What's wrong with what we eat.

The following is a talk that I found on TED: Ideas worth spreading. I believe it is fine to share this with you as TED supplies embedding code.

Mark Bittman, food writer for the New York Times, gives his views on what's wrong with the way we eat: too much meat, too few plants and too much fast food, too little home cooking about sums it up.

The talk is a little long and has periods where it drags a bit. But, it is a talk given by an adult. I often think that newspapers and the media in general should spend more time being adults. It's fun. It's rewarding.

And it may sell newspapers; then, it may not. But better to go down being an adult than succeed being a Glenn Beck.

Are you knowledgeable or just another know-it-all?

Paul Berton, the editor-in-chief, of The London Free Press recently wrote a piece titled, "Are you knowledgeable or just another know-it-all?"

Yesterday Berton ran a piece on the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest structure. Paul wrote:  "The Burj Dubai, in the city-state that may be the very definition of excess in a modern world, is finally complete. Stretching more than 800 metres into the desert sky, the office tower dwarfs even the world's second tallest structure, Toronto's CN Tower."

Interesting. Just two things that I'd like to add. One: the building was renamed the Burj Khalifa  in honor of the president of the United Arab Emirates. You do recall that it was the UAE that bailed Dubai out of last year’s debt crisis?

So sorry Paul, but you got the name wrong. (I'm sure you're in good company but a fast Google lap didn't turn up any other news organizations making the same error. But, it is a big world and I am sure you are not alone.)

And oh, the world's second tallest structure is not the CN Tower in Toronto; It's the KVLY-TV tower located three miles west of Blanchard, North Dakota. If you want to play the tallest game, you have to call the Toronto tower the second tallest "freestanding" structure. The freestanding is very important as without that word the CN tower would never have been able to make its claim; The Warsaw Radio Mast was hundreds of feet taller but it was a guyed affair and not freestanding.

Oh well, look on the bright side. You can do another column in the are-you-knowledgeable-or-just-another-know-it-all vein and you can take a more generous and forgiving approach this time. Your view will now be tempered with the wisdom of someone who has been-there-done-that.

Maybe, just maybe, you should have kept those editors you let go at Christmas.

Safe Sleeping for Baby

SIDS: "Back to Sleep" Campaign

Cut SIDS Numbers by 50 percent!

All parents of a young child fear Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Crib death is a big reason for the sale of thousands of high tech monitors with loud alarms to alert parents a sleeping baby is in distress.

Now, there is a suitably named campaign aimed at cutting the risk to sleeping infants and babies: The Back to Sleep campaign. Amazingly, simply placing babies on their backs to sleep reduces the risk from SIDS dramatically.

Thirteen years ago the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) first made its recommendation that all healthy infants be placed on their backs to sleep, thus reducing the risk of SIDS. Since then, the percentage of infants placed on their backs to sleep has increased dramatically, and the rates of SIDS have declined by more than 50 percent. 

I know this sounds incredible. My wife says that it is not what she was told when she was a young mother. Yet, shortly after the AAP recommendation, the following groups all joined with the AAP: the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the SIDS Alliance (now First Candle/ SIDS Alliance), the Association of SIDS and Infant Mortality Programs, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of HRSA. All these groups have launched their own Back To Sleep campaigns to inform parents and infant caregivers about the importance of infants and older babies sleeping on their backs.

Here are the rules.

• Lay your newborn down on her/his back, not on the baby's stomach. Research indicates this position lowers the risk of SIDS.

• Avoid covering your baby with a blanket. Instead, put her/him in a sleeper suit to keep baby warm without blankets. The blankets themselves are a problem and babies should not be allowed to get too warm.

• Provide proper bedding: a firm infant mattress free of pillows, stuffed animals or comforters that could block the baby's airway. Crib bumper should be securely fastened or not used at all. (The public health nurse advised my daughter to completely remove the bumpers from her baby's crib.)

• Check with your pediatrician about alternate sleeping positions if your baby was a peemie who experienced respiratory distress or if your baby has a gastroesophageal reflux. Also check with your pediatrician before introducing your baby to a newborn sleep pillow used to prevent your baby from rolling from her/his side or back onto her/his stomach.allowed to get too warm.

And don't fear the pacifier.

Several studies have found that infants who used a pacifier when going to sleep had a lower risk of SIDS compared with infants who did not. There may be as much as a 60% reduction in SIDS risk with pacifier use at bedtime.

Sleeping on back safer than side

If a baby insists on sleeping on her/his side, position the baby's arms to make turning onto the stomach less likely. Strive to train your baby to sleep on her/his back.


Good luck,
Cheers,
Rockinon

My granddaughter Fiona, above, is fighting the Back to Sleep advice but she is kept off her stomach when sleeping and luckily she hates the prone position at all times.

My take on swine flu gets more support

I mentioned the other day that my take on swine flu has been getting a steady flow of hits. Well, today the Huffington Post carried a piece that adds support to my original post.

See: Flu Season: Factory Farming Could Cause A Catastrophic Pandemic

"So far, only thousands of people have died from swine flu. Unless we radically change the way chickens and pigs are raised for food, though, it may only be a matter of time before a catastrophic pandemic arises."

Then read my post and learn where many people believe the present swine flu originated.

Yours,
Rockinon

Still working on the real post....

I spent some time working on my post on food but it will not be ready until sometime tomorrow. So, please smile at this; Hey, you won't smile at the food post.

Forgive me. I know; I know. It's just a baby picture.

And yet I love the way this little girl is so obviously interested in the puzzle on which her grandmother is working. The little girl went to the doctor for her check-up earlier in the day and the doctor said, "This kid is bright." I'd say he was a bright doctor, very observant.

Note: If you have a SLR digital camera, or any camera that allows the setting of the f/stop, use a large one. Something like f/2 or f/2.8 would be good with a 28mm lens. This will help to throw the background out of focus. I am using a simple, old point and shoot and so do not have this control. I must take what the camera gives me and that is far too much depth of field.

Before shooting this picture I turned off the incandescent ceiling light to prevent having a yellow cast staining the image. I also wiped the little girl's mouth as she is quite into bubble blowing and it does not add to her carefully managed image.

Cheers,
Ken (Rockinon)

Scroll

Hi!

I'm working on an interesting question; A question that should be of interest to all of us. Where does our food, in this instance particularly our meat, come from? An investigative feature in the New York Times peaked my interest and a recent visit to the local Metro grocery store put my google-fingers in motion.

What I am finding is interesting.

Come back in a few days and maybe I'll have posted some questions. If you are looking for something interesting on food production, and you haven't read my take on pig farming and swine flu, check out my post.

Cheers,
Rockinon

p.s. My take on pig farms has been hit hundreds of times and continues to get a small, but constant, number of hits. These hits come from all over the world.

The Mean Decade: 2008 - When the financial world crumbled

Sun Media reporter Thane Burnett has written a series on the past decade in which he found very little good to report. When it came to 2008, the article carried the headline, "The Mean Decade: 2008 - When the financial world crumbled."

Many of us, who have been saving for retirement and rode out the truly frightening 2008 correction of historic proportions, are kicking up our heels with glee. In the end, it was a good decade.

2008 was bad when you think about investments, but it was not anywhere near as bad as the media would have one believe. Everyone did not buy at the peak and dump their stock when all bottomed out. The story is far more complicated than that. Let  me give you an example.

If you had put $10,000 in a simple fund, say the TD Monthly Income on Jan. 1, 2000, you would have had $18,024.49 at the end of 2008. When growth like that is being achieved, saying the financial world crumbled as Burnett claimed, is the all-too-common shallow media response to a complex story.

If you had left the money in the TD MIF until the decade ended, you would have had $23,552.99 for an increase of 135.5% during the "mean decade." The financial story is not over but as the decade ended, the story was hitting some very positive notes.

I, by the way, owned a lot of TD MIF until early this year when I dumped about 75 percent of my holdings for CIBC Monthly Income. The CIBC offering has not performed as well as the TD one but it did not drag my portfolio down either, just put a gentle brake on its growth. A little less volatility offered the benefit of a better night's sleep. I'm not upset about my decision.

Like many investors, I found 2009 an amazing year, giving portfolio growth in the 30 percent range. If the 2008 crash chopped  a fast 20% to 25% off your balanced, diversified portfolio, 2009 may not have pulled you free of the financial hole dug a year earlier, but you are sitting in a very comfortable position.

A $100 thousand dollar RRSP portfolio could easily have been cut to a $75 thousand dollar portfolio in 2008. But that $75 thousand could easily have regain most of its losses in 2009. (100 X .75 X 1.3 = 97.5)

If you had had the nerve to buy into the market in the spring, there are lots of ETFs and inexpensive mutual funds that would have paid handsomely.

It is a rich, complex world. If someone tries lumping ten years together, a whole decade, one has to ask a few questions. The first question is, "Why is the Sun Media reporter not asking more questions?"

And they (Sun Media and other media folk) wonder why newspaper sales are slumping.
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I also looked at this silliness on my other blog, Rockin' On: Money.