Avoid heart attacks

Did you know that there are three easy ways to predict and even prevent heart attacks? The following is from Methods of Healing:

Low levels of vitamin D can lead to inflammation of your arteries as well as an increase of blood pressure, two common factors that contribute to heart attack risk. Over 75% of adults do not have enough vitamin D stores in the body. With a simple blood test, checking your vitamin D levels is easy. The test can let you know whether you have a vitamin D deficiency. Optimal levels of vitamin D for adults are around 40 ng/mL (nanograms per milliliter). However, some doctors believe that 50 to 60 ng/mL is best.

If your blood test reveals a vitamin D deficiency, there are several ways to boost your levels. Soaking up some sunshine without applying sunblock can help. Consuming vitamin D fortified food and drink like salmon and orange juice is important. Taking vitamin D supplements is also an option.

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If you feel tired and drowsy during the middle of the day, you are compromising your heart health and increasing your risk of a heart attack. Sleep deprivation discharges stress hormones which end up causing inflammation and constriction of the arteries. Each extra hour you can add to your evening snooze reduces your risk of calcification of heart arteries by one-third. If you have insomnia, try changing your bedtime routine to include light reading, no television or even a hot bath. When your significant other complains that you snore, you might want to determine the cause as the solution will help you reduce your heart attack risk.

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A blood pressure cuff is wrapped around your arm while the index finger of the same arm is rigged with a temperature detecting device. As the doctor inflates the cuff, blood flow to the fingers is reduced and temperature will drop. After several minutes, the blood pressure cuff is released. The faster your index finger returns to a normal temperature, the healthier you are. This test can even be conducted while you are on medications. It is a great gauge to determine how well the medications you take to lower heart attack risk works too.

If your family has a genetic history of heart disease or you are simply concerned about heart health, you may wish to discuss these test with your doctor.

Art on pavements

Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Its peculiarity? Beever gives his drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle. It's amazing !!!

Game of the year

At the end of last year’s La Liga season, Real Madrid spent unbelievable amounts of Euros to sign Ronaldo, Kaka, and Benzema, among others.  The club already had world class player such as Figo, Raul, and Casillas.  Why add more star power?  Because last year, rival Barcelona won La Liga, Copa del Rey, and the UEFA Cup.  Three titles!  Unacceptable to us Real fans.  Which lead us to Sunday when the most expensive club in the world will take on the defending Champions League and Club World Cup champions as Real Madrid heads to Camp Nou to take on Barcelona.

Also this weekend, London’s two football powerhouses face off at Emirates Stadium where Arsenal hosts Chelsea, the top-ranked club in the world. The fact that these matches are back-to-back means that we will have four of the best hours of football this season on Sunday.

Current World Club Ranking Top 10

• 1. Chelsea
• 2. Real Madrid
• 3. Inter Milan
• 4. Benfica
• 5. Barcelona
• 6. Manchester United
• 7. Bayer Leverkusen
• 8. Arsenal
• 9. Werder Bremen
• 10. Juventus

Premature, maybe

For some of us, presidential elections are the equivalent of the political World Cup.  The next event is in 2012.  The Republicans are likely to run a candidate so far right of center as to win only in Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina.  Moreover, the party is not likely to garner any votes from the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group…Hispanics.  Or so I thought.  Maybe that is why last week, Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader, suggested Luis Fortuño as a possible candidate. 

Fortuño is the governor of Puerto Rico and a true-blue, Reagan- and National Review-loving member of the GOP.  While Fortuño can't vote in a US presidential election, he can, in fact, run as a Republican in one.

Why is Norquist so fond of this unfamiliar face? For starters, Fortuño has proven to be a rather bold fiscal leader since assuming office last January. After discovering that Puerto Rico's deficit was four times greater than what he'd previously been told—at more than $3.2 billion, it's the highest per capita in the nation—he outlined a plan in March to cut spending by $2 billion per year and slash government payrolls by tens of thousands of workers. (In Puerto Rico, the government employs 30 percent of the workforce; another 30 percent rely on government contracts.) The idea was to chart a new economic future for the cash-strapped commonwealth by focusing on private-sector job creation—and so far, the plan is on track. Despite labor protests, Fortuño has trimmed approximately 20,000 government positions and, with the help of $6.5 billion in combined federal and local stimulus funds, has managed to create 17,000 new jobs in return (which, according to a recent analysis by The Christian Science Monitor, puts Puerto Rico third in the country behind Washington and Montana in terms of jobs created by the federal stimulus bill). Puerto Rico's unemployment rate—nearly 17 percent—is still staggeringly high. But Fortuño is effectively using Obama's bigger-government policies to move the commonwealth toward less bureaucracy, less spending, and more privatization. This is catnip for fiscal conservatives like Norquist.

Republicans need Hispanic votes in 2012.  The well educated, well-spoken, and youthful governor of Puerto Rico may help the party in its outreach efforts.  in the years ahead, expect to hear more about Governor Fortuño.  

Treasure hunter

Now be honest with me.  How many of you guys, after seeing an ad for a metal detector at the back of a magazine, have said to yourself:  “When I retire I’ll buy one of these gizmos and spend my days treasure hunting”.  Turns out that is not such a bad idea.

The largest haul of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered, unearthed by a metal-detector enthusiast in a farmer's field, has been valued at 3.28 million pounds ($5.5 million) by a committee of experts.

The Staffordshire Hoard, found by Terry Herbert in central England in July, comprises over 1,500 mainly gold and silver items thought to date back to the 7th century.

Under Treasure Trove laws, the money will be split between the finder, Herbert, and the landowner, Fred Johnson.

The find has been compared in importance to the spectacular Sutton Hoo burial site, a huge ship grave in eastern England excavated in 1939.

The cache comprises sword-hilts, fragments of gold helmets, some elaborately decorated, and other pieces of weaponry inlaid with precious stones.

The two museums which hope to acquire the hoard, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum, along with the finder and the landowner, have all approved the valuation.

A dozen or so items from the hoard have gone on show at the British Museum in London. Hundreds of people queued for hours when a small selection of items were displayed in Birmingham earlier this year.

That metal detector was an investment.  For sure!

This is your God

Various days this weekend worldwide (and tomorrow in the US) is Buy Nothing Day. This video uses clips from John Carpenter's "They Live" to terrific effect.

Coffee break

Whether at home, Starbucks, or Dunkin’ Donuts, we tend to not pay attention to coffee's importing history. But just like food, knowing the bean-to-cup journey enhances our purchasing power and may make the brew go down that much easier. Click here for a a short primer of coffee's history in New York.

If this goes on

I must admit I have enjoyed science fiction: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, mostly.  I find that at times, real life comes close to emulating the stories of the science fiction writers.  This week for example, a possible presidential candidate for 2012 suggested her middle east policy outlook is dictated by her religious beliefs.  Well, we know her domestic policy beliefs.  My thoughts upon hearing this were:  ‘if this goes on…”

"If This Goes On—" is a science fiction short novel by Robert A. Heinlein, written in 1940, revised, and expanded for inclusion in the 1953 collection Revolt in 2100. The novel is one of Heinlein’s future history written in the 40’s but describing a projected future of the human race from the middle of the 20th century through the early 23rd century.

This novel recounts a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of “Prophets.” The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later). The novel deals with a rebellion, organized by a secret society called The Cabal, that leads to the eventual re-establishment of democracy. The Cabal uses terminology associated with Freemasonry, and there are hints that the Masons are actually one of the groups involved in the loosely organized revolt against the government. Heinlein himself was not a Mason, but had considered joining the Masons as a young man.

Scudder was a back-woods televangelist who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, essentially an empty suit with a great deal of personal charisma and his own personal religion that bore only a mocking resemblance to Christianity.  Scudder leveraged his talent for public speaking to win the presidential election in 2012. As soon as he was in office, Scudder established a totalitarian socialist regime under the guise of a most peculiar theocracy. There was no election in 2016.

It's amazing how way back in 1940, Heinlein accurately predicted the nature of the coming 2012 election.  Let’s hope that Heinlein wasn’t prophetic (as he insisted all his life) but just writing an entertaining. "If This Goes On..." is about how men threw off their shackles and overthrew the totalitarian state. However, there is a message: The fight takes planning and constant work, sometimes for decades. It takes dedication and diligence, but if nobody does it, the bad guys win.

My grateful feeling

On Thursday, like you I will give thanks.  This is an old term meaning as a verb to express gratitude, appreciation, or acknowledgment.  As a noun, thanks refers to a grateful feeling or acknowledgment of a benefit, favor, or the like, expressed by words or otherwise.  On Thursday I will have a grateful feeling for:

• Life the greatest gift of all.
• My wife whose love, caring, and tenderness sustains and enriches my life.
• My kids, who I love even more than when they were small and cute, who tell me I am a great Dad,  and whose accomplishments make me proud.
• My grandson, who brings joy to my soul, but who like all children belongs not to me or his parents, but to the future.
• My body, which continues to run, with just a sputter now and then.
• Family members who love me and support me without wavering.
• The food on my table, clothes on my back, a roof over my head, and simple luxuries of which many Americans just dream.
• My home, which is a haven in an otherwise dark and hostile world.
• The doctors and nurses who tend to my ailments.
• Seeing the gifts and not the shortcomings.
• Seeing the blessings and not the burdens.
• For coffee the world’s number one beverage.
• For soccer the world’s number one sport.
• For heart the driving force of all passion.
• For politics without which we would just kill ourselves.

More soccer surprises

The Major League Soccer (MLS) season for 2009 is over.  Real Salt Lake edged out the LA Galaxy in the seventh frame of penalty kicks in Sunday night’s MLS Cup final.  Yes they played to a tie 0-0 after two hours.  For critics, this absence of scoring is why soccer will never catch on in the US.  Matt at With the Leather Ball blog says.

If you don’t like soccer, you’re not going to magically give a crap about it just because America’s league played its championship in front of 46,000 fans at Qwest Field, and you’ll probably make dismissive wanking motions if I tell you it was a genuinely exciting game. But you should at least be aware that your grumbling about low scores isn’t going to be relevant as Americans’ passion for the sport grows — because what I saw in Seattle over the weekend shocked me.

After America’s repeated and well-documented failures at pro soccer, the MLS — which just finished its 14th season — is here to stay. And I’m not making that declaration after a careful study of MLS’s ledger, but after witnessing something I’d never seen before: genuine die-hard passion for teams with almost no history whatsoever. Real Salt Lake is only four years old, yet thousands of scarf-wearing, flag-waving fans — many of them non-Mormon, defying stereotype — came to Seattle in November to cheer for this jackass.

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This world’s a-changin’, people. If global warming and and giant earthquakes and diabetes don’t kill us all in some grand Roland Emmerich production over the next two decades, we might just live to see a day where MLS surpasses the NBA and NHL in fan support. And maybe even MLB after all the old people die.

In other soccer developments, this month saw a young woman behave like a thug on the pitch and France move on to World Cup 2010 because an official failed to call a handball.  It also saw the resurgent Tottenham Spurs of the English Premier league defeat Wigans by a score of 9-1.

Wigan Athletic's playing staff have offered to reimburse the entrance fees for all supporters who travelled to White Hart Lane to witness their 9-1 destruction at the hands of Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.

Spurs equaled the record for goals scored in a Premier League game when producing a ruthless second-half performance, with Jermain Defoe scoring five goals to equal the record jointly held by Andy Cole and Alan Shearer.

After suffering such acute embarrassment, Wigan's players will now personally refund the admission price paid by every Latics supporter who attended the game in North London.

"We feel that as a group of players we badly let down our supporters yesterday (Sunday), and this is a gesture we have to make and pay them back for their tremendous loyalty," Melchiot told the club's official website.

"There's not a lot else to say, just that as a group of professionals we were embarrassed by the way we performed. We feel it was below our standard and this is something we feel we owe to the fans.

Can you imagine the Detroit Lions reimbursing their fans for substandard play and loses?