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Month: July 2009

What is Raw Milk?


Tuesday July 7, 2009

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I am a dairy enthusiast. I will admit it. I adore milk. Full fatted vitamin D enriched milk is what I usually buy. No skim, no 2% I want the real deal. I want rich creamy yumminess.

Recently I have been trying to find new places to buy fresh produce and in my search for local produce found something that everyone seemed to be talking about. Raw milk, not organic, but raw as in straight from the cow.

What I did not realize is the politics of milk. Procuring a cup of unpasterized unhomogenized milk is not as easy as one might expect. I found a shop about 10 miles from me to try out a half gallon of raw milk. In other states you may have to order your milk and have it delivered as state law prohibits its sale in retail stores.

The FDA is very clear on its position on raw milk calling it, “inherently dangerous.” Proponents of raw milk claim all kinds of health benefits. Check it out for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Who would have thought that milk could be so very controversial. Check out this video on NPR for more information on raw milk.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

10 of the best reasons you just had a 3 day weekend. These 10 amendments were added to the Constitution on December 15, 1791. A new world is at hand…

1) Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Petition
2) Right to keep and bear arms
3) Conditions for quarters of soldiers
4) Right of search and seizure regulated
5) Provisons concerning prosecution
6) Right to a speedy trial, witnesses, etc.
7) Right to a trial by jury
8) Excessive bail, cruel punishment
9) Rule of construction of Constitution
10) Rights of the States under Constitution

I guess the Preamble to the Constitution was not specific enough, and the Preamble goes like this…

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Just Sayin…

Reading Time: 2 minutes

What happened on July 5th? Everyone knows what happened on the 4th of July, sometimes it is easy to forget what historical events took place on the 5th.

5th July 1921 : Players from The Chicago White Sox Baseball team are accused of throwing the World Series.

5th July 1946 : The Bikini swimsuit ( a daring 2 piece swimming costume for ladies ) was introduced by French designer Louis Reard at a popular swimming pool in Paris.

5th July 1950 : The first American reported killed in the Korean War (Private Kenneth Shadrick ) a member of a bazooka squad, was cut down by enemy machine-gun fire.

5th July 1971 : The Voting Age in the United States is lowered to 18 yrs old.

5th July 2006 : North Korea test Medium Range Missiles capable of hitting the Japanese and US mainland.

I love learning about historical events, I think that it is a good practice to take some time to learn about things that happened on a particular date. I hope you find some of these facts as interesting as I have.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Today is July 4th, our federal holiday celebrating 233 years of Independence. While I wish all of you a Happy Fourth of July, I would like to highlight Lady Liberty. Happy 4th of July Lady Liberty!

This July 4th is special for Lady Liberty. For the first time since shortly after September 11, 2001, a limited number of visitors will be allowed to climb the spiral staircase to the crown. Have you ever been to the Statue of Liberty? I will tell you that of all of the majestic places I have visited in our United States, Liberty Island is by far the most awe inspiring, more so than Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite, the Golden Gate Bridge, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, St. Louis Arch, Hoover Dam, Denali, Everglades, Washington, D.C., Arlington National Cemetery. But enough about my travel guide.

I invite any of you who have the opportunity to visit New York City, even those of you who live in New York City, to make time to visit Liberty Island and Ellis Island. If you are unfamiliar with Ellis Island, it served as a federal immigration station for steamship passengers from 1892 until 1954. But I digress…as you approach Lady Liberty on the ferry you might recall great movie scenes from Titanic, Funny Girl, to name a few…it is amazing.

Beginning this July 4th, 30 people per hour will be allowed to climb up and down the 346-354 (but whose counting) steps to the crown, that is about 250 guests per day. I have never been to the Crown, but my sons have. I believe it was the spring of 1990.

Today I cannot begin to impart all that you can see and learn when you visit both Liberty and Ellis Islands. But you can stay in touch with The Lady, as she does Twitter…and Flickr. She is a social lady!

P.S. If you really want to have some fun, then visit the Ellis Island Foundation and search for your relatives who may have immigrated to the United States through this station.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Manny Ramirez, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ slugger and left fielder will be back in the lineup tonight against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park. This is news because Manny has been forced to miss the last 50 games due to a violation of the MLB’s drug policy. Ramirez was caught taking a banned substance, specifically a women’s drug known to be taken by athletes ending a period of steroid use. He has not yet been caught using steroids though, to be clear.

The Dodger’s slugger bats third in the potent lineup which leads all of baseball with the best record in the bigs. Manny comes into tonights game with 533 career homeruns, 17th on the all-time list.

There are many positions on the steroid issue, and I for one am ashamed the game has been tainted by it. Having said that, since the era is tainted with performance enhancing drugs I don’t think you can hold players out of the hall of fame because it must be the case that currently there are players in the hall that have not and will not be caught using, even though they did. So in my view, holding out players you did catch shouldn’t make a difference. I don’t think ‘well you got caught’ should be the tag line to hall eligibility.

I will be watching Manny tonight, but then again I watch most all Dodger games. I hate to say that it has become so widespread a problem, steroids that is, that I don’t really care anymore. I’d just like to see the sport cleaned up and the issue to go away.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Downloading the original pictures uploaded to Picasa all at once is easy if you’re using Firefox. DownloadThemAll is a plug-in for Firefox which can be used for many things but I have found it most useful for me when needing access to original pictures from Picasa.

1) Download the plug-in DownloadThemAll and install it to your Firefox browser.
2) Go to the Picasa album where you want to download the pictures from
3) Picasa provides the RSS feed for the pictures so all you have to do is click on RSS on the right hand side of that page to bring up the feed.
4) Still with me? Now just right click on the screen and click on DownloadThemAll.
4-a) Save the files in a directory you specify and select Images under the filters.
5) PRESS START

One thing I am still trying to figure out with Picasa is how to display a random image from the album using the RSS feed… Any suggestions?