soils, using grass-fed meats and wild fish, and avoiding most vegetable oils, you can just skip this post. 

Still with me? 

Personally I take about 12 pills every morning. I am not going to recommend this many as I am following my doctor's advice by using specific B vitamins to reduce homocysteine levels. This is something you may wish to try with doctor supervision, but much, much later. Gradually changing what you eat is more important. 

This is the multivitamin I take. 

I think that most multivitamins are too dangerous for many. This is because a large percentage of people have a genetic mutation that makes the metabolism of folate problematic. Yes I am a mutant.  I cannot handle folate well. To make matters even worse, most vitamin preparations do not even use folate, they use folic acid, an artificial compound. Can my body use folic acid to make the methylated folate that is in the multivitamin I take? No one seems to know how efficient someone with my genetics would be in converting folic acid to methylated folate. 

So if you want to take a multivitamin, you either need to get yourself genetically tested, or use a multivitamin that helps you by supplying methylated folate instead of folic acid. Personally I do not want the unmetabolized folic acid to build up until my body can excrete it. 

If you have had your physical, I hope you got your vitamin D levels tested. Otherwise you have no idea if you need to supplement or not. Go get it tested before using vitamin D as it can be toxic. No, two pills is not necessarily better than one. The vitamin D in your multivitamin will not be enough to hurt you, but it might not be enough to help you either. Here is what I take.

If you live above the red line, you may need Vitamin DI may be wrong, but if I had to pick one reason why I got cancer it would be Vitamin D deficiency. Right now, even with a very aggressive supplementation program, I am still deficient. At the start of the supplementation I was low enough that I almost certainly had undiagnosed bone problems. It does not matter how much calcium is in your diet, if you do not have enough Vitamin D, the calcium is not properly utilized. 

The video I am recommending today talks about this issue. One figure in the video I found shocking. 85% of patients admitted to a Boston Hospital for any reason were deficient in Vitamin D. 

Unless you live an active outdoor life in an area without winter, you need to consider supplementation. The Vitamin D test should be a part of any physical you take. 

If you take vitamin D there is another vitamin you need to take--K-2. I do not take K-2 because I eat Natto. I think it tastes fine, like what I remember pork 'n beans used to taste like when I ate that. But the slimy look leaves something to be desired. One reason I eat it is that it has more vitamin K-2 than any other food in the world. There are a few vitamins that are in short supply in our diet. K-2 is one of them. For a more in-depth discussion of this click here. 

This is not the K-2 you are looking for, move on. If you eat fermented cheese like blue cheese, liver, pasture-fed butter and milk, or have good gut bacteria that live on soluble fiber, you might be OK—might. But if you don't, you should supplement. 

(Remember that K-1 is not the same vitamin!) 

K-2 is crucial in calcium allocation. Even if you have enough calcium, without this vitamin, along with vitamin D, the calcium is not laid down in the bones as well. Even worse, the calcium might be put in places you do not want it, like your heart. 

So either crack open the styrofoam Natto container, eat a lot of blue cheese, or get some supplementation. 

Here is what I take if I have not had natto recently. 

Magnesium deficiency is also a problem for many. Magnesium also helps build strong bones. Here is what I take, but I take less than the recommended amount.  

I do not take calcium except for the modest amount in my multivitamin. I have calcium in places I do not want it to be. The sudden rush of calcium supplementation, really the rush you get from any vitamin, is not good. This is one reason I take so many vitamins: I use smaller doses twice a day. With calcium this rush is particularly dangerous. Women seem to be different than men on this as they are more susceptible to bone issues. But even women should space the calcium pills throughout the day. 

Remember what Socrates said, "The unexamined vitamin is not worth taking." 

A Lesson from the Twilight Zone

If you are anything like me, various episodes of the Twilight Zone, in addition to entering pop culture, provide food for thought. No, the episode where William Shatner overacts is not the one I have in mind. Shatner is even a parody of himself, but at least he embraces it!

The episode I have in mind is focused on a mild-mannered accountant. As is typical in such stories he is not happy. He receives a mysterious letter from a psychic who claims to be able to predict the outcome of The Big Fight. The psychic was right. Our hero receives another letter with another prediction, again correct. By the third letter the psychic explains his problem: he can not profit directly from his power, so he asks that he receive a portion of any winnings the accountant receives. 

The man is hooked, places a small bet, and wins. As a result of the psychic's next letter, he embezzles a large sum from his employer and makes stock market investments.  In the next-to-final scene, our hero is sitting on his yacht in a smoking jacket, drinking an adult beverage. He won!

The final scene has his coworkers discussing the psychic fraud they had read about. The "psychic" sent out thousands of letters, half of which predicted one outcome of the original boxing match, and the other half the opposite prediction. The conman would then write more letters, but only to those to whom he had made the correct "prediction." The con man knew that if he wrote a large enough number of initial letters, and kept writing to those to whom he had been correct,  the pool of correct predictions would also be large. This would give him people on whom to pull his psychic scam.

This relates to two different sub-themes here at the Prophecy Podcast.

Would-be prophets in the religious world might actually be able to string together a number of successful predictions, just by chance. Since there are a surprising number of such prognosticators, some of them are bound to be right. Of course the "prophet" will combine the technique of vagueness with not mentioning their prophetic failures. Thus a prophet is born.

Would-be economic advisers in the financial world might actually be able to string together a number of successful predictions, just by chance. Since there are a surprising number of such prognosticators, some of them are bound to be right. Of course they will combine the technique of vagueness with not mentioning their predictive failures. Thus a economic guru is born.

Do I need to name names? I think each of us can think of some examples. Sometimes the con is not even that sophisticated. Thus we have the joke about the economic adviser who predicted 5 of the last 3 recessions. 

People also forget about the colossal bonehead mistakes that these "prophets" make. One particular adviser I read over 20 years ago--who out of politeness shall remain nameless--was constantly predicting that the dotcom mania of the late 90's was just that--a mania. He was right. But I guess he got tired of the money that those who ignored his advice received. Right at the top of the mania, he urged his newsletter subscribers to buy Internet stocks. This was one of the worst calls in modern times. He had to resign. But guess what--a decade later he is back as editor of the same newsletter. (Note that I am not saying one can not have a financial advisor.) 

Do not be fooled by the magical thinking of religious or economic gurus. They don't know any more than you do--probably less.

 

The Empire Marches On

What? I thought that the recent Russian Airline crash in the Sinai was mechanical failure and that the claim by Isis for responsibility was bragging. But now it is reported in the Wall Street Journal that the US may soon be supplying "moderates" with hand-held surface-to-air missles to "keep the Russians at bay" as the article puts it. Here is the "money quote": 

"Mr. Obama has long rebuffed such proposals, citing the risk to civilian aircraft and fears they could end up in the hands of terrorists. To reduce those dangers, U.S. allies have proposed retrofitting the equipment to add so-called kill switches and specialized software that would prevent the operator from using the weapon outside a designated area, said officials in the region briefed on the option." 

What this means is that if this happens then any downing of Russian aircraft will be assumed to have been done by proxies of the US Government. The next paragraph says this: "U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that a few older Manpads may already have been smuggled into Syria through supply channels the CIA doesn’t control." Thus it seems obvious that when, not if, this happens, the Russian government will assume the US is responsible. 

I do not post a link since the WSJ is subscription only. But one can google the title  "U.S., Allies to Boost Aid to Syria Rebels" to see the article. You need to do so.  

Most of these hand-held weapons, called Manpads, cannot reach the altitude needed to down a commercial aircraft except at take off,  but apparently some can.  So since these US made weapons, the ones with the altitude needed, are in the region, the crash of the Russian civilian airline could be laid at the US' feet.  (Note I am not saying that such a weapon was used, the altititude seems too high. We still do not know what happened, and we may never know.)

I would have thought that this was a false report, but this is the Wall Street Journal. The usual "meme" is the supposed "liberalness" of the Obama administration. I would say the opposite: It doesn't matter who is elected, the empire marches on.