Selective Biases

All of us are probably guilty of selective biases, as this illustration demonstrates: "Hey, I'm happy to give up chicken to make my point. Give up gasoline? Not so much."

How Not to Die

The always entertaining Dr. Michael Greger's latest hour-long survey, based on last year's scientific research, on how not to succumb to the leading causes of death. Might be the best hour you spend this year.

Risk, Fear, and Worry

Seth Godin has the enviable skill of seeing things clearly and describing them plainly. I found his description of risk, fear, and worry particularly helpful. (Original on his blog.)

They're not the same.

Risk is all around us. When we encounter potential points of failure, we're face to face with risk. And nothing courts risk more than art, the desire to do something for the first time--to make a difference.

Fear is a natural reaction to risk. While risk is real and external, fear exists only in our imagination. Fear is the workout we give ourselves imagining what will happen if things don't work out.

And worry? Worry is the hard work of actively (and mentally) working against the fear. Worry is our effort to imagine every possible way to avoid the outcome that is causing us fear, and failing that, to survive the thing that we fear if it comes to fruition.

If you've persuaded yourself that risk is sufficient cause for fear, and that fear is sufficient cause for worry, you're in for some long nights and soon you'll abandon your art out of exhaustion. On the other hand, you can choose to see the three as completely separate phenomena, and realize that it's possible to have risk (a good thing) without debilitating fear or its best friend, obsessive worry.

Separate first, eliminate false causation, then go ahead and do your best work.

Much from Little

My "garden" at present consists of a small plot in front of my house that gets good sun—a bit less than 100 square feet. Even with my limited skills, this small plot produces well. In due course, I'll replace these summer plants with fall greens.

In these four photos, you can see the progression of growth:

Here's a collection I brought in Friday morning:

Unfortunately, for the first time, I have had a problem with birds sitting on the tomato cages and helping themselves to the tomatoes. At least they have good taste—here is a decimated Brandywine. Brandywine's are an heirloom and not prolific producers, so every one lost to the birds is missed sorely. Tomato purists say the Brandywine is the world's best-tasting tomato, but they are low producers (though large, with big shoulders) and susceptible to all manner of disease:

I've had at least three different kinds of volunteer squash come up from seeds in the compost I spread. I'm not sure what variety is in the first picture, but the second looks like it will be the beautiful half-yellow and half-green zephyr squash:

Live and Learn

The back "corner" of my lot was filled with pine trees which I greatly dislike. They drop dead branches, pine cones, and fall over in ice or wind storms (though none of mine ever did). I always wanted them gone and should have tackled it when I first moved in this house 12 years ago—when the trees were 12 years smaller. I finally, on impulse (a bad move) decided to remove them.

The two pictures (the only ones I could find quickly) show what the back corner looked like with the trees in place:

When a crew of ne're-do-well tree cutters came through the neighborhood looking for work, I hired them to just drop the trees and trim the limbs into a pile. My plan was to then hire somebody with a chipper to chip the limbs into mulch, and find a wood harvesting company to give the trees to for free if they would haul them off. All the above was a really bad idea. With the building business off, I discovered nobody wanted my huge pine trees—not even for pulp. They weren't worth the cost of retrieving them.

So this is what I was left with (plus a big hole in my wallet). Somehow, these trees look much smaller in these pictures than they actually were standing next to them. Most were 50-70 feet tall before being cut.

So, I had to bite the bullet and hire a professional tree service to come in and clean up the mess: grind up the branches and limbs, grind the stumps, take down four more huge trees still remaining, and haul off the logs. They told me they could have done the entire job from scratch for just a little more than what I paid them to clean up the mess the other crew left. Ouch.

They took down four more trees and cleaned up all the mess in about six hours. And they had the equipment to do it:

I had never had stumps ground before, so was fascinated with this machine. I had originally planned to have a backhoe dig the stumps out because I wanted the surrounding roots pulled up as well so I wouldn't hit them when I dig new holes to plant new trees/bushes. But this grinder digs a hole 2-3 feet wide, cutting out the large roots on either side of the stump:

I want one of these: (I kept all the mulch from the grinder and had them spread it out since I won't be planting grass in this area. My plan is to fill the area with fruit trees and bushes.)

So, here's what a couple weeks and way too much money accomplished. It was an expensive education, but I learned my lesson: Go slow, get numerous estimates, DON'T hire people that knock on your door looking for work. The fence on the left is my property line. My neighbor's pines will continue to drop pine cones and limbs into my new clean space, of course—but at least I can now toss them back over the fence into his yard instead of having to get rid of them myself. (The owner of the clean-up tree crew and I were talking about fruit trees, and he told me about the fruit trees he had seen on a recent cruise to Belize. Apparently the tree business is good thanks to guys like me.)

Hangin' with Katie

A few snaps of my new granddaughter, Katie:

Getting some puppy love from Blue:

Laughing at the photographer (thanks, Katie!):

Chillin':

Enough pictures already! Time for my eighth 15-minute nap of the day, after which will be my ninth meal-from-Mom of the day. It's a pretty simple schedule actually: nurse, nap, play, fuss; nurse, nap, play, fuss; rinse and repeat all day. In other words, just being a newborn. Hang in there, Mom (and Dad).

Summer Staples

The eggplant I'm growing like what their roots are in, apparently. They are bearing prolifically, this plant having five purple orbs at present:

Here's a cool summer treat I put together: one frozen banana cut in small pieces, one 16-oz. tub of silken soft tofu, one avocado, a quarter-cup-plus-some of carob or cacao powder, and a couple tablespoons of maple syrup. Blend until smooth in a food processor with the S-blade. Sliced strawberries and shaved almonds on top. Makes enough for two of these parfait glasses full (don't ask).

Two Good Signs

I'm able to see what topics people are searching for that bring them to my blog, and, over the last few months, the top two Google searches have been . . .

#1: The ANDI nutrients-per-calorie food table popularized by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

#2: The life cycle of squash bugs.

These are both positive indicators—people are interested in eating nutrient-dense foods and even growing some of their own (and battling the bugs that make it a challenge).

Diet and Prostate Cancer

Excellent post from Dr. Gabe Mirkin on prostate cancer and diet. Dr. Mirkin is by no means a vegan, but he will report whatever the science says. And regarding prostate cancer, he says things like . . .

"Multiple studies by Dr. Ed Giovannucci of Harvard show that a plant-based diet is the best way to help prevent prostate cancer."

"A study from the University of Hawaii showed that prostate cancer occurs much less frequently in men who eat yellow and orange vegetables such as corn and carrots, and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. A report from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle showed that men who eat three or more servings of vegetables a day have a 48 percent reduction in prostate cancer compared to those who don't eat vegetables. Other studies show that men who eat soy foods, which are full of flavones, have a lower incidence of prostate cancer."

"Eating meat raises your chances of developing prostate cancer. So does drinking large amounts of milk and taking calcium supplements that deplete your body of vitamin D. Low levels of vitamin D are a major risk factor for prostate cancer."

He also cites the Omega-3 fatty acids in fish as being a healthy defense against prostate cancer. But the Omega-3 fatty acids in fish come from the algae they eat—a plant food. Admittedly, eating fish is more tasty (because of the flavor of cooked fat) than eating algae, but you can get some of the same Omega-3 EFAs (long-chain DHA and EPA) from taking algae-derived Omega 3 supplements, as well as by taking in large amounts of other plant-form Omega-3 (like flax, chia, and hemp seed, walnuts, purslane, and other dark leafy greens), from which the body gets the EFA alpha-lenolenic acid (ALA) which the body partially converts to DHA and EPA. So eating fish is not mandatory—but getting adequate DHA/EPA essential fatty acids is.

Dr. Mirkin concludes by saying . . .

"At this time, the best diet to prevent prostate cancer is loaded with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and other seeds, and deep-water fish; limits meat and whole milk dairy products; and has ample amounts of vitamin D (preferably from sunlight)."

In other words, eat a plant-BASED died (the above diet is BASED on plants), or better yet, eat a vegan (all plants) diet.

You can read Dr. Mirkin's short post here.

Turn Here Sweet Corn

I wrote in March about Atina Diffley's new memoir, Turn Here Sweet Corn, and there is now a trailer for the book (cool idea). This is a beautifully written book that gives incredible insights into land and food and the kind of people who love both. Whether one is a farmer/gardener or not, I wish everyone would read this book. Folks like Atina and her husband make many of us look like slackers. I have had greater appreciation for what it takes to bring organic food to my plate, and for why I'm happy to support gardeners like the Diffley's who produce it.

Physician, Heal Thyself

Hold the Sugar

There is a growing amount of attention focused on the deadly impact of sugar, in all its forms—yes, even natural sugars in fruit, though this impact is partially mediated by the fiber in fruit.

Three points in this post that create a macro-connection:

1. The rise in death by cancer from 1900 until now: 64 deaths per 100,000 in 1900 versus 185.9 deaths per 100,000 in 2010 (graph from The New England Journal of Medicine).

2. The prevalence of sugar in the American diet, obesity rates being the most obvious sign. All one has to do is read food labels to see how much sugar is in the packaged foods we buy. Just last weekend, I went through my pantry and tossed out a number of jars and packages of food containing sugar: Trader Joe's Peach Salsa, Trader's Joe's Corn Salsa (sugar was second ingredient on the list), agave nectar (duh), dried figs (concentrated sugar in smaller, dried, form), etc.

3. Research released on June 26, 2012, in Molecular Systems Biology, that shows how depriving cancer cells of sugar leads to their apoptosis (death) without harming other normal cells. Dr. Gabe Mirkin has pointed out that chemotherapy and radiation will never be a cure for cancer because they both kill normal cells as well as cancer cells. To generate levels strong enough to kill all the cancer cells would destroy too many normal cells. But when cancer cells are deprived of sugar, their only source of energy, they die on their own. (Read Dr. Mirkin's report on this research at his website, here.)

Here's the opening paragraph from Dr. Mirkin's report:

"This week a realistic cure for cancer was presented by Thomas Graeber of UCLA (Molecular Systems Biology, June 26, 2012). His team showed that depriving cancer cells of the sugar, glucose, kills them by causing the cancer cells to accumulate Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). As ROS accumulate in cells, they damage the large molecules in cells, such as DNA and RNA, and cause apoptosis, the programmable death of cells. This specifically kills cancer cells without harming normal cells."

So, connect these three macro-dots: A huge increase in cancer rates in America coupled with a huge increase in the consumption of sugar in America, and brand new research that shows depriving cancer cells of sugar leads to their death . . . .

Even with this research, I wonder how many cancer patients will continue to be fed sugar as part of their hospital meals, and how many will be told by their doctors to remove sugar from their diets. I'm not suggesting that eliminating sugar is a cure for all cancer, but the big trends seem to suggest it could be part of the cause now that we know how dependent cancer cells are on sugar for survival.

Takeaway: An accepted notion is that every human body has rogue (cancer) cells in it all times. If those cells don't "take root" and become "cancer" it's because the body's immune system has eliminated them before they have a chance to multiply and spread. Therefore, the goal is not to wait until we "get cancer" to try to fight it by eliminating sugar from the diet, etc. The goal is to maintain an "anti-cancer" inner-environment all the time so cancer cells have little opportunity to find food (sugar) and become established. Such an inner-terrain is an alkaline environment (sugar being the opposite, acidic) fed by cancer fighting foods, specifically cruciferous veggies, dark leafy greens, and other anti-cancer foods and herbs. (See sources like AntiCancer (2nd edition) by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber and Foods to Fight Cancer by Dr. Richard Béliveau and Dr. Denis Gingras.)

And, the point of this post, the elimination of sugar, cancer's main energy food.

It's easy to forget that sugar is a processed food. It's also easy to rail against the "processed food" plague while consuming vast quantities of other processed foods (oils, sugars, etc.) along with our organic, locally-grown, whole-foods fare. If sugar had been left where God created it—in the fruits and some vegetables like carrots and beets—we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

Processed foods are another example of not everything that is possible being helpful (1 Corinthians 10:23).

Addendum: Because a good question was raised in the comments on the distinction between glucose, fructose, and sucrose in the study mentioned above, I contacted Dr. Mirken for clarification, which he promptly provided:

"All sugars are inter-convertible. For example, glucose is the only sugar allowed to circulate in your bloodstream. Fructose goes directly to your liver and is immediately converted to stored sugar called glycogen,. When your body needs sugar, the glycogen is released as glucose. Sucrose is a double sugar made of glucose and fructose bound together in a single molecule. Your body cannot absorb double sugars. It absorbs only single sugars. So the sucrose is split into glucose and fructose and each is absorbed individually. Then fructose goes to your liver to be stored as glycogen. If you have too much, it is converted to a fat called triglycerides."

Therefore, the study focused only on glucose because it's the only one the body makes available to cells for energy.

Peter Cottontail

Saw my rabbit pal from the upstairs window, just chillin' out in the unusually cool afternoon yesterday. I went downstairs and got a picture from inside the kitchen window:

Then I went outside and snuck around to the corner of the house for a closer shot. His ragged right ear suggests a life in the wild:

I then started inching my way across the yard in full view until I invaded too much of his space:

His white cottontail was the last thing I saw. I was afraid I had scared him off for good, but he was back this morning, though it was too dark for photos:

Stuff that Works: Shea World Shea Butter

If you need something for your skin, organic shea butter from my son's company, Shea World, will fit the bill. Since he spends a disproportionate amount of his life on the beach in California, he needed something for sunburn, dry skin, bumps and scrapes, and the like. When he discovered shea butter worked better than anything else, he and a friend created Shea World to make a vegan, organic, pure shea butter available. It comes in tangerine, lavender, and vanilla scents, or unscented, and contains nothing but pure, organic shea butter from Africa and pure oil for the scented versions. I've been using it and decided it definitely deserves a Stuff that Works page. It's especially good for eczema as well as for an aftershave balm. It goes on slightly "oily" but absorbs into the skin in a couple minutes. Good stuff—I love the lavender scent.

Read more about it at their web site, SheaWorld.com. (Choice of sizes plus FREE shipping.)

In the Yard

Male cardinal (shot through a hazy window) lunching on Swish chard seed pods:

A whitetail deer, nibbling on grass in the field behind my house. Traffic stopped both ways on a busy street recently where I was driving for a tiny fawn, couldn't have been more than a few days old, in the middle of the road. It was between my car and another car (going the opposite direction). The other driver hopped out and carried it back into a nearby field—no sign of Mom. A deer about the size of the one in the pictures below bounded across a road about 50 feet in front of me when I was riding my bike this week.

This is why they're called "Whitetail Deer." (Hard to see, but the underside of their tail is white, and when they are running away from you they hold their tail high and the white underside is beautifully visible.)

Garden overflowing its boundaries:

Finally! Peace in the Middle East!

Now that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as been declared the winner of last weekend's election, the newly appointed president has issued encouraging words about his desire to live peacefully with Egypt's neighbor, Israel. Why does everyone think so badly of the Muslim Brotherhood? Peace-seeking Egyptians, regular people who want to simply care for their families and make their way in the world, will be glad to know they have just been designated as martyrs for Hamas.

How to Present Stuff to People

Terrific short (six minutes) video by an expert in the field: "Five Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People." I thought of "a hundred" things to say about this but don't have time to write them down. Just watch the video—the application is universal, but especially if you are a person who regularly speaks to others: teacher, preacher, trainer, motivator, parent, leader . . . . (And for regular exposure to things like this, subscribe to the weekly (Sunday mornings) Brain Pickings newsletter.)

5 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People from Weinschenk on Vimeo.

Betcha Can't Look at Just One

I've been slack in posting about my new granddaughter, Katherine (Katie) Louise, born nearly a month ago now. I'll tempt you with this one beautiful picture and send you here to see more. (Nice work with the camera, Daniel!)

Chickpea Quarterly

Chickpea Quarterly is a cool new vegan food and lifestyle magazine -- now on the web only, soon by subscription as well.

What a Guy

A cousin on my father's side sent me this photo of my father, Robert Daniel Kruidenier, from her archives. He was all dressed up with somewhere to go. He was born in 1911, and I'm guessing he's in his early twenties in this photo, making it 1931 or later. Hey—that's the heart of the Great Depression, but he looks anything but depressed. (I'd love to have a jacket like that!)

Within a few years of this picture Daddy would drop out of Drake University and head to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as a pilot in the pre-WW II buildup. (The U.S. had no air force at the time.) When America got its air-act together, he transferred into the U.S. Air Force and was sent to China (29th Fighter Squadron) to train Chinese pilots to fight the Japanese in the CIB Theatre (China-India-Burma). On his way to China, he spent 12 hours floating in the Mediterranean when his transport ship, the HMT Rohna, was sunk by a German torpedo dropped from a plane (and he worked later side-by-side at NASA with the German scientist who developed that torpedo). In China he pancaked his P-40 in a rice paddy when he ran out of gas due to the radio beacon signal going dead, and spent several days walking back to the base on foot. Later, his plane would be hit by a Japanese fighter, blowing up the engine and leaving him with shrapnel in his leg. He was sent home a year-and-a-half later with a bad case of Sand Fly Fever—but not before receiving his Chinese pilot's wings from Madam Chang Kai-shek, to go with his RCAF and USAF wings. (He was one of a few pilots to earn pilot's wings from three different countries' Air Forces.)

When the above picture was taken, his grandfather (and then father) owned Kruidenier Cadillac in Des Moines, Iowa, originally located in this building at 1408 Locust Street in Des Moines. I'll assume Daddy was dressed up for a hot date in the 1930s version of the Escalade. As was true of all the Greatest Generation, Daddy never knew what perils lay ahead—including those to one day be induced by the raising of this post's author!