Finding good food

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This website makes it easier in finding organic and sustainable farms.  However, I would caution you that just because someone claims to be organic doesn’t necessarily mean they have their hearts in it.  I know of at least one farm listed here that they were burning asphalt roof tiles, along with plastics and other stuff that you shouldn’t…a half – block away from the organic fields.  They also sprayed weedkiller on gravel that was next to the growing field.  Yep.  That’s not something someone casually shopping would know….so it helps to know the folks you’re dealing with or someone who works for them, but this website is a good start.

I’ve tried to go online to look for local free range egg farmers, but came up empty.  There was one website that was called “farmer’s friend, but there was nothing even in Allen County (FW), where I knew they had free range eggs….<sigh>…it doesn’t do one a whole lot of good if you’re not going to put information on the website for customers.

Hope this helps anyone looking for locally grown food.

 

Eat a damn cup cake

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I found this blog on the women and weight issue.  She points out that the same magazines that criticize women for being too skinny also turn around and criticize them for being too *cough* fat.  It is pathological.

She does a great job of listing the statistics of women and how  the media distorts its portrayal of women.

I love the line:  Eat a damn cup cake!

She also advocates, as I do, eating a healthy diet and not sitting on the couch all day.  It’s all about balance.

I will be forever grateful that I started doing aerobics after my first child was born.  I was active as a kid, but slacked off when I became  a teenager–sports were considered unladylike in my hometown–you were a lesbian if you participated in sports (yes, they were that backward)….and people who exercised regularly were considered “health nuts” .  Geez-o-pete.

But I do believe those years of exercising helped with the health issues I’m dealing with now—I think I would have been much, much worse off from the effects of slowly being poisoned if I had not been as healthy to begin with.

And I’ve discovered that I’m much more likely to exercise when it’s something that is active and sports-like.  I do like aerobics, but even they can become routine and boring….I’m more likely to want to do something like playing in the snow or riding a bike or hiking a trail…and on…it’s something that I think is probably more beneficial not only to the body but to the spirit, as well.  Gotta have that.

 

 

Fat?

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Seriously…this cheerleader is considered “pudgy”…?

And the question “why are women so mean” is soooo far out of line it’s unbelievable.  Men can be just as cruel.  It may be a little more subtle, but still impacts his partner.

Anyway, it is really disgusting to see how Hollywood and the media  have demanded women become anorexic in order to be considered sexy and desirable.  It is pathological and unhealthy.  (it’s also personal as my ex was constantly on me about my weight.  I was 125 pounds–and small–and he was constantly telling me that I “better not get fat”.  It was a control thing with him.)

I’m not ashamed of being a woman. Of having curves.  The only time I feel bad about that is when those curves are somehow seen as “public property” that can be groped or commented on…like I’m not even a human being….

Some good news

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The poster that I blogged about here is apparently okay, as s/he is posting again.  Perhaps didn’t see the post asking if s/he was okay.  Some good news for a change…and yes, we have lost people to suicide in this group…I posted about one a while ago, but it has been lost. <sigh>   She was mercury toxic, without a job,  money,  or health insurance, and living out of a car.   She took her life in her despair.

Meanwhile….corporations get welfare while they ponder cutting Medicare, Social Security, and food stamps….

More on Rogoff and Reinhart

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Firedoglake has this up on the *cough* research of Rogoff and Reinhart.

From one of the commenters, letsgetitdone at 16:

I think, finally, that the RR study is an example of the corruption of social science in modern times. I believe that one can show that the study was not just guilty of calculation errors and errors of omission, but that these must be seen as part of a pattern of systematic bias that permeated their whole process of inquiry beginning with their selection of the problem, moving through every decision point in implementing the study, and ending with their evaluation of their evidence and their writing of the result. They made no attempt to do a scientific study maximizing fair comparison of alternative theories having policy relevance, but instead prepared what was essentially a legal brief supporting austerity policies and the Pete Peterson line. The social costs of what they did are strewn all over the globe. See this recent post at DailyKos.

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I agree that if R and R purposely left out data (and the concensus is that they did), then what they did was fraudulent and a deliberate attempt to persuade public opinion towards austerity.
This should be *sounding the bells*  as to how very, very important our public education system is….from  kindergarten through four year colleges….the public needs to be able to understand this stuff in the most basic terms.  And the financial gurus purposely make it difficult to understand for the Jane/John Does of the U.S., to give themselves the upper hand.  Like I said about the university I attended, they made math more difficult than it had to be –the only conclusion one can come to is that they were doing it on purpose to “weed out” people.  This, in turn, means fewer graduates with Math degrees to compete in the job market, enabling them to be paid more $$.  It also means that financial gurus can bullshit people and no one will be the wiser.  When the Wall St. meltdown happened, there were econ people who could not figure the mess out…how are Jane/John Doe supposed to?
With the Liberal Arts degree, I have a basic understanding of statistics from a political science class. We were taught to look for the reasons behind conclusions of research.  Who funded it?  What other work have these researchers done (looking at other work for biases)?  Who benefits from it (will a corporation use the data as an asset or use the data to knock down a competitor)?  If it was a poll, we were taught that anything more than 2% plus or minus of the margin of error was a flawed study–the questions asked were biased in some way or not thorough enough.
That is why one should always question absolutes in science or absolute truth that anyone espouses.  If more people were less intimidated and asked “why” and to say “I don’t understand” to someone trying to buffalo them, the financial gurus and others like them would not be able to get away with the stuff that they do.  Thank God for people like Herndon and the others who seek the truth and are not afraid to speak out.
I followed the link that letsgetitdone had in the comment to dailykos, which in turn had the link to the cepr.net website.
This quote from the cepr website says it all:
This is a big deal because politicians around the world have used this finding from R&R to justify austerity measures that have slowed growth and raised unemployment. In the United States many politicians have pointed to R&R’s work as justification for deficit reduction even though the economy is far below full employment by any reasonable measure. In Europe, R&R’s work and its derivatives have been used to justify austerity policies that have pushed the unemployment rate over 10 percent for the euro zone as a whole and above 20 percent in Greece and Spain. In other words, this is a mistake that has had enormous consequences.
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Minor quibble—as everyone is leaning to, this was not a “mistake”…but a deliberate attempt to misconstrue data to suit their political ideology, and that of Pete Peterson.

Hunger in America

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…speaking of hunger:

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm

..an issue for the  poor whom are also Celiacs, would be made ill by bread and other commonly donated food.  Things get more difficult for the poor and sick when the efforts of those trying to help aren’t helping–and would instead make them sick—I’m sure many would seem ungrateful to those trying to help when they would refuse food.