Talk About What Is On Your Mind: 2011

Are Vegetables As Nutritious As They Used To Be

DIRT POOR: HAVE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES BECOME LESS NUTRITIOUS?
Because of soil depletion, crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today
| April 27, 2011 | 5
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WHAT'S DOWN, DOC?: Although fruits and vegetables are still our best source of nutrients, those grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion.Image: Martin Poole, Digital Vision/Thinkstock
Dear EarthTalk: What’s the nutritional difference between the carrot I ate in 1970 and one I eat today? I’ve heard that that there’s very little nutrition left. Is that true?—Esther G., Newark, N.J.
It would be overkill to say that the carrot you eat today has very little nutrition in it—especially compared to some of the other less healthy foods you likely also eat—but it is true that fruits and vegetables grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion: Modern intensive agricultural methods have stripped increasing amounts of nutrients from the soil in which the food we eat grows. Sadly, each successive generation of fast-growing, pest-resistant carrot is truly less good for you than the one before.
A landmark study on the topic by Donald Davis and his team of researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was published in December 2004 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. They studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding “reliable declines” in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C over the past half century. Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.
“Efforts to breed new varieties of crops that provide greater yield, pest resistance and climate adaptability have allowed crops to grow bigger and more rapidly,” reported Davis, “but their ability to manufacture or uptake nutrients has not kept pace with their rapid growth.” There have likely been declines in other nutrients, too, he said, such as magnesium, zinc and vitamins B-6 and E, but they were not studied in 1950 and more research is needed to find out how much less we are getting of these key vitamins and minerals.
The Organic Consumers Association cites several other studies with similar findings: A Kushi Institute analysis of nutrient data from 1975 to 1997 found that average calcium levels in 12 fresh vegetables dropped 27 percent; iron levels 37 percent; vitamin A levels 21 percent, and vitamin C levels 30 percent. A similar study of British nutrient data from 1930 to 1980, published in the British Food Journal,found that in 20 vegetables the average calcium content had declined 19 percent; iron 22 percent; and potassium 14 percent. Yet another study concluded that one would have to eat eight oranges today to derive the same amount of Vitamin A as our grandparents would have gotten from one.
What can be done? The key to healthier produce is healthier soil. Alternating fields between growing seasons to give land time to restore would be one important step. Also, foregoing pesticides and fertilizers in favor of organic growing methods is good for the soil, the produce and its consumers. Those who want to get the most nutritious fruits and vegetables should buy regularly from local organic farmers.
UT’s Davis warns that just because fruits and vegetables aren’t as healthy as they used to be doesn’t mean we should avoid them. “Vegetables are extraordinarily rich in nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals,” he reported. “They are still there, and vegetables and fruits are our best sources for these.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011

The Blue Beam Project The Rapture

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1195360/project_bluebeam_a_holographic_rapture_and_the_prophet_hologram/

The Blue Beam Project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPAYbbGLYlE

The Inner Self

Have you ever thought about who you are? What you stand for?

I’m not talking about your roles or social identities. You can be a friend, brother/sister, employee, boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, partner, father/mother, son/daughter, all at the same time, but these are just an aspect of you. They don’t represent who you fundamentally are inside. Your inner self is who you really are on the inside.

To know your inner self is to know your purpose, your values, your visions, your motivations, your goals and your beliefs. Not what you have been told by others but what you have discovered for yourself. Knowing your inner self requires a high level of introspection and self-awareness. If you have clarity to at least half of what is listed above, you probably hold quite a high level of self-awareness. At the same time, the process of discovery never ends – it’s a life-long journey.

Trying to uncover your inner self can be a tricky process. For one, you hold multiple identities in your life, each with their own sets of socially defined values, visions, expectations, etc. These may not directly conform with what you represent.

For example, let’s say you are an employee of an automobile company. As an employee, your mission should be congruent with whatever your company’s mission is, say to improve quality of people’s lives through automobile manufacturing. Your goals should also be in line with the company to increase company sales by 20% in 1 year and expand its regional presence.

However, you as a person have other dreams and goals outside which differ from your company’s. Perhaps you really love volleyball with a passion. Your ideal vision is to be an internationally accomplished volleyball player and become a highly sought-after volleyball coach, training national-level teams. That’s definitely different from the visions you are expected to have as an employee. Likewise, this applies to all your other identities too. For every identity, you have a set of purpose/values/visions/motivations/goals/beliefs which are not entirely the same as your inner self’s.

Because everyone is unique, your real self can’t be boxed in by any single identity or label. I am a friend to my friends, a blogger to my readers, but I’m more than just that. These are just roles and titles. None of the roles by themselves accurately surmise who I am. The inner me is someone who cannot simply be defined or labeled by any one label.

A good analogy to use would be the sunflower. Your inner self is like the bulb of the sunflower (the center part where petals are attached to). Your identities are like the petals around your inner self. While the petals are extensions of the head, they are not the head. Similarly, your identities are extensions of yourself, but they do not represent who you are wholly.

If you have never given much thought about your inner self, it is likely you have become defined a lot by your identities. It is common for people to see themselves as a certain role, such as a friend, partner, employee, son/daughter, and so on. Some spend their whole lives building themselves around such identities. Take those identities away, and they get totally lost, because they have a low awareness of who they are on the inside. These people are not able to articulate his/her own visions, goals and dreams beyond what have been imposed by his/her identities.

For example, someone who is entrenched in his identity as a son will see his entire existence as a son. He will act in accordance with what’s best for his parents. He will spend a lot of time with his parents, do things for his parents, and forsake other things in his life if it’s needed to make them happy. When it comes to making important decisions, such as career or life partner, he makes sure his parents are in approval before he takes any action. His parents are the central focus of his life.

However, his real self is more than just being a son to his parents. If his parents are to ever exit from his life, he will be in a state of total loss. His life will start spiraling out of control since the anchor he has been building his life on so far is gone. It’s like when the bulb of the sunflower disappears; all the petals will scatter away randomly since there is nothing to hold them together. When you become overly attached to any one of your identities, you run into the risk of an identity crisis when that particular identity is removed.

That’s why it’s important to find your inner self. You are the owner of your life and you live your life for yourself. This life is one that’s defined by you, not what is defined by your roles or identities. If you are not connected with who you really are, you are probably just living your life for others. Pursuing others’ goals, living up to others’ expectations and projections of you, rather than what you really want. To know your inner self is the first step of living a conscious life of your making.

Knowing your inner self comes from self-awareness. Even if you do not have full clarity on which your inner self is, it is likely that certain aspects of inner self are already exhibited on a day-to-day basis through how you assume your identities. For example, if you find yourself often extolling on being responsible to your parents, responsibility is likely one of your inner values. If you feel a compelling need to always be there for your friends, reliability is probability an important value to you.

It is perfectly okay if you don’t know your inner self. Discovering and unraveling it is a lifelong process. When I was in primary and secondary school, I didn’t really know who I was or what I stood for. I don’t think anybody at that age did actually. Everyone was just focused on doing what they were told. There wasn’t much introspection or self-awareness going on. We never really had to think about who we were, what we thought or who we wanted to be. While we had our own personalities, they were probably hazy at best.

Come think of it, I think the reason why self-awareness was low was because conformance was highly valued in schools (or Asian societies, for that matter). To have an opinion was seen as being defiant. Our tasks were generally to process and execute instructions, not to troubleshoot or question. If you have some different thoughts, you would generally be frowned upon or shut down. That’s why we never so much as thought about what we wanted. We were more like robots just doing our things, or sleepwalkers. As I got older I grew more self-aware. A lot of it came about from increased liberty, for example from making choices in life as a teenager. I bought my fist home when I was 21 years old. I attribute this to listening to my inner self instead of everyone else. More skill in decision making triggered me to do more thinking – about what I wanted to do and what I wanted for the future. Of course, a lot of activities I was doing on the side were also growing me in different ways. I grew to learn myself even more. Every day is a learning journey in discovering who I am and what I stand for. The more I uncovered about myself, the more I am able to live in a conscious manner.

Try an exercise to discover your inner self. Start off by mentally removing all those different identities that you have been layered with for a moment. This means stop thinking yourself as a brother, a colleague, a friend, or whatever identity you commonly associate yourself with. Think as just yourself.

With a pen and paper, start writing whatever comes to mind as you read the questions below.

What is your life’s purpose? What is the purpose you see your life to have? What are your visions for yourself, independent of anyone else? What goals and dreams do you have for yourself in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years or even 10 years?

What are YOUR motivations in life? What gets you going, day after day? What will you fight for? What do you feel passionately about?

What are your values? What are the qualities important to you?

What are your beliefs of the world? What are your world views?

If this is the first time you have ever done such an exercise, you will probably fall into a bit of a jam. Some of the answers you write out are from one of your social identities. If you are very family-centric, you might find your answers wholly centered on taking care of your family. It’s totally fine to have such an answer but that should not be the only answer you are conjuring up. You need to start thinking beyond your family. What are your visions for yourself, outside of family? What are your personal motivations in life?

Don’t worry if you have difficulty getting things down. Even if it may seem that you are drawing up a blank, there is a real you that lies beneath all those social identities, waiting to be uncovered.

Here are some steps which I found to be useful in uncovering my inner self:

Continuously learning and growing

Putting myself in unknown contexts to spike my learning curve

Constant introspection

Looking beyond what I’m told to discover what I want for myself

Listening to my gut feeling when it arises

By doing this exercise, you have already triggered the search process. No matter how deeply embedded your inner self is at the moment; this request will ripple out, slowly but surely, and stir the depth of your soul. You will start becoming more aware of your thoughts and actions. Soon, you will carve out an impression of who you really are on the inside. Eventually, you will reach a stage where you have strong clarity of who you are as a person.

As you uncover more of your inner self, you will probably find your identities do not match to your inner self. There’s a conflict between who you really are and who you are expected to be. If that’s the case, it’s fine. It’s a first step to have already discovered who you are. The next step is And all these didn’t happen by chance. They came about as a result of conscious effort.

Focus on finding your inner self, then start living in alignment with it. That’s when you start to live a conscious life. You can then live your life with purpose, love, and a sense of self that you have never experienced before.

to live in alignment with your inner self, as best as you can, within the situation. At the same time, start making long term plans towards ultimately living in full alignment with your inner self. I try to live in alignment with my inner self as best as I could while working through some difficult times in life. I could not do anything to change the situation so I focused on what I could affect.

Every action you take should move you towards your inner self. If there are identities which do not fit who your inner self represents, there will be two possible options you can take. First, try to find the common ground between those identities and your inner self. This may involve shaping the identities to fit who you are. If that doesn’t work at all, the other (more drastic) option will be to remove or change the identity altogether. When I shed negative friends and positive energy vampires away from my life it was then easier to get in touch with my inner self.

This has resulted in me becoming more and more congruent as a person. Today, I’m at a place where my identities are well matched with who I am on the inside. While there’s definitely still room for further alignment, they are quite congruent with one another. And all these didn’t happen by chance. They came about as a result of conscious effort.

The Power Of Touch

The Power of Touch

Recently, a 40-year-old man was hospitalized for treatment of advanced leukemia. While he was receiving massive doses of chemotherapy, he was put in quarantine for fear that even catching a common cold from family or friends could be potentially lethal. During isolation, his family could come no closer than his door, and then had to stand separated from him with masks covering their mouths. The only person allowed to touch the patient was a nurse who has been specially cleared as being in good health.

Here is how the patient described the experience of isolation: "This nurse changed my bedding and kept me clean and all that," he says. "But she hated to touch me, or at least it felt that way. Whatever she was doing she did with as little physical contact as possible.

"I wish I could have told her how important touch was," he adds. "I craved the feeling of flesh on flesh. I craved it! It wasn't a sexual thing--in my condition that was the last thing on my mind. But I really felt I was losing my will to live without that touch. I mean, I still wanted to live, to get better, but the reason to keep struggling was slipping away from me. I needed the feeling of someone's skin on mine to help me find it again."

Touching eases pain, lessens anxiety, softens the blows of life, generates hope and has the power to heal, according to most experts. In fact, modern psychology and medicine are confirming what mothers across the centuries have intuitively known--namely, the healing power of touch.

Various studies and experiments show the simple act of reaching out and touching another person frequently results in physical benefits such as slowing the heart rate, dropping blood pressure and speeding recovery from illness. For example, Dr. James Lynch, professor at Baltimore's University of Maryland School of Medicine conducts extensive studies on touch and its impact upon the body. "Physical contact has very dramatic effects upon psychological health," he says. "It lowers blood pressure. It relaxes you."

Other experts agree. "People who are more comfortable with touch are less afraid and less suspicious of other people's motives and intentions," says Stephen Thayer, professor of psychology at the City University of New York. "They tend to have less anxiety and tension in their everyday lives."

The bottom line is touching is good for everyone. One touch can soothe, comfort and convey caring in an way words never can. But what about the many people who simply want to reach out and touch but are uncomfortable with touch? The following are four suggestions for putting more touch into your life.

Commit

Take advantage of opportunities which exist to increase touch daily. For example, kiss your spouse when leaving for work, embrace your friends when greeting them, hug your children when they return from school and hold hands with your significant other when you are watching television.

Rather than having children sit beside you when you read a story, have them sit in your lap. In fact, one of the "secrets" enjoyed by almost every strong family unit is their high level of touching and intimacy. One husband and wife describing an important daily event which strengthens their family share this: "Each night we go into the children's bedrooms and give each a big hug and kiss. Then we say, 'you are really good kids and we love you very much.' We think it's important to leave that message with them at the end of the day."

Communicate

Do not assume that others will always sense your need and desire to have more physical contact. Family and friends should not be expected to read minds. The best way to get what you want is to speak up. Ask for a hug. Tell someone, "You deserve a hug for that!"

One lesson from a four-year-old girl reveals the importance of touch. After discovering the story of the "Three Little Pigs," she requested her father to read it night after night. Her father, weary of reading the same story each evening, tape recorded it and taught his little girl how to turn the machine on and off, including playback. This approach worked, but only for a few nights. When his daughter asked him to read the story again, her father said, "Now, Janie, you know how to use the tape recorder." To which she responded, "Yes, but I can't sit on its lap."

Connect

The best way to be touched is to touch. In 1976, James C. Gardner, then the mayor of Shrevesport, Louisiana, was scheduled to deliver a commencement address at Louisiana State University. He delivered the speech while in a state of shock. Earlier that day a doctor's yearly physical on his wife revealed she had a terminal condition.

When the commencement exercise was completed, Mayor Gardner turned to the Rabbi who had delivered the invocation and began to cry. As he shared with the Rabbi what he and his wife learned that afternoon, the Rabbi simply placed his hand upon the mayor's shoulder. "I do not know what he (the Rabbi) said, it was not important," says Mayor Gardner." What was important was that he let me know he cared. In the months that followed, I learned the importance of being cared for and, in that learning, became a more caring person myself. Ten years ago I was not a 'toucher.' Today I can hug, put an arm around a shoulder and hold a hand with ease because I have learned that touching is such an important element in the expression of caring.

Comfort

One touch can "speak" volumes and convey your love, acceptance and support. For example, a woman, who had been recently widowed, tells of being overcome with grief at a Christmas Eve service following her husband's death. Sitting next to her was a 10-year-old girl, who noticed the woman's tears. "I felt my little neighbor's small hand creep up into my lap," the grieving woman says. "She took my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. My heart swelled."

Everyone should remember hands were designed to do many different tasks. One of the best uses is to convey love, warmth, caring, understanding and acceptance. So, reach out and touch someone--it's healthy!

The Commandments

The Ten Commandments

1. I the Lord am your God, you shall not have other Gods besides me.

2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God In vain.

3. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day.

4. Honor your Father and your Mother.

5. You shall not kill.

6. You shall not commit adultery.

7. You shall not steel.

8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

10.You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

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