Don’t miss our year end blowout.

Last night I learned on Coast to Coast AM that Yellowstone has been having earthquake swarms since December 26. Earthquakes are normal for the Yellowstone region and largely go unnoticed. Although a swarm of more than 250 quakes in several days is unusual, so far no one is panicking. Not that panicking would do any good. If Yellowstone blows, half of the country will be covered in ash three feet deep. Still, it’s something to ponder, 2012 enthusiasts.

The Learning Disability Myth

The Learning Disability Myth*

Dr. Robin Pauc with Jacqueline Burns

Nonfiction 213 pages Virgin Books, 2006

In his book, “The Learning Disability Myth,” Dr. Pauc addresses a number of developmental and behavioral disorders and presents the basics of his treatment methods. These disorders include: learning disabilities, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Childhood Turette’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. Each of these conditions share overlapping symptoms, causes and treatments and should therefore be reclassified as aspects of what he calls, Developmental Delay Syndrome. The cause of Developmental Delay Syndrome is that spindle cells, which appear in the prefrontal cortex four months after birth, fail to properly integrate with other parts of the brain. The treatment involves proper diet and stimulation of these cells. Dr. Pauc prescribes removing unhealthy foods and food additives from the diet while adding healthy ones. His book includes a two-week eating plan. He is less specific, however, about his therapies for stimulating wayward spindle cells. Quoting from the letter of a thirty year old patient, these therapies could include, “listening to Mozart, with a view to gain right-ear dominance, looking through a Syntonizer at different lights for an hour a day for two weeks to open the fields of vision, … walking up the stairs with my eyes shut and holding a tray with a glass of water on it to help stimulate the left cerebellum!” Has Dr. Pauc made revolutionary discoveries, or are his claims exaggerated? Dr. Pauc readily discusses neurology, but never mentions that he is a Chiropractor, not a Neurologist. If the reader wrongly infers his profession, Dr. Pauc can, at worst, be accused of omission, rather than of deception. Evidence presented in books written for casual readers tends to be anecdotal rather than statistical. Dr. Pauc’s evidence is also anecdotal. If you want statistics, you’ll need to read elsewhere. Based on the evidence offered, I am unable to form conclusions. I invite your opinions, be they based on personal, or professional, experience.

*March 12, 2021 - No longer published under title above
 

Link building with Blogger

One of the best ways to increase your blog traffic is to encourage other bloggers to link to your blog. The easiest way to do this is to post comments on other people’s blogs. Your comment should always include a link to your blog.

Here’s a few more things you should do:

1. Open the Settings panel from the Blogger dashboard.
2. Select the Comments tab in the Settings panel (Figure 1).
3. Set the Backlinks option by checking the Show radio button. Your blog information will now display a link that says, ”Links to this post.” (Figure 2).
4. Clicking, “Links to this post,” will display the permalink for the current post. A link reading, “Create a Link,” is displayed under the header, “Links to this post.”
5. After clicking, “Create a link,” a window appears displaying the link. You can choose to display either rich text or HTML. The HTML will look something like this: “<a href="http://truthtalltales.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-ceos-come-begging.html#links">Truth and Tall Tales: When CEOs come a begging</a>”
   You can change the title to, “See related article,” by changing the code to: “<a href="http://truthtalltales.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-ceos-come-begging.html#links">See related article</a>”

Another good way to encourage links to your blogs is to provide links to other’s blogs. Blogger provides several ways of creating lists of links.

1. Open the Layout panel from the Blogger dashboard.
2. Choose the option to “Add a Gadget” (Figure 3).
3. Choose either Blog List or Link List from among the available gadget choices. When you add a blog link, inform that blog’s author. The author might return the favor. If he doesn’t, try replacing that link with a link to someone else’s blog. Eventually, you’ll have a list of links to blogs linking to your blog.

Dangerous uses for peanut butter.

I once supped with a bachelor who poured chocolate syrup on his pizza. BeauJo’s located in three spring towns, (Idaho, Steamboat and Glenwood), and elsewhere in Colorado, furnishes honey to put on their thick crusts. Okay, I can deal with that, but chocolate syrup?

Fortunately, peanut butter isn’t pizza. Everyone knows that Elvis liked to put bananas on his peanut butter sandwiches. I like mine with sharp cheddar cheese, or perhaps sprinkled with bacon bits. Think that’s strange? How about mixing peanut butter with vinegar, chilies and soy sauce and pouring it over noodles? Live dangerously.

Matzo Ball Soup for Gentiles

It was recently Thanksgiving here in the U.S. of A. and perhaps you have a turkey carcass somewhere around the house. If so, you’re in luck because you can make matzo ball soup. If not, Christmas is coming—consider serving turkey.

Easy Matzo Ball Soup Recipe
Make turkey soup.
Make matzo balls.
Drop the matzo balls into the soup.

Okay, maybe that was a little too easy. Just what is a matzo ball anyway? Matzos are the, often bland tasting, crackers that Jews eat during the Passover season. Matzos commemorate the time when the ancient Jews were captives in Egypt. Upon gaining their freedom, they had to beat it out of Egypt so fast that they didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise.

Purchase matzo meal in the kosher section of your grocery store. Look for a recipe for matzo balls on the package. Follow it. Find a recipe for turkey soup. Follow it.

Make sure you refrigerate your matzo meal mixture before you roll it into matzo balls. A one-inch diameter is about right. Toss the matzo balls in your turkey soup. They will expand as they cook and their color will lighten. When done, the outer segments will be soft, and the interiors, slightly firm. Mazel tov.

Take two aspen and call a tree surgeon.

Colorado conifers have undergone major bark beetle infestation since 1996. Forests show ugly patches where the needles are diseased and red rather than healthy and green. Biologists claim some types of bark beetles are increasing because more can survive warmer winters. Due to climate warming, their range expands into higher altitudes and more northerly latitudes.

If you spend some time in the mountains, you can’t help noticing the degree to which spruce and pine trees are dying off. But you may not know that aspen are suffering, too. An article by Michelle Nijhuis in the December 2008 issue of Smithsonian, addresses the issue.

Foresters began observing aspen die-off in western Colorado in 2004. Although aspen bark beetles, borers, fungi, and diseases have all attacked the aspen, the underlying causes of aspen decline are high temperatures and draught, which stress the trees allowing them to fall victim to secondary causes.

It’s said that you can’t control the weather, but apparently people can, and have, influenced the climate. Global warming has begun, but perhaps it’s not too late to slow its progress. If we don’t, those beautiful mountain vistas may not be.