Robben Ford: Voted one of the greatest guitar players ever!

Yowza! 12 foods that pack on pounds

 Summertime, Summer Time, Sum-Sum-Summertime. 

Let's all head to the beach!

But watch what you eat.

Twelve Foods that PACK on POUNDS!!!
12. Butter (Food just tastes better with the reaL Thing)
Dairy foods like butter and cheese, exception: yogurt. People who ate a lot of it were less likely to put on weight,
People who ate a lot of butter gained about 0.30 pound every four years.

11. Fruit Juice (Tastes great, but it's 100% sugar)
Drinking juice daily added 0.31 pound of extra body weight every four years

10. Fried foods (Like French Fried Potatoes?)
Eating fried foods at home added  0.36 pound every four years. Eating lots of fried food out at restaurants added 0.28 pound every four years.

9. Refined grains (Like Rice?, Love Rice!!)
Daily servings of refined grains added 0.39 pound every four years.

8. Sweets and Desserts (Like, Duh!)
Eating sweets daily added 0.41 pound every four years.

7. Potatoes (French fries, with Catsup)
A daily fix of potatoes added 0.57 pound of weight every four years, with or without butter and sour cream?

6. Trans fats (Oh!)
Eating trans fats added on 0.65 pound of weight every four years

5. Processed meat (Bacon, Bacon, and more Bacon!)
Cold cuts and hot dogs, eating lots of processed meats tacked on 0.93 pound every four years.

4. Unprocessed RED meat (Processed vs Unprocessed? Can't throw out the meat)
Eating lots of red meat contributed to a weight gain of 0.95 pound every four years.

3. Sugar-sweetened soda (OK, I don't drink my calories anyway, unless it's got alcohol in it.)
Daily consumption of sugary drinks added exactly one pound every four years, according to the study.

2. Potato chips (Potatoes again)
Daily chip eating brought a 1.69 pound weight gain every four years.

1. French fries (More Potatoes, Cajun Fries!!!)
People who ate lots of fries gained more than three pounds of body weight every four years. Over the study's 20-year-period, that meant people who ate more fries put on more than 16 extra pounds from this food alone.

OK, lets do the math and look in a mirror.
That's 10.56 POUNDS every 4 years, or 2.64 POUNDS, each year. Times your age, and very little exercise, lately!
It all comes back to haunt you.

Have a great summer.

I am with you still

For anyone who has lost a loved one, as we just lost Antionette. Hold them always in your heart when a new day dawns.

I AM WITH YOU STILL 

I give you this one thought to keep -
I am not gone, I do not sleep.

I rustle your hair when the warm winds blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of summer rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.

When you awaken in the mourning hush,
I am in the graceful uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the star that shines at night.

I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am with you in a quiet room.
I am the song the birds sing,
I am in each and every lovely thing.

Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still - in each new dawn.
I'm still here --- I have not gone.
I will always be in your heart.

An adaptation of the poem by Mary Frye

Lamont Cranston Blues Band

The Dark Side of the Moon [HQ] Full Album - Pink Floyd

The Death of the BOOK

From a link in Arts and Letters Daily. http://www.aldaily.com/ to; http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/4659371294/the-death-of-the-book

"Pity the book.  It’s dead again. Suddenly they seem clunky, heavy, and almost fleshy in their gross materiality. Their pages grow brittle. Their ink fades. Their spines collapse. They are so pitiful; they might as well be human."

Funny, or not, books are kind of the mirror to the soul. It used to be that when you walked into someone's home or office you would find a bookshelf full of books, or at least a book lying on a table. You could tell a lot about the books represented there. A glimpse into the psyche of one who lives or works there. The books were lined up along a shelf and could show what interested the occupant. You could tell how diverse their interests were and if they were "high-brow" or "low-brow", had a since of humor, or leaned toward the weird and off-beat. You could learn a lot about a person by the books they read.

Not so, anymore. More and more books are being downloaded to computers, readers like Kindle, and to the iPad or smart phones. Now a part of the soul of a person is being hidden from view. People don't need the bookshelf anymore; they don't even print the cover of the book to display their recent interest.

I have books that can be handed down from generation to generation. Books that may spark the interest in some far fringe of the curious who peruse the titles. They can even pick up the book and leaf through it. You can't do that with the downloaded books. They are most likely going to be erased from the memory of what ever they are stored on and lost not only to the owner, but their followers.

I can see the use of downloading a book or two, but at the current cost of the downloaded book compared to holding one in your hand, the cost is way too high. I can usually buy a book for less then $20. The cost to down load most top selling books, or even newly published books is about $9, when it should be less then $2. After all, they didn't have to go through the same publishing process of printing thousands of copies. All they had to do was store the data - once - and send the data to - anyone. Maybe when the cost becomes more realistic, I'll download more books, but for now I like the comfort of holding it in my hands and kind of letting people look into my soul when they see it on the table or in the bookshelf.

Osama Bin Laden is DEAD~DEAD~DEAD!!! HOOAH

The puzzle of poverty.

...it is a world where those without enough to eat may save up to buy a TV instead, where more money doesn't necessarily translate into more food, and where making rice cheaper can sometimes even lead people to buy less rice.
More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World
Oucha Mbarbk lives in Morocco without enough work, money, or food, but with a television, DVD player, and cellphone.
We asked Oucha Mbarbk what he would do if he had more money. He said he would buy more food. Then we asked him what he would do if he had even more money. He said he would buy better-tasting food. We were starting to feel very bad for him and his family, when we noticed the TV and other high-tech gadgets. Why had he bought all these things if he felt the family did not have enough to eat? He laughed, and said, "Oh, but television is more important than food!"

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!

Have you lost your Marbles?

The Marble Game
In marriages (and other relationships), there is often a "Marble Game" going on.

At the beginning, each person is perceived to have roughly the same number of marbles. However, as the relationship progresses, and one spouse clearly emerges as being weaker in decision-making, natural intelligence, and/or "walking around smarts," then "Marbles" are lost by that person, and the other spouse gains marbles.

In one case about a dad blaming a mom for a child being waitlisted for school admission, the "husband" lost a whole bunch of marbles when he foolishly invested their money. The "wife" gained a whole bunch of marbles with her decisions to allow the child to be waitlisted instead of pulling him off the list and then finding a way to pay for school. This created a huge imbalance of marbles because of the long-lasting implications of that one mistake. This mistake wasn't something that just caused a minor ripple in the family, such as denting a car or bouncing a check. This "husband" has to live with the fact that not only did he make a very serious mistake, but his "wife's" decisions were not only better, but they saved the family from absolute disaster.

Once you have one spouse with lots of marbles (in this case, the wife) and you have another spouse who perceives himself as having fewer marbles, then you have a situation where the "husband" is going to - lash out - and criticize any imaginable, thing in a way to try to take away some of the other's marble stash.
So, even when other rational people would say that the "husband" has no reason to criticize the wife about the waitlist situation, the "husband" just sees it as an opportunity to say, - "see, everything YOU do doesn't work out perfectly either".

Also...since such a person perceives himself as having fewer marbles, it may take him a LONG time (maybe never) to admit that he was wrong to criticize (because that means losing MORE marbles). This theory may help to explain why a whole lot of situations began to make sense (situations with unreasonable relatives, nutty teachers, stubborn children, etc).

Men may have a harder time dealing with an imbalance of marbles when they perceive themselves as having less because of their culture's perception that men are supposed to be the (gag) more logical, smarter sex. It's also not about who makes more money. When men feel that they don't have more marbles, they can feel emasculated....so he will just be petty...and some will more seriously lash out.

This theory seems to help a lot of people understand weird conflicts that are going on in their lives.... with spouses, kids, co-workers, relatives, siblings, in-laws, parents, etc. (oh yes, with parents!) Parents of adult children do not want to admit that their adult children may have more marbles than they do. It can also occur when one spouse has an addiction (drinking, gambling, etc) or infidelity issues that has had negative affects on the marriage/family, so that a spouse viciously nitpicks the other spouse so as to say..."you're not perfect either...you make mistakes, too" (even though those mistakes/flaws are far more minor and have insignificant negative affects on the family).

How does the partner with the most marbles stop being the constant brunt of attack from the marble-short partner? I think the day you stop keeping a record of the marbles, the problem will end, but it is in our human nature to keep score. We have long term memory, all but sometimes very selective. This is a psychological problem to begin with. If you try to have the upper hand in marriage - you'll loose the relationship.

Make better decisions and you will get more marbles, or attain a balance of marble stacks. I understand keeping score with casual acquaintances and business associates, just because you may need to limit interactions or find a new way to communicate, if it becomes too imbalanced? Keeping score with "family" never leads to anything good. You need to give some marbles back, to keep the stacks balanced, or at least give the appearance of being balanced.

You have to make the other person feel that his/her opinions are valued, listened to, and not immediately dismissed. This can be hard to do if the person is seriously lacking in common-sense, but be very cautious not to be the type who can't "suffer fools gladly." Each person in a valued relationship has to have some worth-while redeeming value.

Hasn't each of us been frustrated when we tell a parent/child to do something and they dismiss it, yet when someone ELSE tells them to do the SAME thing, the parent/child acts like that's the smartest idea they've ever heard!!!???  

That's the Marble Game Theory going on. The parent/child doesn't have that "marble-conflict" going on with that "other person." So, the parent/child feels that he/she isn't giving up any marbles (showing weakness) by following that "other person's advice. (and, we all just shake our heads and wonder.)

FYI:
I get alerts about "game theory" every day, this was one of the better ones from;
mom2collegekids
Senior Member
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1112882-touched-sore-point-marble-game-theory.html

Wonder Why Your New Year's Resolution Is Already Behind You?

U.S. was always a bit pound-foolish
By Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press
Posted: 01/24/2011 07:43:02 PM PST

WASHINGTON - Before there was Dr. Atkins, there was William Banting. He invented the low-carb diet of 1863. Even then Americans were trying out advice that urged fish, mutton or "any meat except pork" for breakfast, lunch and dinner - hold the potatoes, please.

It turns out our obsession with weight and how to lose it dates back at least 150 years. And while now we say "overweight" instead of "corpulent" - and now that obesity has become epidemic - a look back at dieting history shows what hasn't changed is the quest for an easy fix.

"We grossly, grossly underestimate" the difficulty of changing behaviors that fuel obesity, says Clemson University sociologist Ellen Granberg, who examined archives at the Library of Congress. She believes it's important to show "we're not dealing with some brand-new, scary phenomenon we've never dealt with before."

Indeed, the aging documents are eerily familiar.

Consider Englishman William Banting's account of losing almost 50 pounds in a year. He did it by shunning "bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer and potatoes, which had been the main (and I thought innocent) elements of my existence" in favor of loads of meat.

His pamphlet, "Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public," quickly crossed the Atlantic and become so popular here that "banting" became slang for dieting, Granberg says.

While obesity has rapidly surged in the last few decades, we first changed from a nation where being
plump was desirable into a nation of on-again, off-again dieters around the end of the 19th century, Granberg says.

Before then, people figured a little extra weight might help withstand infectious diseases that vaccines and antibiotics later would tame. It also was a sign of prosperity.

But just as doctors today bemoan a high-tech, immobile society, the emergence of trolleys, cars and other machinery in the late 19th century scaled back the sheer number of calories people once burned, Granberg explains. Increasing prosperity meant easier access to food.

"An excess of flesh is to be looked upon as one of the most objectionable forms of disease," the Philadelphia Cookbook declared in 1900. Low-cal cookbooks hadn't arrived yet; the calorie wasn't quite in vogue.

By 1903, La Parle obesity soap that "never fails to reduce flesh" was selling at a pricey $1 a bar. The Louisenbad Reduction Salt pledged to "wash away your fat." Soon came an exercise machine, the Graybar Stimulator to jiggle the pounds. Bile Beans promoted a laxative approach.

As the government prepares to update U.S. dietary guidelines next week, February 2011, the Library of Congress culled its archives and, with Weight Watchers International, gathered experts recently to discuss this country's history of weight loss.

Granberg recounted how real nutrition science was born.

The government's first advice to balance proteins, carbohydrates and fat came in 1894. A few years later, life insurance companies reported that being overweight raised the risk of death. In 1916, the Department of Agriculture came up with the five food groups. Around World War II, charts showing ideal weight- for-height emerged, surprisingly close to what today is considered a healthy body mass index.

Diet foods quickly followed, as did weight loss support groups like Overeaters Anonymous and Weight Watchers - putting today's diet infrastructure in place by 1970, Granberg says.

Yet fast-forward and two- thirds of Americans today are either overweight or obese, and childhood obesity has tripled in the past three decades. Weight-loss surgery is skyrocketing. Diet pills have been pulled from the market for deadly side effects, with only a few possible new ones in the pipeline.

More and more, specialists question how our society and culture fuel overeating.

"Should it be socially desirable to walk down the street with a 30-ounce Big Gulp?" asks Patrick O'Neill, president- elect of The Obesity Society and weight-management director at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Negotiating a weight-loss menu for a family with different food preferences is a minefield that affects how people feel about themselves and their relationships with loved ones, adds Clemson's Granberg, who began studying the sociology of obesity after losing 120 pounds herself.

"If what you need is a nutritionally sound, healthful weight- loss plan, you can get (hundreds) of them," she says. "That, we have figured out in the last 100 years. It's how to do all this other stuff that I think is the real challenge."

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http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-modern-way-to-get-a-better-body-2186891.html

THIS IS REAL BOOT CAMP!!!
It's not a boot camp if you get to go home at the end of the day. Real boot camp is 24/7 for a couple of months!

Boot camps
Outdoor military training sessions have been growing in prominence during the past few years, but are set to soar in 2011. At the end of last year, the American College of Sports Medicine, the largest sports medicine and exercise science organisation in the world, announced its projected top 20 fitness trends worldwide for the coming year. It predicted the growing popularity of boot camp workouts, modelled after military-style training that includes cardiovascular, strength, endurance, and flexibility exercises.

"I expect more and more people will be going to boot camps," Miller says. "We're not quite sure why men haven't latched on to it so much. I suppose women like someone authoritative telling them what to do and they like to be instructed; they like to be shouted at. It's a quick workout, you go there, you're put through your paces and then you're out of there. It's outdoors as well and you're working with the natural elements. You can have a laugh with everyone else there: you all tend to support each other because you're all in it together."

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Interesting that Weight Watchers is now counting carbohydrates higher in points and looking more like Atkins.

It's still ~ BURN more calories than you take in ~ exercise ~ exercise ~ exercise ~~~ or go work on a farm.