Banana Republicans Go Off Half-Cocked

The idiom to “go off half-cocked” came from incidents in which a flintlock or matchlock gun would fire prematurely, before the trigger was pulled.

As used in modern context, it means:

• to take a premature or ill-considered action; to act too soon, prematurely, or without reflection;

• to do or say something without preparing for, or thinking about it;

• to go into action too early, or without thinking.

That certainly seems to be the case with several Banana Republicans recently. Banana Republicans lead Banana Republics, right?

An article published last week by the notoriously unreliable British tabloid “The Daily Mail” – which is infamous for habitually and recklessly publishing sensationalistically inaccurate fear-mongering stories – stated a deliberate lie which falsely claimed that President Joe Biden’s climate proposals would deliberately limit Americans’ red meat consumption.

Shortly after that scurrilously false story was published, numerous

Feeling Stuffed on Thanksgiving

iPhone 6 screenshot showing maximum memory capacity (128GB) reached, and proportions of memory used by category

Not to worry… my iPhone’s got you beat.

It’s more stuffed than you are.

Or, more stuffed than your Thanksgiving turkey.

Or your turducken.

Seriously.

“Turducken,” is a word-blend of turkey, duck, and chicken, which is a de-boned dish of the three fowl combined, which is then cooked.

And it’s just barely Thanksgiving morning!

But that’s GigaBytes, and you’re human bites – it’s not an “apples-to-apples” comparison.

And, that’s okay, because we often compare disparate items. You know, like oranges to truck stops, or oxygen concentration ratios to seat cushions.

Anyway… the human stomach’s average capacity is about 1.5 – 2 Liters.

Maximum capacity is 3 – 4 Liters.

Put in perspective, the upper end of the maximum capacity of the human stomach is the equivalent volume of TWO 2 Liter soda bottles.

The low end of the average capacity of the human stomach is about 75% of one 2 Liter soda bottle – 1.5 Liters.

In fact, the human stomach – which essentially is a muscle sac, and when empty, is about the size of your fist – can expand to hold up to 4 Liters of food. That’s more than 50 times its empty size.

Of course, some folks’ stomachs are bigger.

Seriously.

Bigger body = bigger stomach.

And you’ve certainly heard the age-old adage “big feet, big… need big shoes.”

But, even though you, and others may be quite hungry – famished, even – this Thanksgiving, you probably won’t quite be eating like wolves… even though you may wolf your food down.

You see, after a successful hunt, a wolf pack

In Praise Of @Arbys Denali-Style Meat Mountain Sandwich: Have you tried it?

Arby’s promotional image of their “Meat Mountain” sandwich, a “secret menu,” hand-made custom sandwich which contains every meat and cheese offering they carry.

You MUST TRY THIS!

Arby’s has a sandwich called “Meat Mountain”…

…but it’s NOT listed on the menu!

In a manner of speaking, it’s been somewhat “under the radar” except to a few with specialized knowledge of it. It’s like a word-of-mouth menu item.

Apparently, it’s been around for quite some time, at least two, and very nearly three years – at least since August 2014.

Store associates will make it for customers who ask for it by name.

What is it?

Medical News You Can Use: “Dr. Atkins Was Right” Edition – Carbs Make You Fat, Not Just Inactivity

Researchers: Diet To Blame For Obesity, Not Lack Of Physical Activity

Lack of physical activity is not to blame for the prevalence of obesity, but rather the wrong diet, report physicians from the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa who published their findings in the “British Journal of Sports Medicine.” However, they emphasized that even regular exercise cannot compensate for poor dietary habits.

Excess consumption of sugar and carbohydrates is mainly responsible for obesity, say the experts. Even 40% of people with a normal BMI will consequently have metabolic abnormalities normally associated with obesity.

But it is problematic that the public firmly believes that development is exclusively due to lack of physical activity. That misconception is due almost exclusively to

Butter really IS better!

How Food Marketers Made Butter the Enemy

By Tom Philpott

Wednesday, April 9, 2014 3:00 AM PDT

Louise Cukrov/Shutterstock

James McWilliams—a historian who has made a name for himself in prestigious publications like the New York Times and The Atlantic for his contrarian defenses of the food industry—is back at it. In an item published last week in the excellent Pacific Standard, McWilliams uses the controversy over a recent study of saturated fat as a club with which to pummel food industry critics like the Times‘ Mark Bittman.

Here’s what happened: A group including Harvard and Cambridge researchers analyzed 72 studies and concluded that there’s no clear evidence that ditching saturated fat (the kind found mainly in butter, eggs, and meat) for the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated kind (found in fish and a variety of vegetable oils) delivers health benefits.

Bittman responded to the study’s release with

New Research Proves Obesity is Related to…

The Humble Crockpot
The crockpot is a ‘set it and forget it’ cooking tool. In fact, when placed on the “high” setting, food is often cooked overnight, and ready the next morning.

Excess Food Consumption.

Big surprise, eh?

Yeah.

NOT!

Seriously, there is only ONE time-tested way to lose weight.

It has two, very simple steps.

They are:

1.) Eat Less, and;

2.) Exercise More.

Or if you prefer, Step #1 can also be considered a form of exercise – Push Aways.

Push Away from the table.

Now that we have the levity out of the way… let’s look at the news.

Some have promoted various forms of diet as an adjunct to weight loss. Many of the more successful models have revolved around variations upon a theme, that being increased protein intake in conjunction with decreased carbohydrate intake, also more popularly known as the “Atkins Diet.”

To give Dr. Atkins his due,

Trojan Horse-like Therapy a New Tool in Cancer Treatment Arsenal

More exciting news in cancer treatment!

One of the perplexing things about cancer treatment (chemotherapeutics) is that the substances used to kill the tumors are poisonous… even deadly toxic. It has been, in essence, a shotgun approach. That is, while the malignant cells targeted for destruction are killed, so are other, non-cancerous cells throughout the body. It is an imprecise treatment because the intravenous treatment circulates throughout the entire body.

This new approach is – as the story describes – somewhat like the proverbial Trojan Horse.

—

A New Class of Cancer Drugs May Be Less Toxic

May 31, 2012
By ANDREW POLLACK

Fern Saitowitz’s advanced breast cancer was controlled for about a year by the drug Herceptin and a toxic chemotherapy agent. But her hair fell out, her fingernails turned black and she was constantly fatigued.

She switched to an experimental treatment, which also consisted of Herceptin and a chemotherapy agent. Only this time, the two drugs were attached to each other, keeping the toxic agent inactive until the Herceptin carried it to the tumor. Side effects, other than temporary nausea and some muscle cramps, vanished.

“I’m able to live a normal life,” said Ms. Saitowitz, 47, a mother of two young children in Los Angeles. “I haven’t lost any of my hair.”

The experimental treatment, called T-DM1, is a harbinger of a new class of cancer drugs that may be more effective and less toxic than many existing treatments. By harnessing antibodies to deliver toxic payloads to cancer cells, while largely sparing healthy cells, the drugs are a step toward the “magic bullets” against cancer first envisioned by Paul Ehrlich, a German Nobel laureate, about 100 years ago.

“It’s almost like we’re

Is Schizophrenic Science partially to blame for American Obesity?

There’s no question but that America’s increase in overall obesity is due in large part to two factors: Diet & Exercise.

More specifically, it is Poor Diet & Lack of Exercise which has brought about much – if not all – of our increased waistlines, and the accompanying health problems associated with obesity – diabetes, joint failure, etc.

To be certain, however, our nation is perhaps THE best fed – er, make that MOST fed – nation in the world, bar none. And, generally speaking, even when discounting obesity, we are a large people in stature precisely because of our excellent nutritional status. Other, lesser developed nations do not fare as well, literally and figuratively, because of that reason. People in Southeast Asian nations, the Far East, nations in the African continent, in central Europe and in South America… there are few people in the world whom are as giant – and I do NOT mean obese – as Americans.

Even before obesity became a public health issue, Americans were considered people of large stature because of our ability to produce food. There was no scarcity of it.

Now, however, the changing tide of work – with a move toward a computer-driven and service economy – Americans have increasingly become sedentary. Desk jobs, or jobs which require little physical activity, are commonplace, and along with those changes have come health problems as a natural consequence of extra weight.

Again, considering the technological changes which have occurred in our nation, the jobs some of our forebears once worked are nothing like the ones we work today. Whereas once, they labored manually, the mechanization of labor reduced their need to exert themselves as strenuously. And today, one farmer can sit in an air-conditioned tractor outfitted with GPS navigation, cellular telephone, and more, and work several hundreds – if not thousands – of acres, and not even break a sweat. Previously, that was unimaginable. Now, it’s commonplace.

Given that our lifestyles have been significantly changed because of mechanization & technology, it should also be understood that

It’s official… I’m a nerd.

Image via Wikipedia Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Hey!

What do you read for fun?

It seemed an entirely apropos title for this entry.

What DO I read “for fun”?

Well, here are two excerpts from items I’m now reading.