Month: June 2013

This week the American Medical Association has declared obesity a disease. In an online article by the Voice of America, they state there has been a fifty percent increase in obesity cases between 1997-2012. According to the article , the World Health Organization states, 2.8 million people die from the disease.

What does this mean to the average American who is over weight?  The hope is the insurance companies will allow benefits to treat this new disease, that has been around for some time now. However at this point in time, insurance companies not doctors set the standards and conditions for weight loss procedures and behavioral modifications. I for one am not happy with insurance companies deciding who may have surgery or help with a weight loss program. Hopefully, this will change in the near future. I am one of the one-third of Americans who must lose weight and have a body mass  index reading of over 35.

I am at risk for cancer, type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart problems. Knowing this, my nephew and his wife are offering a program that will be tailored to my needs. It is called, Take Shape for Life (TSFL). I am going to include the video for this program. It seems to include features from Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and the South Beach diet to list a few. Most of the cost is in the food packages that are shipped to you monthly. What makes this program different is the help that is given to the participants.

I am currently on the Weight Watchers program and have been trying to lose weight with it for over ten years. I, however, need the personal support of ” in your face” supporters, like life coaches or sports coaches provide. I have never reached my ultimate goal with WW and end up giving up and gaining weight. I do not like the meetings or the lack of individualized attention. On the other hand, I do not like food that is not fresh and in its natural state.

Working for Manpower, Inc. at Google in their Hosting Services Program, I get to eat in the cafes on Google’s campus. This is suppose to be healthy food and for the most part is. However, I have been counting portions and points and find that it is really important to make food choices based on the caloric cost of the food eaten. When everything is on display and looks fantastic, it is really hard to eat the correct portion based on your individual caloric requirements. Making food choices that are healthy is only part of the total picture. You must make choices on what the calorie count of the foods to be ingested is. There is nothing at Google that lets the person know what they are ingesting as far as calories go.

Granted most of the employees at Google look pretty lean and mean to me; because they are young and active. I have yet to see anyone that looks as fluffy as I am. When I look at the younger people ( just about anyone is younger than me), I can’t help but feel out of place. So, that is motivating me to go back to a strict life style change. I will spend two to three months on the WW program and switch over to the stricter TSFL program.

I have already begun to count my points on the WW program and do not feel satisfied with the food amounts I am now eating! I want to indulge myself; but I can only do this with a set amount of points which convert to calorie counts. My goal is 1600 calories per day. I certainly am not at that limit at this time. I have increased my exercise routine and swim once or twice a week, ride my bike and ride at a local stable once a week. By doing this I can increase the amount of calories I can use, since it gets added to my daily caloric count.

The problem is, there is a lot of guess work in trying to calculate points on this program. Often there is no way of knowing how many calories are in certain foods. For example, if you eat at Denny’s and order the senior tilapia the calculation is 14 points; however, this includes the bread that comes with the meal. What happens when you do what I do and don’t eat the rolls that come with it, have a salad with less than a tsp of salad dressing and get fresh veggies instead of rice or potatoes? This whole counting calories thing leaves a lot to be desired. The classes supposedly solve this problem, NOT! The other problem with meetings is everyone is trying to learn while sitting on their back sides. I would prefer learning while we were exercising.

I would like to go through sugar withdrawal like the South Beach diet demands. I can’t help but wonder if that program, as hard as it is for two weeks, might not be the right answer. I have a hard time with carbs and need to use more protein in my diet than other people. Worse yet, I need more calcium since certain medications strip my system of calcium. With all this on my plate, I yearn for the time when I could eat whatever I wanted and never gain a pound. I spent most of my life weighing 126-132 pounds and am now carrying twice that. Talk about having been self indulgent and never learning portion control!

So whatever diet you choose and/or if you decide to have the surgery, I wish you well. I know what a struggle losing weight is and like drugs or alcohol, food is addictive. The dictionary states the word disease means a harmful development. Now we know what real life conditions being over weight brings upon us, let’s try to commit to living a long healthy productive life, at a more suitable weight. Most “baby boomers” are heeding these warnings and are working on reducing their weight. Now if we could just get employers to hire us!!

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/vlastula/2864400414/”>Vlastula</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;

Have you ever seen an object in the sky you could not identify? Could you conceive of the possibility that something extraterrestrial has landed on earth and been seen in our sky? Eighty million Americans believe not only is it true, but they believe their government is hiding something from them about this phenomena. According to the United Nations circa 100,000,000 people have had some sort of experience with UFO’s since 1978 .

France was the first country to open their files on a government sponsored website in 2007 and in October of 2007 Canada followed suit. In 2009 Brazil and Russia released some of their files. In 2012, the New Zealand government joined the party. The United States terminated it’s program called Project Blue Book on the study of sightings in 1969. Today millions of people around the world continue to see objects in the sky that cannot be identified.

After watching every program and reading every book about ufology, I can get my hands on, I have mixed emotions and confused thinking about where the reality lies. One of my favorite programs is aired on the History channel and is called, “Ancient Aliens.” It is simply an unproved theory that captures the imagination. It does not answer what people are seeing. The magazine Popular Mechanics stated that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had every reason for wanting people believing in the myth of UFO’s. The secret aircraft programs of both Lockheed and Boeing supported by the US government, to mention only a few, were best served by a belief in alien aircraft and not American experimental secret aircraft and unmanned drones. But the question to ask is this really all there is to the sightings?

Here is where the investigation of sightings gets bogged down in belief systems. For those who are committed to the belief that UFOs exist, there is no way to argue with them, when they cite the hundreds of pages of testimony about sightings from reliable sources.  Pilots are considered to be one of the most reliable sources. I think it is safe to say that many pilots are afraid they will lose their jobs if they report what they see in the sky. Which makes sense if they are seeing experimental aircraft that is highly classified. On the other hand, one has to wonder if they are seeing something else, that may not be one of ours.

I believe that the CIA has so totally confused us with it’s disinformation campaign that we may never really know the truth until we speak to an alien on national television or one lands in a place no one can discount. It makes more sense to believe that something has been left unanswered; but only concrete proof will clear up the matter once and for all. If in fact I was from another planet and/or galaxy and far more advanced then humans, I would not want my presence known to earth’s government officials. Our governments have been less than trustworthy for some time now.

I would make myself known to certain people; those who could not prove my existence. I would want to feed their curiosity. I would want them to search for the answers they would need to protect their sanity. Maybe in the end we will find they are the human race from the future or aliens from another dimension. As we search for the answers we increase our knowledge as a people. Maybe that in itself is the reason this quest has begun.

I have been assigned at the Google Seattle and Kirkland office via Manpower Incorporated for one year this month!  I love the place and really like the people, however young/old they are. I see mostly millennial generation employees. Yes, they are different…but in a good way.

I anxiously awaited the movie “the Internship” with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. I was so tired the Friday it came out, I thought I might fall asleep during the movie. Nope, I did not and loved it! I truly had a good time watching  what the Hollywood producers did with the material!

Because I am an older adult, I had a lot to relate to in the movie. I have read some of the reviews and know that it did not do well in the box office. However, there were a couple of messages in the movie that caught my attention.  First, as an older adult, I know how hard it is to get a job, much less a job in a highly technical company. A local company where I live has failed to hire me, even though I have tried for almost twenty years. I know I have the skills. Nevertheless, it has not happened for me. The bottom line is there are a lot of myths out there about older workers.

Secondly, there was a learning process taking place in the movie.  Wilson and Vaughn, through their interactions with the young techies, held onto a vision they had to get the internship no matter what. They really wanted to learn the technology and they wanted to work for Google. I can relate to that. However, it soon became clear that there were attitudes that needed to be changed when you throw a couple of older people in with young, bright, technically adapted digital learners. They proved that older people who actually helped invent computers like we have today, can learn the technology and adapt to the culture.

I have always had computers, since they first came out.  However, I never really learned the new programs and technology, so I went to the local college to get an online teaching certification. Nope, never got a job teaching and stop trying. I became so discouraged, I decided to stop and think about if I needed more training or not. I have decided all I need is a chance and experience.  I am still not certain if that will ever happen. Unlike me,  Wilson and Vaughn hung onto their dream and refused to let defeat get to them! A great lesson to learn and a great lesson to teach.

I want to admit that I have never really felt out of place at Google.  Most of the young men/women I have met there speak to me as an equal. I do not feel by their deportment, they are talking with an old woman, who is out of touch and out of date. I have been treated with nothing but respect, even when I had some complaints…which were resolved immediately!! Both of my supervisors and/or managers are younger women and I deeply respect them for their efforts to meet my needs as an employee. I applaud Google for doing this for their employees as well. That being said, do I have the skills they need to hire me direct…that depends? Would they hire someone my age, I have no idea. Did they hire Wilson and Vaughn? We will never know, because the story doesn’t take us there.

If you haven’t seen this movie, it is a good one.  I would rate it a B+. I think they could have worked toward getting a more developed story out of the script. However, they were dealing with a very complicated issue today…hiring older workers and then helping them fit into the teams they are part of, rather then hiring people human resources thinks will fit in. Actually, there are a lot of myths that need to be dispelled. So if you have the time, go see the movie or buy it when it comes out. I had a great time watching the peccadilloes they encountered real or not! I think you will too. Finally, remember Hollywood loves to exaggerate reality.

From the beginning of recorded history there has been a belief in mermaids. There are cave drawings in Egypt, that depict the appearance of said creatures of the sea. Recently Animal Planet ran two stories about the possibility that these creatures may exist and are undiscovered. In fact 3.6 million viewers watched the two programs.

All of the evidence used in the filming was based on a hypothesis called the ” Aquatic Ape” hypothesis or theory purposed by a marine biologist, called Alister Hardy in circa the 1930’s and was published in the 1960’s. By the 1970’s Elaine Morgan had written six books on this theory and gained some attention with her book called, “the Descent of Woman.” She wrote this book because of her irritation at the authors and scientists of the day that gave women little notice in the theories that were being accepted on evolution. Elaine Morgan (video on her reasoning) is a  octogenarian scientist feminist and believed the reason the theory was not accepted was because men in the scientific community were not interested in viewing women as the main subjects of their research. She also felt that the dominance of the Savanna theory, biased the research evidence found by these academics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTe9qVEAcXk

I use the word theory very loosely when speaking on this Aquatic Ape theory.  A theory is something built on testable hypothesis. Since there is no proof other than folk lore and cave paintings created during the paleolithic period some 30,000 years ago, it is difficult with any amount of certainty to say this is a theory and it is testable. However, that being said, a great deal of thought and scientific information went into the creation of the television program called, Mermaids: the Body Found and the New Evidence, which aired on Animal Planet and was created by Charlie Foley. It gives a person pause when it comes to dismissing mermaids and the Aquatic Ape theory and Darwinism.

If one wanted to visualize how these creatures would look, the creators of this program came close to creating a possible imagine based on the scientific information they had from other evolutionary theories. I for one, love to swim and scuba dive and could spend hours in lakes and pools. Swimming for me is as natural as breathing. I love the water (not so much now after watching Jeremy Wade in Monster Rivers), however. One of my children swam in our pool before she could walk. Yes babies do open their eyes underwater and can swim without being taught. They instinctively hold their breath. This leads me to believe there could be something to this whole idea of mermaids, even though it was not based on actual events, for the most part. I would like to think, after watching the creations of Animal Planet’s mermaids, they do look like the mermaids in the Mermaid’s presentation.

It is with great interest people all over the world watch presentations like the one aired on Animal Planet. I think we want to know how much of the fork lore about mermaids is real and how much is myth. I ran across this video and thought, “okay, that makes me think!” So I am putting in this blog video for you to view and consider whether you think there might be some truth to the myths we all grew up with. This video is  a lecture length video and worth watching if nudity or length doesn’t bother you. I highly suggest you also look at the material Elaine Morgan has written, as well. The video does ramble a bit, and could be a better presentation of the subject matter; however, it has presented some highly interesting material. The choice of pictures could be more scientific if they existed; but they certainly would hold the attention of some viewers. I apologize, for these pictures, to the female or males reading this blog and watching this video. What is so interesting is the concept the narrator is unraveling in the telling of the history, myth, folk lore and the art in some of the pictures.

Warning: Parental Guidance due to nudity of the 1 and 1/2 hour video. See: “Secret History of Mermaid”s on my Blog roll.