That would explain it, Kryten.

We could never go to city bars with the country guys on our shift when I was in law enforcement – they had absolutely no sense of who was a threat, and assumed that everyone walked away, if a little battered, from a bar fight. Many of the “quiet” bars that those of us who lived in the city liked, were constantly removing chalk outlines from the floor when stupid people would annoy some of the regulars. No one wanted trouble, but they definitely had no intention of backing down. Threat assessment was a totally alien concept to them.

If you want trivial, teach at college-level. Students freak out at just about everything except what is really important for their future. The brain is definitely not fully formed until after the college years. If you’ve covered oxygen, water, food, and shelter, everything else is just annoying, not life threatening.

The Doc showed me this new insulin system. Only needs 2 injections a day now. The unit comes in a box with 7 packs of 2 (a weeks supply) and are fully self contained and disposable. The needle is tiny and I would hardly feel it (which isn’t a problem anyway.) 🙂

I’ve always believed that stress is the biggest killer. I try not to get stressed as much as possible. Which curiously, tends to get other people annoyed because they think I don’t care or don’t take them seriously (which, I do have to admit happens occasionally when people stress over something really trivial) if I just stay calm etc when they tell me something they consider tragic etc. Hey, I survived a year in Cambodia, and other deadly places. Almost everything else *IS* trivial to me. 😉 *shrug* I’m not gonna get an ulcer because someone else needs to get stressed over something! Life is too short as it is. 😉

It’s always safer to go with what you know if you are swallowing it.

I hope things start to come together for you, Kryten. They usually do, and there is a lot of promising work taking place on type-2 diabetes, especially in the Commonwealth.

Oh, yeah, Badtux, a biscuit and gravy breakfast will easily hold you until lunch. Sounds like those biscuits will stick to your ribs, if they don’t break them. 😉

Ah, Badtux, based on the doctors in the local hospital emergency room, the for-profit hospital corporations have imported their staff from third world countries. I’m guessing that more than a few of them would be happy to accept chickens in payment, a goat would get you super-service.

The bacon grease was used for flavoring and salt in things like biscuits. Salt pork especially hog jowls and other such “everything but the grunt” fare was regularly added to vegetable dishes in order to add taste. None of this was light or “healthy” fare. My grandmother’s biscuits were *stout*. Not quite dwarvish battle bread, but definitely nothing light or fluffy about them, one of those biscuits with some gravy over it was pretty much a meal :). But oh-so-good… and didn’t seem to do my grandmother or great-grandmother any harm, just as the whole milk or real butter or real cheese didn’t, they both died of cancer at an advanced age, not of anything to do with their diet.

Kryten, I’ve had to change jobs twice and move once because of stress-related illnesses taking their toll on my health. Thus why I am in a rather sedate backwater of the computer business today, though somehow I’ve ended up back doing something peripherally related to security (next time you transit through DFW wave to me , or at least to the cameras attached to one of my camera farm clusters 🙂 ). I think people underestimate just how much harm stress does to your health, my blood pressure goes through wild fluctuations when I’m stressed out (either my ears are pounding or I’m passing out), there’s that cough, there’s the wild weight fluctuations… not surprising that, as Bryan points out, average life expectancy is going down in the U.S. today. Especially given the collapsing state of the U.S. health care system, which hasn’t been #1 in the world for over 20 years, indeed, on most measures of quality ranks somewhere around the typical Eastern Europe nation…

I’ve used the Inner Health products for many years now. they are the only ones I tried that actually wok (for me anyway). 🙂

Errmmm… Erratum: “Moore’s sight” –> “Moore’s site” , of course! I’ve actually NOT had a good day. I found out from my Doc this morning that I will probably be on Insulin in the new year (the diabetes med’s Diaformin & Diamicron are not working any more. My hba1c & glucose levels are slowly going up.) Then, the $300+ titanium frames on my $700 eye-glasses broke, and I don’t have the money to get them replaces (the arm actually snapped off), and something else went wrong (that I won’t bother mentioning. You get the idea.) So, expect more typo’s etc., sorry about that! 😉 And it *proves* that trouble really does come in threes! Been saying that for decades (thanks to my Grandfather explaining that to me! I think I’d be better off If I’d never heard of that.) *SIGH*

And a Merry Christmas to all! Bah humbug! 😛 😉 😆

Ehhhh… It’s OK everybody! 😉 Just being annoyed. 😆 Have a great Christmas (whether you celebrate it or not)! Peace to all. 🙂

Kryten: Life expectancy in the US has gone down recently, which is consistent with what happened during the Depression. The birthrate should also decline, as people put off having children because of the unsettled conditions. This is all known and should be expected, but it will probably become another crisis. Logically when health care is dependent on employment, as it is in the US, when there is high unemployment, there are fewer people able to seek health care. Lacking health care cause the number of preventable deaths increases. This isn’t magic, any more than it was magic when the Boomers hit 45 in the early 90s and the crime rate started to decline. Crimes are committed generally by males between 15 and 45, so when that group gets smaller so does the the number of crimes. The politicians built a lot of prisons just in time for them to be extraneous.

There are so many cons and frauds with “dietary supplements” that you should only get them from someone you trust, and only use them when you need them.

I mentioned before that I assumed that many of the classified documents in the dump were probably lies designed to misinform. That was certainly true of Panama, and might be true in Cuba, but the Cuban interest section has long been a captive of the Calle Ocho crowd of Cuban exile whackoes, that there is no way of knowing.

PJ: They carry Barber’s here, it would just be a matter of figuring out who, if anyone, carries that particular product.

You might add a dash of cinnamon or use brown sugar for a change. I remember eating buttered bread with sugar sprinkled on it as a child, and if you added cinnamon and toasted it in the oven it was really good.

The thing I found with probiotics is that: a) they are expensive, especially the *good* ones, and b) they are useless unless you need them, and may even make things worse in the long run. *shrug* I use (when I need to): Inner Health Plus

I was looking through Moore’s site (as I do occasionally), and came across this gem. 😉

¡Viva WikiLeaks! SiCKO Was Not Banned in Cuba

Yeah, really! 😛 😀

Isn’t lard another of those things that are nowadays easier to find as ethnic groceries? I think it had been pretty much displaced by Crisco in your average U.S. supermarket even pre-1970’s.

Guess I’m catching up to your GGM, Bryan. I’ve recently re-acquired a childhood fondness for milk-toast as a comfort food (milk, butter & sugar heated with shredded toast).

She was from Switzerland and had 18 kids, no twins, by her 45th birthday. Like your great grandmother, Badtux, when the girls got old enough, they took over the actual work, so it wasn’t the total drudgery that people would imagine, including a few reporters who profiled the family.

They were well known in New York, and President William McKinley was the godfather of my Great Uncle Samuel. Another of the boys was named William McKinley Imhof [actually it was spelled Emhoff or Emhof depending on who was doing the reporting in the US].

Your description of the biscuit pudding with peach preserves reminded me of Chriesitotsch, Swiss cherry pudding, which is like cherry pie filling mixed with toast cubes soaked in milk. Of course it should have whipped cream on top. It was a regular desert in my family.

My Great-grandmother was more than slightly weird. when one of the boys married a Catholic, she claimed her new daughter-in-law had hexed her false teeth, so GGM refused to wear them for the last several decades of her life and lived primarily on bread soaked in milk. That restricted diet is probably the reason she only lived into her mid 90s instead of making it past 100, like her younger brother and many of her children.

Your great-grandmother knew that you need pork fat to bake a number of things. There is no point in even trying to make a pie crust without lard, which is pork fat. Bacon grease qualifies, but it tends to be salty, so you can’t use it for everything.

Yeah, the younger brother, my Great-great-uncle Chris died at 102 from cancer. As one of the aunts who did not approve of some of the things that he got up to noted: It was about time something killed him. He wasn’t much of a role model – drinking, smoking, and playing the accordion in a Swiss band at dances most weekends when the farm work allowed it. There was also his love of Studebakers and total lack of regard for traffic laws.