thelerner

Any enterprising person with time on there hands want to see which of these movies is available on Netflix? The movie I mentioned Cafe was on Netflix, but no longer.

How an Iron Fish prevents Disease http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32749629 His invention, shaped like a fish, which is a symbol of luck in Cambodian culture, was designed to release iron at the right concentration to provide the nutrients that so many women and children in the country were lacking. The recipe is simple, Dr Charles says. "Boil up water or soup with the iron fish for at least 10 minutes. That enhances the iron which leaches from it. You can then take it out. Now add a little lemon juice which is important for the absorption of the iron." If the iron fish is used every day in the correct way, Dr Charles says it should provide 75% of an adult's daily recommended intake of iron - and even more of a child's. If it's something that is culturally acceptable and not too costly, it would be of great benefit Prof Imelda Bates, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Trials on several hundred villagers in one province in Cambodia showed that nearly half of those who took part were no longer anaemic after 12 months. Prof Imelda Bates, head of the international public health department at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, says the iron fish is a welcome development. These sort of approaches are so much better than iron tablets, which are really horrible. If it's something that is culturally acceptable and not too costly, then any improvement to anaemia levels would be of great benefit. Around 2,500 families in Cambodia are now using the iron fish and the Lucky Iron Fish company has distributed nearly 9,000 fish to hospitals and non-governmental organizations in the country. One woman and her daughter, who are part of a current trial in Preah Vihear Province, told the BBC they would use it during cooking. "I'm happy, the blood test results show that I have the iron deficiency problem, so I hope will be cured and will be healthy soon. I think all the people in Sekeroung village will like the fish, because fish is our everyday food." The World Health Organization estimates that two billion people - over 30% of the world's population - are anaemic, mostly due to iron deficiency. It says stopping iron deficiency is a priority - for individuals and countries. "The benefits are substantial. Timely treatment can restore personal health and raise national productivity levels by as much as 20%," it has said. And it emphasises that it is the poorest and most vulnerable who stand to gain the most from its reduction. But there are other forms of anaemia. It can also be caused by vitamin B12 and A deficiencies, parasitic infections, such as malaria, and other infectious diseases. Iron deficiency anaemia is a condition where a lack of iron in the body leads to a reduction in the number of red blood cells. Iron is used to produce red blood cells, which help store and carry oxygen in the blood. If there are fewer red blood cells than normal, your organs and tissues will not get as much oxygen as they usually would. This means you can suffer from tiredness, shortness of breath, heart palpitations and a pale complexion. If left untreated it can make people more susceptible to illness and infection. Pregnant women and children are particularly vulnerable. Anemia is thought to contribute to 20% of all deaths during pregnancy. Source: World Health Organization

true, still the lights (and building) work for years so the cost could be spread over there lifetime (if 8 years then less then $1 million a year). GE is onboard so they may be getting bulbs cheaply <& cheaper if mass produced in the future). Really getting an 7 or 8 5 or 6% return on total investment isn't a bad thing, especially when it potentially does so much good, ie they're shipping produce, say within 5 miles versus 60. And its Japan where prices for produce are high, land prices astronomical. It'll be interesting to see the economics as they experiment with other crops. Keep in mind its also a prototype so costs could be reduced as they perfect and multiply the system. It doesn't look like they're doing it but they could supplement with sunlight, with some changes to the roof, to save energy and bulb life. It may be going bigger or smaller could be the answer. With something a tenth that size; I'm imagining something attached to a large grocery store (or above it) that used similar methods and grew just enough varied produce for that store could be a sweet spot (or not). Also look at the alternative of doing it the normal way. Would it be $50 million(? no idea actually, I assume fertile land in Japan is extraordinarily expensive) for the acreage, millions (?) for equipment, charges for 100 x more water and increased labor? I know transportation costs there are high and slow. Its all about synergies and economics, but Whole Foods and there ilk has shown people will pay a premium for quality. It may also be about getting these places to where people need food most. Creating smaller easily created 'Ikea' style factories that can be set up in famished areas would be tremendous. Even at a total loss, hiring natives, native distribution, setting up cooperatives to replicate indoor stacked hyper farms might be tremendous.

This is a controversial enough question that it deserves its own thread <and its getting far from the OP> If the parties involved and most knowledgeable want to create it.

The point I was thinking of is it's better to go deep then go wide. And by filtering to a 'few good sources' you end up with having fewer sources; tadah. Which is good, if you go deep.

The highest level people in anything are like arrows. An internet forum is simply not part of the target. I get the feeling we'd all be much more advanced if we had fewer sources of information, at some point it's all distraction.

I was thinking of some house cleaning. For example in this Forum we have 'No Link for Mo Pai threads' as a pinned heading. Thankfully that ship of drama has sailed. It could be unpinned to drift where it will. There are probably other Pinned threads that could be released into the current too.

The way to increase charisma may be the same as the short answer to 'What is the secret of life?' Cultivate Enthusiasm.

I don't have much experience with other sites. Originally I was active on the Healing Tao USA site, but ultimately the lack of moderation and even more the lack of conversationality, ie the structure made it more for talking at people then carrying on indepth discussion. So pieces, some of them brilliant were quickly lost down stream. Over the years I've seen good sites as well as bad disappear. We've been lucky with the Dao Bums. What do you think keeps a site healthy? What balances do we need? How do attract new members and retain old ones?

Thought this was interesting and could set a future savior: a space half the size of a football field growing 10,000 heads of lettuce a day. Using 99% less water.. wow. And its not ideaware, its been built. #5. Shigeharu Shimamura's Indoor Farm: Making Traditional Farms Look Like Shit Kyodo/AP Imagine you're standing in 2011 Japan, surveying the devastation left in the wake of the tsunami. What would you do? We know what we would do: We would fill our drawers with a relentless stream of liquid terror poo. Shigeharu Shimamura, on the other hand, is apparently immune to such humanly fears. Instead, he surveyed what looked like the aftermath of a vengeful god dick-slapping a Sony semiconductor factory and said, "Yep, I can use that to solve world hunger." So, his company Mirai Industry Co., Ltd. transformed the factory into the world's largest indoor farm, and, according to the figures, they're off to a damn good start: It's 100 times more productive than traditional dirt farming, uses 40 percent less electricity, 99 percent less water, and wastes 80 percent less food. The farm's LED lights are a shade of fuchsia best described as "violent," which tricks the plants into optimizing their day/night cycles for the optimal rate of photosynthesis (that's science-speak for "it makes stuff grow real fast"). There are 17,500 of these high-tech lights in the farm's 25,000 square feet of garden beds. Shimamura and his company assure us that eating something that's been this aggressively pinked will not, in fact, transform us into a race of Hello Kitties. Continuing with our numbers theme, the farm yields a massive 10,000 heads of lettuce every day, allowing a single installation like this to comfortably feed a small nation (if said nation consists of rabbits). It's also pesticide -- and bacteria -- free, which explains why the workers appear to have stepped straight out of The Stand. General Electric That, and to protect them from the spit of mutant plants. Similar farms have been built by Mirai in Mongolia, and more are planned in Russia and Hong Kong. So, while they haven't saved the world yet, the future's at least looking bright for our BLTs. Excerpt: on it's efficiency: " Following the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that plunged the whole country of Japan in turmoil, a local food shortage ensued. An inspired entrepreneur, Shigeharu Shimamura, took an old semiconductor factory that was abandoned following the disaster and turned it into the largest indoor farm in the world. Using state of the art growing technology, his company manages to make some 10,000 heads of lettuce per day out of the 25,000 square feet facility. This makes it 100 times more productive per square foot than traditional agriculture, all with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields. The massive productivity is mainly achieved by manipulating the plants’ day and night cycles. Using custom developed LEDs from General Electric, scientists have shortened the day/night cycle for the lettuce, to such an extent that they grow two and a half times faster. Besides lightning, systems are in place that fine-tune other important factors like humidity and temperature. Stacking growth mediums atop each other further boosts productivity per square foot. Productivity is not only increased by producing more, but by wasting less. In a conventional agriculture setting more than 30% of the lettuce grown ends up in the trash heap, while just 3% of Shimamura’s special “coreless” indoor lettuce gets wasted. Currently, the process is “only half automated. Machines do some work, but the picking part is done manually. In the future, though, I expect an emergence of harvesting robots. For example, a robot that can transplant seedlings, or for cutting and harvesting, or transporting harvested produce to be packaged,” according to a report issued by the Japanese company. Once the process becomes fully automated, productivity is expected to rise even further. “I believe that, at least technically, we can produce almost any kind of plant in a factory. But what makes most economic sense is to produce fast-growing vegetables that can be sent to the market quickly. That means leaf vegetables for us now. In the future, though, we would like to expand to a wider variety of produce. It’s not just vegetables we are thinking about, though. The factory can also produce medicinal plants. I believe that there is a very good possibility we will be involved in a variety of products soon,” says Shimamura. What makes the prospect so appealing is that this is a self-contained design that can be implemented anywhere. Once you have the technology and science well in place, you can transfer operations to anywhere on the globe, and true enough the same technologies has been announced and is now under construction in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China. Like Shimamura stated earlier, however, this approach only works in some limited cases, most notably crowded cities with expensive real-estate. One can imagine such micro-facilities made by small producers right in the heart of cities, thus stocking a daily, fresh supplies of farm goods. As the costs of installing large scale or small scale indoor farming go down, expect to hear more of such endeavors. Who knows, maybe soon there’ll be one in your very own city. Read more: http://www.zmescience.com/science/biggest-indoor-farm-more-productive-0423432/#ixzz3a94pqqck

Going off into the mountains is such a harsh difficult existence with the danger of starvation, craziness, loneliness, disease and injury that if you need an outside force to convince you to do it. You definitely should not. If the outside world isn't particularly attacking you now and your worried about it. Changing your location change probably won't help? Better to concentrate on your own life. One's peace doesn't lie in location, it lies in wisdom focus, ie the Serenity Prayer you mentioned. We seem have a set point of anxiety. Leave one environment or job for another and we keep that set point, and end up just as anxious, and alone in the mountains there's alot to be anxious and scared about. May I have the Serenity-to accept the things I cannot Change Courage-to change the things I can Wisdom-to know the difference and an Escape Plan-for after I kick the bastards in the balls later add> on the third hand, sometimes changing ones location can change a whole lot. Sometimes we grow better in other places.

this one does: http://wudangtao.org/ still good stuff there in the Master's Blog. I'll have to go listen to his guided meditations soon.

I'll give to charity and I'll also be pretty hedonistic when I can. I try not to over think social justice dimension. Too much inquiry can be demoralizing, depressing and paralyzing. There are lines of conduct I won't cross and within that moralizing framework I perform without much guilt.

O2 therapy is used in regular hospitals. I don't think its the magic bullet cure that the article makes it out to be though, ie cures everything and there's an conspiracy to keep it quiet. I thought its used from premature births to burn victims to emphysema cases. I think..

Linked to this from a off topic link about mattresses. I was just at a huge Thai spa, filled with special rooms, ie Gold room, charcoal room, amethyst, ice, uber heat etc., Some of them had just that 'pillow' for laying the head on. Lately my secret weapon is the Spoonk http://www.spoonkspace.com/, kinda like a yoga mat with thousands of plastic spikes on it. You wouldn't want to sleep on it, but for 20 or 30 minutes it loosens the back and makes it feel much better. I don't know if the secret is its hitting acupressure points or just a reaction to painful spikes, but it works well.

Due to my wife I sleep on a nice firm mattress. But at yoga ashrams I slept on a thin sponge type mattress 3 or so inches thick placed on plywood. It took a few days but I think I slept better on the thin cheap mattress over plywood; falling asleep faster and going deeper. Some padding is probably optimal but modern mattresses probably overdue it.

Fascinating video, here's the link: in a similar vein here's a story on how large mammals like elephants fight desertification - http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en It's especially poignant because the author had written a paper in his younger days saying an ecological problem was too many elephants, which led to a mass slaughter. It was later in his life he realized what an incredibly important cog they were environmentally; how the large hoofed mammals sustained and fought desertification.

I don't do yoga, but I've hung out at the Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island because A. its in the Caribbean, Great food, good meditation and you meet some fascinating spiritual types. <who are also ditching early morning yoga class for Starbucks. >

I was thinking the late 60's, 70's and early 80's were way more sexual then we are now. Without killer STDs there seemed to be quite a bit more casual sex then. More clubs, open life styles, casual and experimental sex. I'm far from any hip scene, (the fact I use 'hip' proves it) but I get the feeling the sexual pendulum, perhaps out of necessity, has been moving more conservative the last decade or two. times aren't as groovy as they used to be, man. With drugs too, the movement toward decriminalization, legalization; stopping 3 strikes and your out, and other bias'd crazy expensive drug incarceration policies is swinging in a saner direction. Too slow and there's inevitable backlashes, but in general its moving in the right direction. Groups like the tea party aren't exactly bastions of sex drugs and rock'n roll, but some would say they're easily led. Really, too often the definition of a brain washed group is 'one that disagrees with me'.

and/or a few bladders to blow air into. That way less weight and more customization, though you'd still want some padding so it'd breath.

I'm w/ Marblehead, its a very enlightened ideal. Still, looking at some of the prison systems in Northern Europe which to our eyes coddle criminals. Great living spaces and rehab facilities. W/ the number of people we arrest here it'd be instantly bankrupting. Still some pet programs would be interesting. Spending more upfront might be the cheapest way. As well as knocking out certain 'prison feeder' laws.

or just make into a smaller weedlike plant.

I thought I did it because it felt good, real good. I have 'sexually fasted', yet find myself happiest having sex 2 or so times a week. Course, thats me. I'm on the 'house holder' route, not the monk path. There are times for discipline and times to keep it natural. Hopefully with wisdom the two align.

Eye of Storm is a racist and anti-Semite who used the board as a soapbox to spread his prejudices. When he's back we can expect him creating threads and peppering random posts to include how the Jews are evil and taking over the world. I'd be open to Deci and ChiDragon though, they could be prickly and opinionated but didn't use the board to further racist views.

Things go wrong when you try to do right. Then again, they also go wrong when we do nothing and generally the most wrong when we don't give a damn and act selfishly. I think when things go wrong, when trying to do right, its usually because I pushed too hard, was too emotional and too attached. Without those factors, I think doing right would generally work out better.