Kris Carlson's Weblog

Vitamin C and The Psychosomatic Response

Have you heard of taking Vitamin C when you are feeling a bit under the weather? Well, I do and I can attest that it has helped me. Now is my response to the supplement psychosomatic or is there a good reason for why I take vitamin C when I start feeling like I have something coming on?

I've been reading some articles about Vitamin C (VC) and it's benefit for the common cold and some other ailments. Most purport that VC has no direct effect on fighting the common cold or other viruses. Not being an MD or any other type of trained physician, I would have to say, based on my intuition and experience, that VC has an indirect effect on such things. First, through the strengthening of the immune system; and second through the psychosomatic response.

Whenever I think of the psychosomatic response I am reminded of the skit on SNL with Billy Crystal where he plays this guy who is possessed with looking good. He is trying to argue which is better, to look good or to feel good. He says it is better to look good than to feel good, because when you look good you feel good. Then he argues the case for feeling good. He says it is better to feeling good, because when you feel good you look good, and after all it is most important to look good. I don't remember the exact lines right now, but I love that argument because he is describing the psychosomatic response. That if you feel good then you look good, and vice versa.

So I say, if you believe VC helps make you feel better when you are feeling punk, then take it. It's water-soluble and you can take mega doses without harm. My intuition tells me that the effect VC has is both psychosomatic and physiological. It will help strength the immune system and therefore fight off any bacterial or viral infections.

Swedish Meatballs

I got this recipe from my aunt. For the last 2 years I've been making this recipe for Christmas Eve with lean Venison. I've made it with ground beef and lean venison, and I have to say the venison is better. Enjoy.

5 lbs. ground beef
5 eggs
1.25 cups dry bread crumbs
1.5 cups finely chopped onions (sweet)
1.5 teaspoon nutmeg (oh, that's a lot)
3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
6 cans cream of mushroom soup (undiluted)

mix everything but the soup together well. form 1 inch balls and brown in skillet (I use butter but you can use oil in the skillet). then place the balls in a slow cooker or the like and cover with cream of mushroom soup. heat on low for a minimum of 2 hours.

Oral Chelation: Beneficial or Harmful?

An ad in The Street dot com's Weekend Edition claimed to reverse plaque buildup in arteries.  I inserted the image that came with the email in this post.  Man, if this really works, can you imagine the benefits?  The positive mental attitude that would come from knowing that your arteries aren't clogged, and better yet, open as much as posible.

 

So I went to click on the ad and up pops a test box with the link information in it.  It's a doubleclick ad.  I say to myself, "there's doubleclick gathering information and invading my privacy yet again."  So I copy the link information, edit it, and go to the site without doubleclick sniffing my butt.  It's a cheesy copywrite style sales letter.  I start to read it, and even though I'm interested in what they have to say, I just can't stand the way the sales letter is written. I hit it for Google and do a search for Oral Chelation and find several interesting ads right away.

I've placed a few link from that search here for you to check out.  The one that I found most interesting was the one that suggests Oral Chelation is actually harmful: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=33484  By the way, I've started using SearchMash since my friend, who is in the know, brought it to my attention.  Here are the search results: http://www.searchmash.com/search/oral+chelation 

It's kind of interesting to note that Oral Chelation actually got it's own domain name: http://www.oralchelation.com/
 

Bunkett

These almond pastries are simply devine. My mom first made these for us back in the late 70's. If you have a sweet tooth and you like almond pastry, then you will love these Bunketts.

1 lb. Butter
4 C Flour
1 C Cold Water
- mix like pie crust and let stand overnight in the refridgerator

{(1.5 C Sugar
1.5 C Almond Paste
- mix until real fine)
add 3 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon Lemon Flavor
- mix real good let stand over night in fridge}

In the morning or next day:
- Divide into 8 parts
- roll each one out like pie crust
- put paste on and roll up
- sprinkle milk and sugar on top
-Bake at 350 degrees F until lihgt brown, about 40 minutes.

Today, 12-23-2006 my mom made these. They taste just like I remembered and they are good. I shared some with a friend tonight and his first words were "these are good", then about 10 seconds later, "boy these are good", and then again in about 30 seconds, "damn these are real good."

- Enjoy

Some ASCII character codes

I just wanted to test out some ASCII character codes.

My brother's name is Kaj. It is pronounces as though it were spelled Ki, like eye with a K in front. When he passed away in 1990 my mom gave information to the local newspaper about him for an obituary. When she was speaking to the person about his name she said that people nad always thought his name was Kyle or they would spell it Ki because that was the way it sounded. When the paper came out the article had my brother's name spelled Kaj with 2 dots above the j instead of 1. I just realized that it was over the j and not the a. I saw the charcter code for the   but not for the j. Now I'm starting to think the girl at the newspaper got it wrong, so I'm doing some websearching.

I found this stuff about Esperanto Orthography at Wikipedia. Which actually mentions the word kaj, but not the double dot over the j. Instead, it discusses the j with a carat above it instead of a dot and call it j-circumflex, in relation to the Swedish and Finnish extended layout for Mac OS X keyboard.

Now my curiosity is piqued. More to come on this one...

DTrace on Mac OS X

I know this old news by now, but I am really geeked about dtrace being ported to Mac OS X. Check out Adam Leventhal's Weblog at Sun for a shit load of details. Also, Mike Shapiro's $<blog and Brian Cantrill's "The Observation Deck". Bravo gentlemen! I can hardly wait for Mac OS X 10.5.x, i.e. Leopard. I was resolved to not put Leopard on my iMac G4, but if it'll run on this little jewel; and without significant degradation in performance, then I will install it.

BCS is Flawed... Big Time

I am so pissed about the way the polls chose Florida to play Ohio State for the national title. They were ranked significatly lower than Michigan going into the Arkansas game. How does Michigan lose ground in their ranking? Floridas win over Arkansas was not that impressive; and besides they lost to Auburn who was ranked 11 going into this weekend. This just isn't right. I hope this thing doesn't die. The selection process for the Championship Matchup for NCAA Football has to change.

Now what I would like to see happen is this: Michigan beats Southern Cal very badly. Badly enough to show the rest of the country that Southern Cal should never have been placed at #2 to begin with. Then Ohio State shows the rest of the country, by beating Florida with a significant point spread, that the only team that could have beaten them was Michigan. Then we will see things change with the way the National Title Matchup is decided.

I now believe that a playoff is the only way. That somehow the best 8 or 16 teams in college football are chosen to decide who is the best in the country. Seed number 1 and 2 at opposite ends of the tournament and then watch and see if the polls chose 1 and 2 correctly. At least if you go 8 deep you will not miss number 1, I would think, and number 2 would not get cheated out of their chance at the title.

Whatever is done, something has to change. The Harris Poll and the Coaches Poll got it wrong this year; and the BCS was not able to correct the mistake becasue of the way they average the polls. There has always been the possibility that the 2 top teams in the country would be in the same conference and would meet before the title game. But for the 2 polls to leap-frog Florida over Michigan that way indicates that there is something seriously wrong with the current system.