As I describe in my natural diet book, The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook (and the namesake of this blog) a variety of slow cancers and illnesses such as atherosclerosis, urinary tract infections, and more, are due to cell inflammation.
Chemical treatments can reduce these inflammations, in fact here's the article on how anti inflammatory and anti oxidant chemicals appear to be beneficial for arterial plaques, reducing them and thus the associated angina and risk of heart failure.
This is also the case for many so-called slow cancers, cell inflammation first makes the cells dysplasic (i.e. adopting characteristics of cancerous cells) and finally that triggers cancerous changes in the cells. It's a very layman's description but it suffices - inflammatory disease of the cells leads to irritation, which leads to changes, usually not good changes.
In The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook I describe how natural anti inflammatory and anti oxidant compounds found in various foods can be used to halt, reduce, and even reverse the progress of cancer, plaque, and other illnesses. A lot of it has to do with interactions between these active compounds, i.e. if you're not aware of them, you may well be taking two foods which cancel out one another's beneficial effects. Similarly, there are some combinations which increase the beneficial effects of those active compounds by up to tenfold.
The book also shows you how to avoid the things which cause cell inflammation in the first place. The recipes are redacted to include the right foods in the right combinations, and better yet, the book shows you how to apply the principles to all other meals you might normally prepare, so that you really end up with very low impact on your lifestyle.
The whole diet was chosen for this minimal impact, which is certainly less than the impact of chemotherapy or surgical intervention. Due to all these reasons, the diet is one which can be followed at any time, and which will provide benefits to you at any stage of health. It's a set of good general guidelines to follow in general, and a specific diet that you can use immediately to reduce symptoms, reduce the illness, and possibly save yourself a stressful trip to surgery. And it's always good, as in the article linked to in the second paragraph, to read more and more confirmations of what I've been urging in the diet book all along.
Of course, I don't recommend that you just self-diagnose and just go for the diet for reasons of illness - I urge every one of you to consult your doctor and go for initial advice and regular checks on the progress of any illness. We have the technology to both diet AND take medical advice, and it's always best to play safe...
30 March, 2007
18 March, 2007
Carbon Myths and Carbon Truths
You read about "carbon offsetting" and perhaps you wonder if it's all rubbish. Well, there are some figures around and some facts around and some myths around - and a LOT of predators who will bend you over for carbon credit input dollars. Here's my take so far:
To clear your carbon debt for the year, some articles claim that you'd have to replace 111 lightbulbs with CFL bulbs. They say you'd have to switch to smaller hybrid cars for X years to clear the debt for one year, and so forth.
In reality, every light bulb you replace with a CFL or CCFL bulb is immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you put the petrol-guzzler in the back of the garage and the scooter and the Prius near the front, you are immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you set your air conditioning to two degrees warmer in summer and your heating to two degrees cooler in winter, the effect is immediate, you use less fuel and create less pollution. If you put water pressure reducing discs in your shower heads and take shorter showers, that is something you can do right now which takes effect right now.
"But," I hear you say, "that only reduces the carbon debt, I want to cancel it!"
Well, you can offset all you like by adding trees or other activities like that but the sad truth is that just by living you add to the debt, it's unavoidable. And you can plant a tree to offset your carbon debt now but it won't produce any benefit for a few years, and even then it is a bit of a gamble if it will balance your carbon debt or will be way behind the curve.
Also, the carbon debt you acquire is out there and then you add an input, but the unavoidable thing is that for some period oif time, your pollution load *is* added to the atmosphere for a certain period, it's like injecting yourself with snake venom and then a shot of antivenene later - the venom will have been there for some period and killed certain nerve and muscle cells and no amount of antivenene will repair that damage.
So cast a jaundiced eye on the companies that say they will repay your carbon debt because A) they need money to survive and B) they don't generally care about global warming beyond how many dollars they can extract from you and C) they will want more than just "a little" money for their version of "saving the world..."
I'm not saying that inputs are bad, I'm saying that you will need to look carefully at what methods you should use, whom you should trust - and in the meanwhile, reduce your debt now so that there will be less to balance later.
To clear your carbon debt for the year, some articles claim that you'd have to replace 111 lightbulbs with CFL bulbs. They say you'd have to switch to smaller hybrid cars for X years to clear the debt for one year, and so forth.
In reality, every light bulb you replace with a CFL or CCFL bulb is immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you put the petrol-guzzler in the back of the garage and the scooter and the Prius near the front, you are immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you set your air conditioning to two degrees warmer in summer and your heating to two degrees cooler in winter, the effect is immediate, you use less fuel and create less pollution. If you put water pressure reducing discs in your shower heads and take shorter showers, that is something you can do right now which takes effect right now.
"But," I hear you say, "that only reduces the carbon debt, I want to cancel it!"
Well, you can offset all you like by adding trees or other activities like that but the sad truth is that just by living you add to the debt, it's unavoidable. And you can plant a tree to offset your carbon debt now but it won't produce any benefit for a few years, and even then it is a bit of a gamble if it will balance your carbon debt or will be way behind the curve.
Also, the carbon debt you acquire is out there and then you add an input, but the unavoidable thing is that for some period oif time, your pollution load *is* added to the atmosphere for a certain period, it's like injecting yourself with snake venom and then a shot of antivenene later - the venom will have been there for some period and killed certain nerve and muscle cells and no amount of antivenene will repair that damage.
So cast a jaundiced eye on the companies that say they will repay your carbon debt because A) they need money to survive and B) they don't generally care about global warming beyond how many dollars they can extract from you and C) they will want more than just "a little" money for their version of "saving the world..."
I'm not saying that inputs are bad, I'm saying that you will need to look carefully at what methods you should use, whom you should trust - and in the meanwhile, reduce your debt now so that there will be less to balance later.
06 March, 2007
Meat To Please You
I've neglected diet tips for a while now, but last Saturday I spotted another one of those things that make you go hmmmm and it was in relation to the meat purchases. Here are a couple of observations:
First, I buy very little meat from a chainstore supermarket. They have all the tricks down pat, how much they can inject the meat with saline, how much they can irritate it to stay red, how much they can preserve it.
That's important to you for several reasons. First - "inject with saline?" Surely no self-respecting butcher would do that? Right. No self-respecting butcher would. But these days most butchers buy their sides of beef or even bulk cuts from a meat processor/abattoir. They have no such compunctions and they want your money so they will do that.
It's done for a number of reasons, first being that thanks to Heart Smart ticks, the market prefers leaner beef. So abattoirs would prefer to buy leaner cattle rather than buy fat cattle by the kilo and then throw part of the profits away in the fat. So the meat is less marbled and bacause fat equals flavour, the meat tastes more bland. (Yes it's true bbq steaks tasted so much better when you were a kidf because the meat WAS more flavoursome.) So saline raises the flavour of the meat, and ensures YOU go back to your butcher more often, and in turn the butcher goes bak to that processor more often.
Secondly saline is a preservative, and can allow the processor to store the meat longer before needing to sell it. That increases their bottom line because they can stockpile cheaper beef against a time when beef prices are up, and make a few cents a kilo on the deal. Which adds up to hundreds of dollars in some orders.
Lastly, as a fringe benefit to the meat processor, saline increases the weight if the meat, thus making another few hundred dollars per order when the processor sells saline solution at the price of beef or chicken...
And your supermarket is generally either a meat processor or a meat processor outlet, NOT a butcher. Heck, your butcher may not even be a butcher but just handle bulk cuts and turn then into mince and saleable sized cuts. And unless they can tell you where their meat comes from precisely, assume that there's a meat processor involved.
One way to tell with beef is to put some in the freezer in a plastic bag, freeze it, then thaw it again. Beef with a lot of saline will produce a puddle of very thin and pink watery blood, whereas unsalined beef will produce slightly watery red blood.
The other thing to watch for is lovely blood red beef. It has been treated with a chemical irritant which causes the redness. It's done with minced beef particularly, but watch out for it on the steaks and other cuts, too.
Why should you care? Hello! Irritant! This stuff irriates the meat into presenting inflamed red blood cells, and then you eat that and you're made of... ummm what are we made of again? Oh yes MEAT! and then we wonder why inflammation-based diseases are on the increase. It can make sensitive people ill, cause hyperactivity in some, and can cause a range of symptoms.
How can you tell? Some butchers spray the irritant into the mince mixture, but most just spray the top of the tray, and over the tops of the trays of steaks and so forth. You can tell because meat normally goes grey after sitting for a while. So if your butcher lifts a steak out of the tray and there is a grey steak behind it, the top steak has been sprayed. If the scooped out part of the mince is grey while the surface is pink, it's been sprayed. (It was this that I saw at my local butcher and I'll be asking them a few questions next time I see the owner there, some very hard questions . . . )
Ask for the grey steak or mince. It will taste the same but be better for you.
Last thought for you. Would you eat the stuff in your rubbish bin? Well, why eat the animals that have been fed on stuff like that all their lives. Trust me the Japanese know why they will pay $1000 for a kilo of grain and red wine fed beef. The flavour comes through.
As far as I know there is only one mark that guarantees that the cow or chicken or whatever has not been fed ground-up other animal carcasses, chemical waste from other manufacturing plant, and a ton of antibiotics and steroids. That is the 100% Organic label. If you value your health, that's what to go for.
First, I buy very little meat from a chainstore supermarket. They have all the tricks down pat, how much they can inject the meat with saline, how much they can irritate it to stay red, how much they can preserve it.
That's important to you for several reasons. First - "inject with saline?" Surely no self-respecting butcher would do that? Right. No self-respecting butcher would. But these days most butchers buy their sides of beef or even bulk cuts from a meat processor/abattoir. They have no such compunctions and they want your money so they will do that.
It's done for a number of reasons, first being that thanks to Heart Smart ticks, the market prefers leaner beef. So abattoirs would prefer to buy leaner cattle rather than buy fat cattle by the kilo and then throw part of the profits away in the fat. So the meat is less marbled and bacause fat equals flavour, the meat tastes more bland. (Yes it's true bbq steaks tasted so much better when you were a kidf because the meat WAS more flavoursome.) So saline raises the flavour of the meat, and ensures YOU go back to your butcher more often, and in turn the butcher goes bak to that processor more often.
Secondly saline is a preservative, and can allow the processor to store the meat longer before needing to sell it. That increases their bottom line because they can stockpile cheaper beef against a time when beef prices are up, and make a few cents a kilo on the deal. Which adds up to hundreds of dollars in some orders.
Lastly, as a fringe benefit to the meat processor, saline increases the weight if the meat, thus making another few hundred dollars per order when the processor sells saline solution at the price of beef or chicken...
And your supermarket is generally either a meat processor or a meat processor outlet, NOT a butcher. Heck, your butcher may not even be a butcher but just handle bulk cuts and turn then into mince and saleable sized cuts. And unless they can tell you where their meat comes from precisely, assume that there's a meat processor involved.
One way to tell with beef is to put some in the freezer in a plastic bag, freeze it, then thaw it again. Beef with a lot of saline will produce a puddle of very thin and pink watery blood, whereas unsalined beef will produce slightly watery red blood.
The other thing to watch for is lovely blood red beef. It has been treated with a chemical irritant which causes the redness. It's done with minced beef particularly, but watch out for it on the steaks and other cuts, too.
Why should you care? Hello! Irritant! This stuff irriates the meat into presenting inflamed red blood cells, and then you eat that and you're made of... ummm what are we made of again? Oh yes MEAT! and then we wonder why inflammation-based diseases are on the increase. It can make sensitive people ill, cause hyperactivity in some, and can cause a range of symptoms.
How can you tell? Some butchers spray the irritant into the mince mixture, but most just spray the top of the tray, and over the tops of the trays of steaks and so forth. You can tell because meat normally goes grey after sitting for a while. So if your butcher lifts a steak out of the tray and there is a grey steak behind it, the top steak has been sprayed. If the scooped out part of the mince is grey while the surface is pink, it's been sprayed. (It was this that I saw at my local butcher and I'll be asking them a few questions next time I see the owner there, some very hard questions . . . )
Ask for the grey steak or mince. It will taste the same but be better for you.
Last thought for you. Would you eat the stuff in your rubbish bin? Well, why eat the animals that have been fed on stuff like that all their lives. Trust me the Japanese know why they will pay $1000 for a kilo of grain and red wine fed beef. The flavour comes through.
As far as I know there is only one mark that guarantees that the cow or chicken or whatever has not been fed ground-up other animal carcasses, chemical waste from other manufacturing plant, and a ton of antibiotics and steroids. That is the 100% Organic label. If you value your health, that's what to go for.
01 March, 2007
27 February, 2007
Are you thinking of buying a new car?
Read this first...
In this article, Sam Abuelsamid lays out the reasons we won't see electric cars anytime soon, and he gives it from the established carmakers' point of view. Too hard to retool, too many years from concept to factory floor, I have heard these whinges before somewhere. Now where could that be?
Oh yes, lightbulb manufacturers. For about the last ten years they have been selling small quantities of CFL light globes and large volumes of inefficient incandescent light globes, because while they tacitly admit in their advertising how much more energy efficient and ecologiccally sound the CFLs are, they have more invested in the old production equipment and haven't squeezed the last dollar of value from the incandescent light globe yet, and to Hell with the enviromment hey?
We've heard the same things from carmakers for decades. A load of crap of course, they have so much invested in fossil fuel vehicles that they just plain won't stop before global weather change has tipped past the no return point - and then they'll be right there saying their loyal customers gave them no mandate to change technology and it's all our fault for buying FF vehicles.
The world won't go with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a bunch of greedy manufacturers all busily blaming everyone else except themselves for it. On the Last Day, there will be some advertising guy with a respirator putting up a billboard that says "XXXX autos, we made clean cars before the others ever did! So buy XXXX..."
Can I give you my readers a quick clue? The quickest way to force car manufacturers to re-evaluate their positions is to not buy the bloody things. Make your current car last for another year or two, and then buy an electric or hybrid so that your FF car can sit in the garage for maybe another two years doing very few miles, and believe me after just one year of silent treatment they would get the bloody idea! By the time you'd be ready for a new major manufacturer's car, you'd actually have some choice.
Are you in the market for a new car then? Well just imagine if you and 19,000,000 other Australians all don't buy a new vehicle for a year. All it would cost you is one more year in your old car. Go on, do it for our climate!
In this article, Sam Abuelsamid lays out the reasons we won't see electric cars anytime soon, and he gives it from the established carmakers' point of view. Too hard to retool, too many years from concept to factory floor, I have heard these whinges before somewhere. Now where could that be?
Oh yes, lightbulb manufacturers. For about the last ten years they have been selling small quantities of CFL light globes and large volumes of inefficient incandescent light globes, because while they tacitly admit in their advertising how much more energy efficient and ecologiccally sound the CFLs are, they have more invested in the old production equipment and haven't squeezed the last dollar of value from the incandescent light globe yet, and to Hell with the enviromment hey?
We've heard the same things from carmakers for decades. A load of crap of course, they have so much invested in fossil fuel vehicles that they just plain won't stop before global weather change has tipped past the no return point - and then they'll be right there saying their loyal customers gave them no mandate to change technology and it's all our fault for buying FF vehicles.
The world won't go with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a bunch of greedy manufacturers all busily blaming everyone else except themselves for it. On the Last Day, there will be some advertising guy with a respirator putting up a billboard that says "XXXX autos, we made clean cars before the others ever did! So buy XXXX..."
Can I give you my readers a quick clue? The quickest way to force car manufacturers to re-evaluate their positions is to not buy the bloody things. Make your current car last for another year or two, and then buy an electric or hybrid so that your FF car can sit in the garage for maybe another two years doing very few miles, and believe me after just one year of silent treatment they would get the bloody idea! By the time you'd be ready for a new major manufacturer's car, you'd actually have some choice.
Are you in the market for a new car then? Well just imagine if you and 19,000,000 other Australians all don't buy a new vehicle for a year. All it would cost you is one more year in your old car. Go on, do it for our climate!
19 February, 2007
Another WA Source for Alternative Energy Products
I've added The Solar Shop to the address list, they seem to have a comprehensive range of alternative power products. Please support my efforts and let them know that you found them through my zencookbook site, then they may be tempted to sponsor me in my research! hehehe nothing like networking...
I've looked at the site, and the O'Connor shop apparently will be opening as a shopfront very soon now, so stay tuned. Goodies on the site include solar regulators and electric scooters, wind turbines, and - grid-connect aware hardware. That is the payoff, that you can sell your surplus back to the electric utility and actually recoup a portion of the installation cost.
The Solar Shop look like they've installed a few decent sized projects and you might do a lot worse here in Perth for your alternative power installation. And once I develop one of my ideas in particular a bit more and start producing it, you'll find that with my device installed your installation will develop even more power than quoted, and I'm betting that The Solar Shop will be one of the cutting edge who will start providing this as a standard part of their future installations, allowing you to make a smaller installation do more. This really is a killer idea, and it can be added to most installations at any stage, including installations that have been up for years.
I'm also still looking for anyone wishing to contribute to the development effort, if you know anyone who might be able to assist in any way please direct them to this page.
I've looked at the site, and the O'Connor shop apparently will be opening as a shopfront very soon now, so stay tuned. Goodies on the site include solar regulators and electric scooters, wind turbines, and - grid-connect aware hardware. That is the payoff, that you can sell your surplus back to the electric utility and actually recoup a portion of the installation cost.
The Solar Shop look like they've installed a few decent sized projects and you might do a lot worse here in Perth for your alternative power installation. And once I develop one of my ideas in particular a bit more and start producing it, you'll find that with my device installed your installation will develop even more power than quoted, and I'm betting that The Solar Shop will be one of the cutting edge who will start providing this as a standard part of their future installations, allowing you to make a smaller installation do more. This really is a killer idea, and it can be added to most installations at any stage, including installations that have been up for years.
I'm also still looking for anyone wishing to contribute to the development effort, if you know anyone who might be able to assist in any way please direct them to this page.
15 February, 2007
REVA Revs And - Creeps Away?
The Solar Shop (who are opening a shop here in Perth in March if their website holds the latest news) apparently brought a REVA electric car into Adelaide. I LOVE the idea of electric cars - after all, what better partnering than our long sunshine (and solar electricity!) filled days, a solar battery charger, and an electric vehicle?
So it's disappointing to see the stupid political pissing contests that this one little car is provoking. Come on you stupid bastards we are all going to die together if the climate destabilises, and no-one will give a pink and purple spotted shit whether you stuck to the right side or the wrong side!
I promise to vote for whoever legislates and has brough into Law that these vehicles are glorified motor scooters and thus subject to no more rigorous testing than my VMoto scooter was. Also, the 200W limit on electric scooters is totally laughable - are you afraid people are going to perform terrifying feats of annihilation on anything more powerful?
Please - if you want the law changed leave a comment, I'll bring them all to the attention of my local MP because this kind of bullshit is what's holding back the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and we can't afford for this to get much worse.
So it's disappointing to see the stupid political pissing contests that this one little car is provoking. Come on you stupid bastards we are all going to die together if the climate destabilises, and no-one will give a pink and purple spotted shit whether you stuck to the right side or the wrong side!
I promise to vote for whoever legislates and has brough into Law that these vehicles are glorified motor scooters and thus subject to no more rigorous testing than my VMoto scooter was. Also, the 200W limit on electric scooters is totally laughable - are you afraid people are going to perform terrifying feats of annihilation on anything more powerful?
Please - if you want the law changed leave a comment, I'll bring them all to the attention of my local MP because this kind of bullshit is what's holding back the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and we can't afford for this to get much worse.
Addresses Section Being Added
Newly added, for your convenience, a blog which serves as a database of addresses of businesses and companies, most of them in Perth but there will be more as other cities chime in. For now, go take a look at the new section, and what a typical address card looks like.
If you know of any business, person, or company which should be registered in the list, or if you're such a body yourself, please leave a comment for me and I'll investigate and make it so...
If you know of any business, person, or company which should be registered in the list, or if you're such a body yourself, please leave a comment for me and I'll investigate and make it so...
Theory and Practice
I think every physics or chem teacher (hi Mr De Boni, Hi Mr Vujovich) has told the old saw about the only difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there should be no difference between theory and practice . . .
Well, I've found another saw that's destined to become as well used - when hunting for capitalists and sponsors for projects in renewable clean energy, one comes across a lot of renewable. clean, energy sites. You immediately notice that they are either writing about it a lot, or doing something about it. I've visited dozens of sites that write about it...
I will be collecting a list in the sidebar soon, of companies offering solar and wind and alternative energy sources and equipment, and I'll be putting them into two categories, "THEY SAY" and "THEY DO". . . With maybe a third category "DON'T" . . .
Upshot is, one person so far has gotten back to me. Maybe it's early days yet but I will give it a week or two before I start making my little lists . . . Don't get me wrong I won't list anyone that doesn't supply either equipment or expertise in alternative energy, just that you'll know which ones are eager to help...
Well, I've found another saw that's destined to become as well used - when hunting for capitalists and sponsors for projects in renewable clean energy, one comes across a lot of renewable. clean, energy sites. You immediately notice that they are either writing about it a lot, or doing something about it. I've visited dozens of sites that write about it...
I will be collecting a list in the sidebar soon, of companies offering solar and wind and alternative energy sources and equipment, and I'll be putting them into two categories, "THEY SAY" and "THEY DO". . . With maybe a third category "DON'T" . . .
Upshot is, one person so far has gotten back to me. Maybe it's early days yet but I will give it a week or two before I start making my little lists . . . Don't get me wrong I won't list anyone that doesn't supply either equipment or expertise in alternative energy, just that you'll know which ones are eager to help...
11 February, 2007
F. U Know The Rest
Sunday Times, page 19+:
Making Water Out Of Thin Air.
I had this on the drawing board too - I have several designs there for a veryu similar gadget. Now that is what I hate, having an idea, no resources to develop it, and then watching someone else put the idea out there.
In this case I had a similar idea but using solar cells, the turbine concept is brilliant but still only functions on "windmill time" i.e. during the heat of a windstill day nothing happens. I will now make efforts to contact the people concerned and give them my ideas to add to their design. Who knows, we may have an answer to the water shortage between us.
I REALLY need someone to sponsor me!
Making Water Out Of Thin Air.
I had this on the drawing board too - I have several designs there for a veryu similar gadget. Now that is what I hate, having an idea, no resources to develop it, and then watching someone else put the idea out there.
In this case I had a similar idea but using solar cells, the turbine concept is brilliant but still only functions on "windmill time" i.e. during the heat of a windstill day nothing happens. I will now make efforts to contact the people concerned and give them my ideas to add to their design. Who knows, we may have an answer to the water shortage between us.
I REALLY need someone to sponsor me!
09 February, 2007
Need Business Angel!
I have some sound ideas for generating and using alternative sources of energy which are hopefully cleaner and more renewable. These are all ideas which a lone gun working in the back shed can't hope to attain, but I am out there and trying. Every time I have a bit of spare cash it goes into materials and equipment to try and approximate what I'm trying to do. I am looking for a company or government department that will help me develop these ideas and commercialising them.
Most of these ideas consist of tweaking existing technology or using it in less conventional ways to achieve better efficiencies, get more out of less. It's still too much for one person working in bursts and starts between contracts to cope with. I'm contacting as many Government departments and businesses as I can find, but so far that's only been a handful. As I collect businesses I will add their details to the sidebar here, so that you can find them more easily. I hope they recognise my assistance with some form of assistance with my R&D, if you know any business which may be relevant (alternative energy, survivalist, small farm, biodiesel, etc) and which would like me to place their details here, or if you know any business or government department that can help, please either let me know in comments or put them in touch with me via this blog or any other means.
I am really keen to see some of these ideas hit the shelves as they WILL make a difference to the current global warming / weather disturbance / greenhouse gas situation.
So let me start by saying that this problem is political as well as technological, it's our governments' faults as much as it is our own. It's the fault of greedy multinational companies every bit as much as it's our fault for desiring the things those multinationals place within our reach.
Make no mistake about it, every time you buy a fast food meal in a disposable container set, YOU are the one directly responsible for the pollution and greenhouse gas that it cost to make those containers and process that food. When you bought your car, YOU caused the pollution of extracting the iron ore, shipping it to the smelter's, smelting, turning into steel, forming into car parts. YOU produced your share of the demand which caused the plastics, airbags, electrics, and electronics to be developed and manufactured in quantity.
Up until now it's been enough to buy your car, drive it through the drive-through, and shrug your shoulders and say "well, they caused the pollution, I am just buying the result." They can't be blamed any more, because they wouldn't bother if YOU didn't create the demand.
That's why I will not leave it to "them" to fix this mess, and that's why I will make every effort to improve on their technology, clean up their wastage, and make US responsible for the recovery of the world.
Now why is it the Government's fault then? I can safely say that much of what a manufacturer gets away with, is because the Government hasn't kept its eye on the ball. The key phrase is "gets away with" - because we know that it's morally wrong to pollute, it's ecologically unforgivable and by the laws of most lands it's illegal - but enforcement is the key, and most Governments have a history of turning a blind eye if there is tariff or excise involved.
For the rest of this article I'll use the example of the humble light bulb. A filament bulb turns perhaps 6% of the energy it consumes into light you can use. That means that if you put in a 100W globe, which consumes one unit of electricity every ten hours it's turned on, you are basking in about 6W of light. The other 94W of power is going out as heat, and then you are going to use airconditioning to suck that heat outside your house, but it will take about an extra 20W of power to achieve that. So you are sitting reading in 6W of light but have cost 120W in energy to do it...
Enter the Compact Fluorescent Lamp or CFL. It is 30% to 50% efficient, meaning that for you to sit in 6W of light you only need an 18W CFL at the worst, for the same amount of light. 12W of that will be wasted as heat, and your A/C will use maybe 3W more power to shift that outside. Your light has just cost you 21W of power instead of 120W.
Your Govenrment gets a tariff on the electricity consumed in your region. It much prefers you to use 120W than to use 21W. The Government furthermore gets excise on the coal or fuel oil used to generate that power. So they have less incentive than you or I to do anything about light bulbs, despite the fact that lighting takes up about 20% of the power consumption on average.
Why Not Leave It To Them?
So it's not enough to "leave it to them" because them is we, they be us, and greed is apparently better than altruism. We are all going to be very uncomfortable together, irrespective of whether we were users, polluters, or environmental angels. Our Government here in Australia is just recognising that Global Warming is a "nationwide concern" and they are falling way short of the mark, it is a "global universal concern." The Amazonian tribespeople are going to get every bit as dead as the worst industrial ecology destroying greedy bastard.
We need to all do something. And in order for that to happen, the bar has to come down slightly. It's all well and good to say we're all responsible and do something fer chrissakes but if what we can do costs us our income for the next five years then that's just not do-able...
I believe that leaving the technology to recover from a global crisis like this in the hands of the very same people who have already proven their capacity to ignore all human, ecological, and moral concerns in pursuit of an abstract concept of money, is sheer stupidity. Sorry, but once I've been bent over and shafted a few times I won't just bend over at your gentle touch again...
My concern is to make existing alternative energy technology as efficient as possible, to allow us to do more with less, to allow us to recover from the blow which (much as I hate to hackney) capitalistic greed has caused to fall.
Back to the humble light bulb... It's now available in such an array of sizes and shapes and finishes and materials, each apparently designed to give you the "ultimate experience." How saddeningly true that's turning out to be... How bad can it be that they have to continuously "improve" their light bulb? Light is light after all, and the alternative we face if things run their present course is going back to candles and oil lamps so why are they milking this inefficient and ancient technology?
Well, for one thing, they would have to retool. That costs money. Mind you, the original light bulb making machine is probably still in operation and hasn't cost a cent in maintenance in the last 80 years, but that all improves the company's bottom line. Setting up new production lines, that is on the wrong side of the ledger.
Then too, the manufacturers who are making CFLs are also still making filament bulbs. By making CFLs they are admitting how ecologically and economically unsound their filament bulbs are, but they won't stop making them because... YOU still buy them...
Why Should We Have To Change?
There are a number of things each homeowner or landlord can do right now to bring the consumption of energy down. These are outlined in this document at another point. For now, rest assured that we can already do a lot better than we have been doing.
For example, how many of you still buy a cheap filament globe at the shop? Shame on you! You are supporting a bunch of companies who are too cheap-ass to retool their factories, because the equipment they have had for decades is still churning out a profit for them.
You are probably justifying it by saying that filament bulbs give out a "nice natural" light but I'll tell you what, the alternative at this stage is bloody candles so you'd better bloody well rethink that hadn't you?
Some people justify that by saying that CFLs are too expensive. All I can say is that in ten years you will use about six globes in your house regularly for around three hours a day apiece, buy around 30 replacement filament globes at an average cost of $2 each, i.e. $60. Your obsession with "natural" light will also have cost you at least 6570KW/hrs of power, a dollar cost of between $900 and $2000 approximately, depending what your utility company charges you.
That is all money thrown away, because for the same amount of light using CFL lamps you might have had to buy 8 replacement CFLs at a cost averaging $5 each, or $40 for the ten years. They would have consumed 1100KW/hrs, or between $160 and $390 in the same time. One household can immediately save about $100 a year, and - more importantly - 5.5KW/hrs of electricity, just by switching to CFL lighting.
Our lifestyle will need to change voluntarily, while we still have some control - or else it will change involuntarily, in directions we may not be so happy with...
Why Mess With The Technology?
Last point for this article - why, indeed, mess with the technology? Aside from the sheer stupidity of leaving it to light bulb companies to lead a change (a change which will result in them selling less product, of a kind that they stand to profit less on because the retooling and infrastructure costs have to be recovered from the sales, and selling no more of the staple of their incomes,) there is also the reason that the technology is not tweaked. It is not yet as good as it could be, it is not yet at the point where we can affordably install it and profit by doing so.
For instance, I've been using the example of the filament bulb versus the CFL on this page - now there's another twist to the story...
If we wanted to reduce our dependence on coal or other fossil fuel based power, we could (for example) put the load on our Government to install operate and maintain alternative energy plant. This would be at a cost we'd all bear anyway in increased rates, taxes, and tariffs, and with typical Government efficiency it would cost several times (and possibly several orders of magnitude) more than it is worth. Remember, the Government doesn't make any fuel excise on wind power generators or solar plant. It's in their interests to steer you to hydrogen power that you can be billed for per litre, than it is for them to reward you for putting solar power cells on your roof.
But that's precisely my point. If you want to do your bit, you can voluntarily do it - right now - by placing a small solar panel farm on your roof and you can even contribute to the grid by feeding your excess power back into it. You can earn money from your excess power, or you can be altruistic and let it flow back for free when you have an excess, thus reducing the load on existing coal and oil fired power stations. If one or two houses return 5KW/hrs a day back to the grid, that's a drop in the ocean to a grid which talks in megawatt/hrs. But if 10,000 houses each return 5KW/hrs, that's 50,000,000W/hrs, and additionally, it means those 10,000 houses have stopped feeding from the grid and have thus saved another 100,000,000W/hrs that they would otherwise have consumed...
So - if existing technology can put a solar farm on your roof for $15,000, then that repays itself in ten to fifteen years for you personally, at today's electricity prices. And as electricity prices now climb due to the higher cost of green power generation, that ROI period will shorten to seven to ten years, then five to seven years... Worth thinking about it now, isn't it?
And - if by tweaking the technology and making it more efficient, you could make a $10,000 solar farm do the same as the $15,000 solar farm, that would be even better, yes?
And THAT is why tweaking the technology is important - once you have the best number of kilowatts for your dollar, your solar installation will recoup it's costs quicker and you'll be in the black much sooner.
Two things I'd better mention here - one is that existing solar cell technology is poorly adaptable to current building practices - either building practices will have to change, or solar cells will. I prefer both, but just making solar cell technology more suitable to use in building will do as an immediate achievable goal.
And the other is that twist to the filament/CFL example which winds its way through this summary. After all, it wouldn't be fair to just leave you hanging on this would it?
Okay - so you've gone to all the trouble of putting in a solar cell installation and you have kilowatts of power. But it's all at 12 volts (like your car) or 24 volts. In order to use your 240V appliances and equipment, you have to have a thing called an inverter, which converts the 12V to 240V. So where's the problem?
Well, anytime you convert anything, there are losses. So it is with the inverter - if you hang a 1000W refrigerator off the inverter, it will draw 1400W from your solar installation, and that is a large loss that you have there. Even when just a small amount is drawn off the inverter, it will still have power needs of its own, so for a 100W load, the inverter will still draw 300W from the solar installation.
Now think about lighting. You power all your lights off 240V so you will run 108W worth of CFL lights off that hulking inverter which is designed to be able to cope with your refrigerator (which by the way is the largest electricity consumer in the average household, except for the A/C unit which is usually worse) and draw that overhead of power whether you are running one light or the whole houseful plus the refrigerator.
A far better thing to do is to replace your house's lights with low voltage lights and power them directly from the solar installation. No losses, no inefficiencies, less wasting of the solar instalklation you invested in. When (if!) you ever need to run from mains electricity again, a simple switchmode power supply would power your lighting quite easily if it was also CFL.
And there's the rub - CFLs are currently only made for mains voltages. Yep, even though they are inherently a low voltage light, they are made for 240V or 110V. And there's a little brother to the CFL - meet the CCFL or Cold Cathode Fluorescent Light. One company makes a 12V CCFL bulb styled like a miniature CFL. One.
So there is a market for making various voltages of CFL and CCFL based bulbs. Even better, would be to make the prohibitively expensive and hard to dispose of electronics and the tube part, as separate items. You could easily run all your house on CCFLs and instead of using 2000W/hrs, use only 300W/hrs. Did you know that if you changed all your house lights over to CCFLs you could plug them into a laptop power supply and use that to run ALL of them?
And that is why I'm asking for your help in developing these ideas and many more. We desperately need better ways to do things - and while I have got the ideas, I'm sitting here unable to develop them. If you know of a business angel who would take this on, please let me know because there are several very commercialisable ideas that I have
Most of these ideas consist of tweaking existing technology or using it in less conventional ways to achieve better efficiencies, get more out of less. It's still too much for one person working in bursts and starts between contracts to cope with. I'm contacting as many Government departments and businesses as I can find, but so far that's only been a handful. As I collect businesses I will add their details to the sidebar here, so that you can find them more easily. I hope they recognise my assistance with some form of assistance with my R&D, if you know any business which may be relevant (alternative energy, survivalist, small farm, biodiesel, etc) and which would like me to place their details here, or if you know any business or government department that can help, please either let me know in comments or put them in touch with me via this blog or any other means.
I am really keen to see some of these ideas hit the shelves as they WILL make a difference to the current global warming / weather disturbance / greenhouse gas situation.
So let me start by saying that this problem is political as well as technological, it's our governments' faults as much as it is our own. It's the fault of greedy multinational companies every bit as much as it's our fault for desiring the things those multinationals place within our reach.
Make no mistake about it, every time you buy a fast food meal in a disposable container set, YOU are the one directly responsible for the pollution and greenhouse gas that it cost to make those containers and process that food. When you bought your car, YOU caused the pollution of extracting the iron ore, shipping it to the smelter's, smelting, turning into steel, forming into car parts. YOU produced your share of the demand which caused the plastics, airbags, electrics, and electronics to be developed and manufactured in quantity.
Up until now it's been enough to buy your car, drive it through the drive-through, and shrug your shoulders and say "well, they caused the pollution, I am just buying the result." They can't be blamed any more, because they wouldn't bother if YOU didn't create the demand.
That's why I will not leave it to "them" to fix this mess, and that's why I will make every effort to improve on their technology, clean up their wastage, and make US responsible for the recovery of the world.
Now why is it the Government's fault then? I can safely say that much of what a manufacturer gets away with, is because the Government hasn't kept its eye on the ball. The key phrase is "gets away with" - because we know that it's morally wrong to pollute, it's ecologically unforgivable and by the laws of most lands it's illegal - but enforcement is the key, and most Governments have a history of turning a blind eye if there is tariff or excise involved.
For the rest of this article I'll use the example of the humble light bulb. A filament bulb turns perhaps 6% of the energy it consumes into light you can use. That means that if you put in a 100W globe, which consumes one unit of electricity every ten hours it's turned on, you are basking in about 6W of light. The other 94W of power is going out as heat, and then you are going to use airconditioning to suck that heat outside your house, but it will take about an extra 20W of power to achieve that. So you are sitting reading in 6W of light but have cost 120W in energy to do it...
Enter the Compact Fluorescent Lamp or CFL. It is 30% to 50% efficient, meaning that for you to sit in 6W of light you only need an 18W CFL at the worst, for the same amount of light. 12W of that will be wasted as heat, and your A/C will use maybe 3W more power to shift that outside. Your light has just cost you 21W of power instead of 120W.
Your Govenrment gets a tariff on the electricity consumed in your region. It much prefers you to use 120W than to use 21W. The Government furthermore gets excise on the coal or fuel oil used to generate that power. So they have less incentive than you or I to do anything about light bulbs, despite the fact that lighting takes up about 20% of the power consumption on average.
Why Not Leave It To Them?
So it's not enough to "leave it to them" because them is we, they be us, and greed is apparently better than altruism. We are all going to be very uncomfortable together, irrespective of whether we were users, polluters, or environmental angels. Our Government here in Australia is just recognising that Global Warming is a "nationwide concern" and they are falling way short of the mark, it is a "global universal concern." The Amazonian tribespeople are going to get every bit as dead as the worst industrial ecology destroying greedy bastard.
We need to all do something. And in order for that to happen, the bar has to come down slightly. It's all well and good to say we're all responsible and do something fer chrissakes but if what we can do costs us our income for the next five years then that's just not do-able...
I believe that leaving the technology to recover from a global crisis like this in the hands of the very same people who have already proven their capacity to ignore all human, ecological, and moral concerns in pursuit of an abstract concept of money, is sheer stupidity. Sorry, but once I've been bent over and shafted a few times I won't just bend over at your gentle touch again...
My concern is to make existing alternative energy technology as efficient as possible, to allow us to do more with less, to allow us to recover from the blow which (much as I hate to hackney) capitalistic greed has caused to fall.
Back to the humble light bulb... It's now available in such an array of sizes and shapes and finishes and materials, each apparently designed to give you the "ultimate experience." How saddeningly true that's turning out to be... How bad can it be that they have to continuously "improve" their light bulb? Light is light after all, and the alternative we face if things run their present course is going back to candles and oil lamps so why are they milking this inefficient and ancient technology?
Well, for one thing, they would have to retool. That costs money. Mind you, the original light bulb making machine is probably still in operation and hasn't cost a cent in maintenance in the last 80 years, but that all improves the company's bottom line. Setting up new production lines, that is on the wrong side of the ledger.
Then too, the manufacturers who are making CFLs are also still making filament bulbs. By making CFLs they are admitting how ecologically and economically unsound their filament bulbs are, but they won't stop making them because... YOU still buy them...
Why Should We Have To Change?
There are a number of things each homeowner or landlord can do right now to bring the consumption of energy down. These are outlined in this document at another point. For now, rest assured that we can already do a lot better than we have been doing.
For example, how many of you still buy a cheap filament globe at the shop? Shame on you! You are supporting a bunch of companies who are too cheap-ass to retool their factories, because the equipment they have had for decades is still churning out a profit for them.
You are probably justifying it by saying that filament bulbs give out a "nice natural" light but I'll tell you what, the alternative at this stage is bloody candles so you'd better bloody well rethink that hadn't you?
Some people justify that by saying that CFLs are too expensive. All I can say is that in ten years you will use about six globes in your house regularly for around three hours a day apiece, buy around 30 replacement filament globes at an average cost of $2 each, i.e. $60. Your obsession with "natural" light will also have cost you at least 6570KW/hrs of power, a dollar cost of between $900 and $2000 approximately, depending what your utility company charges you.
That is all money thrown away, because for the same amount of light using CFL lamps you might have had to buy 8 replacement CFLs at a cost averaging $5 each, or $40 for the ten years. They would have consumed 1100KW/hrs, or between $160 and $390 in the same time. One household can immediately save about $100 a year, and - more importantly - 5.5KW/hrs of electricity, just by switching to CFL lighting.
Our lifestyle will need to change voluntarily, while we still have some control - or else it will change involuntarily, in directions we may not be so happy with...
Why Mess With The Technology?
Last point for this article - why, indeed, mess with the technology? Aside from the sheer stupidity of leaving it to light bulb companies to lead a change (a change which will result in them selling less product, of a kind that they stand to profit less on because the retooling and infrastructure costs have to be recovered from the sales, and selling no more of the staple of their incomes,) there is also the reason that the technology is not tweaked. It is not yet as good as it could be, it is not yet at the point where we can affordably install it and profit by doing so.
For instance, I've been using the example of the filament bulb versus the CFL on this page - now there's another twist to the story...
If we wanted to reduce our dependence on coal or other fossil fuel based power, we could (for example) put the load on our Government to install operate and maintain alternative energy plant. This would be at a cost we'd all bear anyway in increased rates, taxes, and tariffs, and with typical Government efficiency it would cost several times (and possibly several orders of magnitude) more than it is worth. Remember, the Government doesn't make any fuel excise on wind power generators or solar plant. It's in their interests to steer you to hydrogen power that you can be billed for per litre, than it is for them to reward you for putting solar power cells on your roof.
But that's precisely my point. If you want to do your bit, you can voluntarily do it - right now - by placing a small solar panel farm on your roof and you can even contribute to the grid by feeding your excess power back into it. You can earn money from your excess power, or you can be altruistic and let it flow back for free when you have an excess, thus reducing the load on existing coal and oil fired power stations. If one or two houses return 5KW/hrs a day back to the grid, that's a drop in the ocean to a grid which talks in megawatt/hrs. But if 10,000 houses each return 5KW/hrs, that's 50,000,000W/hrs, and additionally, it means those 10,000 houses have stopped feeding from the grid and have thus saved another 100,000,000W/hrs that they would otherwise have consumed...
So - if existing technology can put a solar farm on your roof for $15,000, then that repays itself in ten to fifteen years for you personally, at today's electricity prices. And as electricity prices now climb due to the higher cost of green power generation, that ROI period will shorten to seven to ten years, then five to seven years... Worth thinking about it now, isn't it?
And - if by tweaking the technology and making it more efficient, you could make a $10,000 solar farm do the same as the $15,000 solar farm, that would be even better, yes?
And THAT is why tweaking the technology is important - once you have the best number of kilowatts for your dollar, your solar installation will recoup it's costs quicker and you'll be in the black much sooner.
Two things I'd better mention here - one is that existing solar cell technology is poorly adaptable to current building practices - either building practices will have to change, or solar cells will. I prefer both, but just making solar cell technology more suitable to use in building will do as an immediate achievable goal.
And the other is that twist to the filament/CFL example which winds its way through this summary. After all, it wouldn't be fair to just leave you hanging on this would it?
Okay - so you've gone to all the trouble of putting in a solar cell installation and you have kilowatts of power. But it's all at 12 volts (like your car) or 24 volts. In order to use your 240V appliances and equipment, you have to have a thing called an inverter, which converts the 12V to 240V. So where's the problem?
Well, anytime you convert anything, there are losses. So it is with the inverter - if you hang a 1000W refrigerator off the inverter, it will draw 1400W from your solar installation, and that is a large loss that you have there. Even when just a small amount is drawn off the inverter, it will still have power needs of its own, so for a 100W load, the inverter will still draw 300W from the solar installation.
Now think about lighting. You power all your lights off 240V so you will run 108W worth of CFL lights off that hulking inverter which is designed to be able to cope with your refrigerator (which by the way is the largest electricity consumer in the average household, except for the A/C unit which is usually worse) and draw that overhead of power whether you are running one light or the whole houseful plus the refrigerator.
A far better thing to do is to replace your house's lights with low voltage lights and power them directly from the solar installation. No losses, no inefficiencies, less wasting of the solar instalklation you invested in. When (if!) you ever need to run from mains electricity again, a simple switchmode power supply would power your lighting quite easily if it was also CFL.
And there's the rub - CFLs are currently only made for mains voltages. Yep, even though they are inherently a low voltage light, they are made for 240V or 110V. And there's a little brother to the CFL - meet the CCFL or Cold Cathode Fluorescent Light. One company makes a 12V CCFL bulb styled like a miniature CFL. One.
So there is a market for making various voltages of CFL and CCFL based bulbs. Even better, would be to make the prohibitively expensive and hard to dispose of electronics and the tube part, as separate items. You could easily run all your house on CCFLs and instead of using 2000W/hrs, use only 300W/hrs. Did you know that if you changed all your house lights over to CCFLs you could plug them into a laptop power supply and use that to run ALL of them?
And that is why I'm asking for your help in developing these ideas and many more. We desperately need better ways to do things - and while I have got the ideas, I'm sitting here unable to develop them. If you know of a business angel who would take this on, please let me know because there are several very commercialisable ideas that I have
07 February, 2007
Try this, it works for me
Do you have acid reflux? The doctor has put you on Pariet or Nexium and you've been on it a few years now? Getting nausea, diarrhoea, and acid despite the meds?
Apparently the PPI (proton pump inhibitor) drugs like Pariet and Nexium are very good at their job, but your stomach is too. Don't forget the stomach thinks it's under orders from higher up to prodcue more acid for digesting food. As efficient as any bunch of chemicals, your stomach adapts to the inhibiting effect - somehow - and you get acid, that old familiar burning burning not-quite-love, and if you let this go on for any length of time then the next thing is disgusting, and nausea follows soon afterwards, your PPI-blasted stomach will find it hard to hold down a glass of cold water let alone a flavoursome or fatty meal.
(Because lipids - fats - are a marker our bodies consider to be "flavour" in food, so tastier foods are generally higher in fats. And the wrong kinds of fats will do horrible things to you. Go read my book for info on this.)
At that stage your GP will often advise you to cut the PPIs back to once every two days or something like that. It may help you but if it doesn't then you're pretty much up Shit Creek (in more ways than one) without a paddle or a roll of paper.
Take heart, because I've found a paradoxical answer!
The right thing to do is to sip vinegar. Weird as it sounds, when the dodgy tummy sets in, I have some very special vinegar mixes that work for me every time. I have a couple because someof them are EXCELLENT salad dressings while others are for sipping down between squirming and gagging - at first, later you get used to them.
I have no idea why but I discovered this with a Turkish brand of pickled chilli. For years I'd been using pickled banana peppers to settle a hangover stomach, or bacterial gut infection - and it had always worked. But when my stomach started playing bigtime, I found that chilli at that time was not ideal. The banana peppers don't work for the acid reflux PPI miseries - but the tiny green turkish peppers did. I snacked on a few with every meal when I was feeling poorly in the internals, and they worked.
I left the peppers out and drank the pickle liquid. Very salty, medium vinegary, - and lo! - my ticky tummy settled right down.
SO the other night I made a favourite side dish of mine - red onion in salt and rice vinegar brine. I found that the onion I could take or leave, but my body was craving the salt and vinegar, badly.
So a series of experiements later and I have several recipes, they all work reaonably the same, but you may find a favourite, or at least a less detested one...
My favourite:
12/cup red wine vinegar 1/2 cup coconut vinegar, 1/2 cup red wine, 1 or two tsp salt. Stir together, leave to dissolve some more, stir again, refrigerate, sip about two to five tablespoons when the stomach starts squirming.
Another:
1/2 cup apple cider vingegar, 1/2 cup white or rice vingear, 1 to 3 tsp salt. Stir together, leave to dissolve some more, stir again, refrigerate, sip about two to five tablespoons when the stomach starts squirming.
Rice:
1/2 cup rice vinegar 1/2 cup coconut vinegar, 1 or two tsp salt. Stir together, leave to dissolve some more, stir again, refrigerate, sip about two to five tablespoons when the stomach starts squirming.
It sounds crap but it's anything but. I've spent this last week switching on and off my nausea and acid attacks, I don't know for sur ewhy this works but it does. I don't suggest swigging on this stuff all day as it can harden your liver better than alcohol does, in general I take a few tablespooons an hour or so before the times I know I'm going to get it.
Try it, you have nothing to lose but the need for medication. In my case I now take a Nexium maybe two times a week or less, and I'm eating really well. I take a sipped swig after a meal, and the worst effects are gone, I take another one the next day and it's like I never had a problem.
Apparently the PPI (proton pump inhibitor) drugs like Pariet and Nexium are very good at their job, but your stomach is too. Don't forget the stomach thinks it's under orders from higher up to prodcue more acid for digesting food. As efficient as any bunch of chemicals, your stomach adapts to the inhibiting effect - somehow - and you get acid, that old familiar burning burning not-quite-love, and if you let this go on for any length of time then the next thing is disgusting, and nausea follows soon afterwards, your PPI-blasted stomach will find it hard to hold down a glass of cold water let alone a flavoursome or fatty meal.
(Because lipids - fats - are a marker our bodies consider to be "flavour" in food, so tastier foods are generally higher in fats. And the wrong kinds of fats will do horrible things to you. Go read my book for info on this.)
At that stage your GP will often advise you to cut the PPIs back to once every two days or something like that. It may help you but if it doesn't then you're pretty much up Shit Creek (in more ways than one) without a paddle or a roll of paper.
Take heart, because I've found a paradoxical answer!
The right thing to do is to sip vinegar. Weird as it sounds, when the dodgy tummy sets in, I have some very special vinegar mixes that work for me every time. I have a couple because someof them are EXCELLENT salad dressings while others are for sipping down between squirming and gagging - at first, later you get used to them.
I have no idea why but I discovered this with a Turkish brand of pickled chilli. For years I'd been using pickled banana peppers to settle a hangover stomach, or bacterial gut infection - and it had always worked. But when my stomach started playing bigtime, I found that chilli at that time was not ideal. The banana peppers don't work for the acid reflux PPI miseries - but the tiny green turkish peppers did. I snacked on a few with every meal when I was feeling poorly in the internals, and they worked.
I left the peppers out and drank the pickle liquid. Very salty, medium vinegary, - and lo! - my ticky tummy settled right down.
SO the other night I made a favourite side dish of mine - red onion in salt and rice vinegar brine. I found that the onion I could take or leave, but my body was craving the salt and vinegar, badly.
So a series of experiements later and I have several recipes, they all work reaonably the same, but you may find a favourite, or at least a less detested one...
My favourite:
12/cup red wine vinegar 1/2 cup coconut vinegar, 1/2 cup red wine, 1 or two tsp salt. Stir together, leave to dissolve some more, stir again, refrigerate, sip about two to five tablespoons when the stomach starts squirming.
Another:
1/2 cup apple cider vingegar, 1/2 cup white or rice vingear, 1 to 3 tsp salt. Stir together, leave to dissolve some more, stir again, refrigerate, sip about two to five tablespoons when the stomach starts squirming.
Rice:
1/2 cup rice vinegar 1/2 cup coconut vinegar, 1 or two tsp salt. Stir together, leave to dissolve some more, stir again, refrigerate, sip about two to five tablespoons when the stomach starts squirming.
It sounds crap but it's anything but. I've spent this last week switching on and off my nausea and acid attacks, I don't know for sur ewhy this works but it does. I don't suggest swigging on this stuff all day as it can harden your liver better than alcohol does, in general I take a few tablespooons an hour or so before the times I know I'm going to get it.
Try it, you have nothing to lose but the need for medication. In my case I now take a Nexium maybe two times a week or less, and I'm eating really well. I take a sipped swig after a meal, and the worst effects are gone, I take another one the next day and it's like I never had a problem.
03 February, 2007
Check This Site!
Darren who commented on a previous post also had this link to another energy activism site. Please go there and look around...
Ideas For Sale?
I am currently expanding the concepts that the original zencookbook.com website had - it was originally just a pamphlet site to publicise and sell an E-book diet I created which reversed my prostate cancer. But that one book got me thinking that there are so many other things that we need "cookbooks" for, especially now with the spectre of a worldwide weather catastrophe looming, and so I'm working hard to put out a lot more information that will be useful in the years to come.
I have (and will publish in E-book form) ideas for energy use reduction, alternative energy and alternative fuels, and a lot more. The idea of all my books is to keep us and our world as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
If you have ideas or articles or books that fit this philosophy I would love to hear from you. If you want to develop some of the ideas and help make a difference to the future of the world, I would also - definitely! - like to hear from you. Please leave a comment and I'll get back to you.
I have (and will publish in E-book form) ideas for energy use reduction, alternative energy and alternative fuels, and a lot more. The idea of all my books is to keep us and our world as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
If you have ideas or articles or books that fit this philosophy I would love to hear from you. If you want to develop some of the ideas and help make a difference to the future of the world, I would also - definitely! - like to hear from you. Please leave a comment and I'll get back to you.
25 January, 2007
Smart Energy Stars
As many of you are seeing when you visit the site, I'm adding other focii to the site. I have a swag of tips and ideas on how to reduce your energy use, grow healthy food, use smarter energy rather than costly polluting energy, and save and recycle water and other things. I mentioned on the Zencookbook Dot Com website that there is an advantage to thinking smarter - we get to live on the Earth longer...
Because if we use smarter energy, do smarter things with our water, and change our thinking about some very outmoded models, then we will beat global warming and weather, energy, fuel, and water crises. If we don't, then we may as well hold the farewell party now because none of our kids will survive that.
So here's a relatively simple couple of tips that could see you save a few hundred kilos of emissions going into the atmosphere every year - directly as a result of you doing a few things to use what you already have in a smarter way...
If you're like 85% of Perth's houses then you have some form of airconditioning. What is an airconditioner? (Not evaporative systems, they are a different kettle of fish.) It's a heat pump. It pumps heat from inside your house, to the outside. Don't believe me? Go stand near the outside part of your air conditioner when it's operating - that heat belting out of it is what it extracted from your house. Plus a BIG chunk of waste energy from all the inefficiencies in air conditioners - compressor and motor losses, running a fairly hefty fan to pump the air over the heat pump, and general losses because nothing in the world is perfect.
Evaporative systems use water to extract heat from outside air, then pump that into your house to replace the hot air. They use less electricity to achieve the result, but they are also not as efficient - you have to leave doors and windows open, if there is a breeze then hot air will enter at the upwind side of the house and mix with the cooled air, making the house hotter. Evap systems work best on bone dry ( < 20% RH ) windstill days. Which we don't get a lot of here.
So how can we improve the efficiency of these two pretty appaling wasters of energy? Well, if you can manage it, close upwind windows and doors if you have evap air. Make sure you have good solid doors and some heavy curtains to keep heat out. Have roof insulation. Have a roof air extractor to take hot air out of the ceiling cavity.
Those things cost little to do, and can reduce your air conditioning bill by 10% to 25% - more if you put good insulation and a whirlybird in the roof. But there are a few other things you can watch for and fix.
We've established that an air conditioner is a heat pump that pumps heat from where we don't want it to a place where we don't care. Your fridge is in essence a very airconditioned room for your food. It happily pumps heat from the inside to the outside, adding its compressor, motor, and general losses to the heat load. If you open the fridge door in a hot house, the fridge fills up with hot air which then has to be shifted back outside the fridge, with all that wasted energy being used to do it. And it's probably the same heat that the fridge pumped out when Billy got his cold drink out of it 20 minutes earlier.
Because, what do we do with the heat which has been laboriously extracted from your fridge? That's right, we DUMP IT BACK into the house so that the airconditioning can laboriously extract it a second time from your house and add a second set of energy losses to that!
Get that straight in your head for a moment. We put warm food in the fridge and it gets extracted, with quite bit of energy wastage, then we extract that heat from the house with a second set of energy wastage. That half kilo of butter you just put in has probably cost you an extra 25c to pump the heat twice.
Secondly, a fridge works best if it is insulated or in a cool environment to start with. That's the second big improvement we can all make. Make sure the fridge door stays sealed well, and that the insulation is up to the job. If you can, put the fridge in its own insulated alcove.
And now the biggest energy saver of all. You've got the fridge in an insulated alcove, you're running air conditioning to keep the surroundings cool, what's missing? Right! The hot air from the fridge is going to fill up the alcove and heat up your airconditioned house. So make sure the alcove has a vent to the ceiling space (where the whirlybird will soon dissipate it) and - this is important - that there is a low volume continuous extraction fan there. The kind that computer power supplies use are fine, and consume an almost negligible amount of energy to run. But the difference to your fridge, not having to pump heat uphill as it were, is immeasurable.
Can you immediately see the other appliance in your house that needs venting? Oh yes - the stove may have a range hood but most rangehoods just return the air (minus grease and some smells) back into the room. If you have a range hood, make sure it's a generous size, has a powerful fan, and is vented OUTSIDE or into the ceiling space. (where the whirlybird will... you know the rest...)
Do these things and you might find that your power bills reduce to almost half of what they were before. I'm not kidding. It's smart...
Because if we use smarter energy, do smarter things with our water, and change our thinking about some very outmoded models, then we will beat global warming and weather, energy, fuel, and water crises. If we don't, then we may as well hold the farewell party now because none of our kids will survive that.
So here's a relatively simple couple of tips that could see you save a few hundred kilos of emissions going into the atmosphere every year - directly as a result of you doing a few things to use what you already have in a smarter way...
If you're like 85% of Perth's houses then you have some form of airconditioning. What is an airconditioner? (Not evaporative systems, they are a different kettle of fish.) It's a heat pump. It pumps heat from inside your house, to the outside. Don't believe me? Go stand near the outside part of your air conditioner when it's operating - that heat belting out of it is what it extracted from your house. Plus a BIG chunk of waste energy from all the inefficiencies in air conditioners - compressor and motor losses, running a fairly hefty fan to pump the air over the heat pump, and general losses because nothing in the world is perfect.
Evaporative systems use water to extract heat from outside air, then pump that into your house to replace the hot air. They use less electricity to achieve the result, but they are also not as efficient - you have to leave doors and windows open, if there is a breeze then hot air will enter at the upwind side of the house and mix with the cooled air, making the house hotter. Evap systems work best on bone dry ( < 20% RH ) windstill days. Which we don't get a lot of here.
So how can we improve the efficiency of these two pretty appaling wasters of energy? Well, if you can manage it, close upwind windows and doors if you have evap air. Make sure you have good solid doors and some heavy curtains to keep heat out. Have roof insulation. Have a roof air extractor to take hot air out of the ceiling cavity.
Those things cost little to do, and can reduce your air conditioning bill by 10% to 25% - more if you put good insulation and a whirlybird in the roof. But there are a few other things you can watch for and fix.
We've established that an air conditioner is a heat pump that pumps heat from where we don't want it to a place where we don't care. Your fridge is in essence a very airconditioned room for your food. It happily pumps heat from the inside to the outside, adding its compressor, motor, and general losses to the heat load. If you open the fridge door in a hot house, the fridge fills up with hot air which then has to be shifted back outside the fridge, with all that wasted energy being used to do it. And it's probably the same heat that the fridge pumped out when Billy got his cold drink out of it 20 minutes earlier.
Because, what do we do with the heat which has been laboriously extracted from your fridge? That's right, we DUMP IT BACK into the house so that the airconditioning can laboriously extract it a second time from your house and add a second set of energy losses to that!
Get that straight in your head for a moment. We put warm food in the fridge and it gets extracted, with quite bit of energy wastage, then we extract that heat from the house with a second set of energy wastage. That half kilo of butter you just put in has probably cost you an extra 25c to pump the heat twice.
Secondly, a fridge works best if it is insulated or in a cool environment to start with. That's the second big improvement we can all make. Make sure the fridge door stays sealed well, and that the insulation is up to the job. If you can, put the fridge in its own insulated alcove.
And now the biggest energy saver of all. You've got the fridge in an insulated alcove, you're running air conditioning to keep the surroundings cool, what's missing? Right! The hot air from the fridge is going to fill up the alcove and heat up your airconditioned house. So make sure the alcove has a vent to the ceiling space (where the whirlybird will soon dissipate it) and - this is important - that there is a low volume continuous extraction fan there. The kind that computer power supplies use are fine, and consume an almost negligible amount of energy to run. But the difference to your fridge, not having to pump heat uphill as it were, is immeasurable.
Can you immediately see the other appliance in your house that needs venting? Oh yes - the stove may have a range hood but most rangehoods just return the air (minus grease and some smells) back into the room. If you have a range hood, make sure it's a generous size, has a powerful fan, and is vented OUTSIDE or into the ceiling space. (where the whirlybird will... you know the rest...)
Do these things and you might find that your power bills reduce to almost half of what they were before. I'm not kidding. It's smart...
18 January, 2007
Yes I Have Spare Time, Why Do You Ask?
After a hectic few months where I was IT contracting, I finally have time to get behind the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook again. I'm currently home rendering some fine pork dripping for flavouring (no it is not contrary to the diet, as you'll see when you read it) and preparing some chicken wings for roasting tonight.
(The pork fat? Okay in the diet I recommend using olive oil and grapeseed oil, preferably mixed together 50/50 - but food tastes dead boring if cooked with the same fats all the time. As I say in the book, use about half the oil you think you'll need, and for flavour, reduce that to half that amount again - and then it's fine with the diet to add an equal amount of butter or pork dripping or duck fat or whatever flavour you're aiming for. The idea is to reduce your fat intake but not to stop taking in fats. Your body needs them. It creates a variety of building blocks from fat.
Also - much maligned as different fats are - our bodies have over thousands of generations become dependent on having them. Yes, there are a thousand vegetarians who will point to themselves and say this is proof that we don't need these animal products but I say it's a tribute to the adaptability and flexibility of the human digestive system. Those people are putting their bodies under undue stress and it will often show up in various deficiency illnesses such as skin and hair ailments, susceptibility to various community-acquired flu and colds, and so forth. If you are striving to return your cells to a normal state and thus reverse your cancer you shouldn't place ANY undue strain on yourself. )
So anyhow - the chicken wings turned out a treat and I'll soon start a recipe card series on these pages with extra recipes that fit the diet for one reason or another. These recipes will be basic and there will be more on the Bodyfriendly registered user website, with a better description and breakdown of the ingredients. And how does one register for the website? Well, if you purchase a book I will have your email address and when the registered website is operational you will be sent a link and a username and password you can use. It wil be that simple, and then you will be able to take part in online discussions with other people in a similar position to yourself, read the recipes, and (if I manage to get this going, it's proving a hard thing to program) a list of stores in your area where the more specialised ingredients are available. There are also a lot of staff of medical centres and research facilities who are going to get free copies of the book and free membership to the site so you may even be able to discuss matters with a professional.
For now - please visit the Zencookbook Dot Com site and look around - there's getting to be more and more material there.
(The pork fat? Okay in the diet I recommend using olive oil and grapeseed oil, preferably mixed together 50/50 - but food tastes dead boring if cooked with the same fats all the time. As I say in the book, use about half the oil you think you'll need, and for flavour, reduce that to half that amount again - and then it's fine with the diet to add an equal amount of butter or pork dripping or duck fat or whatever flavour you're aiming for. The idea is to reduce your fat intake but not to stop taking in fats. Your body needs them. It creates a variety of building blocks from fat.
Also - much maligned as different fats are - our bodies have over thousands of generations become dependent on having them. Yes, there are a thousand vegetarians who will point to themselves and say this is proof that we don't need these animal products but I say it's a tribute to the adaptability and flexibility of the human digestive system. Those people are putting their bodies under undue stress and it will often show up in various deficiency illnesses such as skin and hair ailments, susceptibility to various community-acquired flu and colds, and so forth. If you are striving to return your cells to a normal state and thus reverse your cancer you shouldn't place ANY undue strain on yourself. )
So anyhow - the chicken wings turned out a treat and I'll soon start a recipe card series on these pages with extra recipes that fit the diet for one reason or another. These recipes will be basic and there will be more on the Bodyfriendly registered user website, with a better description and breakdown of the ingredients. And how does one register for the website? Well, if you purchase a book I will have your email address and when the registered website is operational you will be sent a link and a username and password you can use. It wil be that simple, and then you will be able to take part in online discussions with other people in a similar position to yourself, read the recipes, and (if I manage to get this going, it's proving a hard thing to program) a list of stores in your area where the more specialised ingredients are available. There are also a lot of staff of medical centres and research facilities who are going to get free copies of the book and free membership to the site so you may even be able to discuss matters with a professional.
For now - please visit the Zencookbook Dot Com site and look around - there's getting to be more and more material there.
06 October, 2005
Introduction To The Cookbook
This is now historical, the BFZCB is no more. If you want a copy for free email me teddlesruss@pm.me and I'll email you a copy.
The Body FriendlyZen Cookbook is now on its own site at http://www.zencookbook.com/, it is a work in progress so please download the free e-book there, or buy the full version, or donate something --- and leave a comment please. Your purchases and donations will make it possible for me to continue this work. For example, the CSIRO will in 2007 be running a test on my diet and those results will be published on the site. And I am investigating several promising sources of new treatment foods and those too will be published on the site once I have something to publish. For registered purchasers of the book, this will in effect mean that the book will always be up to date with the latest revisions. It is my intention to also supply the book in electronic form on a USB key, which will be able to actually update from the online server, thus creating the ultimate "perpetual book!" In addition I will hopefully be offering the book in formats to suit proprietary reader hardware etc. Prices are expected to be around $35USD for the USB version, (remember this is also a USB key,) $20USD for the hardcopy, with $15USD for e-text versions. As prices drop for the USB devices this will be reflected in the price of the USB book, and similarly for the e-text versions, Proprietary formats will be priced according to the relevant patent owner's prices. A printed copy is coming soon, stay tuned. Anyway - please head over to the main site, grab a copy of the book, leave me a donation (and email me about doing so - I'll remember to do something nice for you in turn when the full book goes into publication) and put your name down for the mailing list so that you'll know as soon as the first full copies are available.
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