So much beauty around us, but so many people choose to become anonymous and lonely, living stacked in a big city, ultimately losing their authenticity.
The commercialization of the Olympic Games in a society that endorses enjoyment and consumption, with the professional athletes willing to do anything in their power to deliver. The Olympic spirit serves as nothing more but an excuse.
My first collage artwork ever, is done. Took about 8 hours of work in Photoshop, learned a lot in the meantime. My first collage subject is about the philosopher and my favorite indie artist, John Maus, and his need to “appear”. More explanation about the subject here.
Textures and shapes used were freeware, only the sky and the ground are using other pictures as source. Tutorial soon!
Update: My collage board at Pinterest!
I’m making an 180 degree turn, and getting myself into collage art. I decided that a couple of days ago. Funny thing is, for most of my life I hated collages, I found them to be some kind of art-cheating. But after seeing the works of Julien Pacaud and Jeffrey Meyer, I’m convinced that collage art is one of the coolest, versatile mediums out there. I started following the tag “collage” at TumblR lately too, and there are more updates for it than any other type of art right now. Hipster times…
The kind of collage I want to do is inspired by the two artists I mention above, but I want to show more contemporary elements in the composition. Collage artists are mostly using very old, usually copyright-free photographs, and this creates a fashionable, surrealistic world of nostalgia. But I feel that by not using more modern items (e.g. TVs, cellphones, modern cars etc) there’s an inevitable restriction in the work. Sure, the actual element used in an artistic work doesn’t have to be a factual representation of the object, but by only using old objects, a constrain arises in the spectrum of influence and interpretation. At least that’s my take on it, and I hope to do something about it.
In order to use modern objects I’d have to either pay for stock photography (no money for that though), or use pictures from FlickR. Unfortunately, Creative Commons-licensed pictures are not that high in numbers in order to create the best collage possible, so I might have to use copyrighted images too. Credits will be given for each picture used, the resulted PSD file will be offered as “open source” for educational purposes, and a tutorial will be written too for new, aspiring artists (update: tutorial is here). My works will be generally licensed under the CC-BY-SA-NC license (unless all elements are coming from CC-BY images, in which case my work will be CC-BY too), and at least for the collages using copyrighted elements, I won’t use commercially. With these precautions, I believe my work will fall under the “Fair Use” clause.
When that fateful day of September 3rd 2011 I dropped grains completely and found back my health, I did it originally through the SCD diet (similar to Paleo), that also embraces the healing of the gut via home-made, lactose-free, probiotic yogurt. I’ve since moved to Paleo/Primal (which is a more complete diet than SCD in my opinion), but I kept SCD’s yogurt regimen, specifically from goat milk, which is more tolerable than cow dairy (goats have A2 casein, instead of the human-incompatible A1 found in most cows).
Six months passed, and with the additional help of ketosis, most of my ailments are completely vanished. I’d still get an occasional IBS breakout, no more than what would be considered “normal” though by most people.
For a month now, I don’t do yogurt anymore, I’ve moved to home-made goat kefir (fermented for 24-36 hours). Kefir contains up to 40 types of bacteria & yeasts, while yogurt usually contains 3 to 10 strains of bacteria. It also contains up to 5 trillion of these organisms, while yogurt usually goes up to 1-2 trillion per cup (a probiotic pill usually has up to 15 billion, most of them already dead by the time they’re bottled). Even people with lactose intolerance can tolerate kefir better than other dairy. Most importantly, the kinds of bacteria/yeasts that consist kefir, actually colonize the human gut, while yogurt’s strains only pass through, and are active in the gut for a short period of time. In other words, kefir is way more potent than yogurt.
Kefir is the stated reason why Caucasus people used to live up to 150 years old, before the modern cuisine caught up with them too. Kefir doesn’t only have internal healing and anti-cancer properties, but it can also heal external wounds. Its bacteria/yeasts strains work together in (visible by the human eye) colonies called “grains”, and attack any foreign microbe that is not part of their pack. E.Coli doesn’t stand a chance if it has the bad luck to fall into a cup (or a gut) of kefir.
Since I started having kefir, I haven’t had a single breakout of IBS, even when I stopped my Paleo-ketogenic diet and went plain Paleo (devouring quite a few carbs per day). Under “normal” circumstances, that would give me IBS symptoms at least once a week, but not while drinking kefir, no. In my mind, there’s no going back to yogurt, other than as the occasional treat: kefir is here to stay. It’s easier to make than yogurt too!
So why does kefir works so well? It’s for the same reason why some times fecal transplants from family members work for the treatment of IBS, SIBO, or C-Diff and other super-bugs: because you repopulate the gut with healthy strains that are compatible with the human gut. Kefir was probably “invented” by mistake. In the olden days, people would use the tripe of goats/sheep as a flask, to store milk or water. It probably only took one “bad” home-maker woman to not properly sterilize the tripe with hot water, before turning it into a flask. So the surviving bacteria from the tripe of these animals, fermented the milk. The poor husband, high up in the mountains of Caucasus taking care of his animals, had the choice of either drinking this weird sour milk/water, or go thirsty for the rest of the day. He drank it, he didn’t get sick by it, and so the story of kefir started. That was 2000 years ago, and while it’s just an assumption on my part on how it all started, it feels natural that it probably started this way. In contrast today, probiotic pills and yogurt strains are extracted from bovine tripe, but again, cows are incompatible with the human physiology, so these strains don’t stick in our gut. Goat/sheep’s strains do, so kefir became a superfood.
One word of caution though: to get these great benefits of kefir, you MUST make it yourself. The store-bought kefir products only have the limited effect of yogurt has, but not the extended properties of kefir. You see, you can’t bottle kefir with active yeasts in it: the alcohol produced by the yeasts would create pressure into the bottle, exploding it by the time it reaches the grocery store! Plus, the USDA is strict about some organisms that they haven’t fully researched yet, so kefir manufacturers in the US are forced to use the few well-known yogurt strains to make kefir. So if you want to get it right, you have to make goat kefir yourself. Buy the kefir grains from Amazon or elsewhere (make sure these are NOT kefir “starters”, but actual grains), and grow them according to instructions. Let them multiply and be happy & merry!
And as always, PubMed is your friend. The proof is in research too, not just anecdotal reports.
As I wrote before, we generally don’t use flours in our home (Paleo-approved flours or not). Except for crackers that is, to keep happy my French, cheese-loving husband. The recipe below makes for some amazing gluten-free cheese crackers, and JBQ says that they’re the best cheese crackers he had in his life. And he has tried quite a few so far.
Ingredients (makes 45-50 pieces, 1 gr of net carbs each)
* 1 cup of blanched, fine almond flour
* 3/4 cup of coarse almond meal (I get mine at Trader Joe’s)
* 1/2 cup of flaxseed whole ground meal
* 1 egg
* 1-2 TBspoons of finely minced, fresh herbs you have around: rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, marjoram, lavender, mint, basil etc.
* 2 TBspoons of fine Parmesan cheese (optional)
* 2 TBspoons of raw sesame seeds (and/or poppy seeds)
* 1.5 TBspoons of olive oil
* 1/4 tspoon sea salt
* Some freshly grounded black pepper to taste
Method
1. In a big bowl put all the ingredients together and start working the mixture with your hands. Soon it will become a well-rounded ball.
2. Cut out two pieces of parchment paper, as long as your cookie sheet is. Preheat the oven at 350 F (175 C).
3. Lay down your ball mixture in the middle of one parchment paper, and try to spread it a bit with your fingers (just enough so it’s not a ball anymore).
4. Place the other parchment paper on top, and using a rolling pin, spread the mixture across the parchment, as equally as possible. Aim for a thickness that you desire (I go for a pretty thin texture). If you spread it too much on some side, you can always remove that part, and re-spread it.
5. Remove the top parchment paper and throw it away. Using a pointy knife, cut out a grind in the spread, creating rectangles of about 2.5″ diagonally (be careful to not cut the parchment paper).
6. Place the parchment paper with the mixture on the cookie sheet, and bake for 8-10 minutes. Then check it out to see if the edges are starting to brown. If that’s the case, remove the cookie sheet from the oven, and using oven gloves, cut out the rectangles that are already done and let them cool on a cooling rack (they will be soft at that point, but they will harden as they cool). Put the rest of the undone crackers back to the oven for another 2-4 minutes (monitor them).
7. When done, remove them from the cookie sheet and place them in the cooling rack too. Half an hour later, break-out the crackers in their predefined grind shape. They now are harden and ready to eat. Keep in an air-tighten bag for up to 1.5 weeks.
About half of my animation project is done. I thought that it would take up to May to finish it, but I might be able to finish it at some point in April. I love working on it, so I put more hours in it as time goes by. You can see a picture of my Vegas editing app with the project loaded. I hope the artist will like the final result of the music video (he doesn’t know I’m working on it), although I’m not too optimistic.
Scene where the heroes are escaping to space. Everything is just better in space.
UPDATE: One more frame grab, from the time travel section of the story…
MDNA is Madonna’s first album on her new label, so she seems to be playing it safe. She serves us a canned formula that has worked for her in the past. Does it still work though?
Girl Gone Wild: 8/10
The best track on the album, it’s a good dance song. The editing of the official music video is even better though.
Gang Bang: 6/10
A nice semi-atmospheric dance track, but it doesn’t go far-enough. It needed to blossom, but it didn’t.
I’m Addicted: 2/10
Yuck. Boring, unimaginative, uncatchy, goes nowhere.
Turn Up the Radio: 2/10
Reminds me of her late ’80s period. Nothing new here. Playing it safe.
Give Me All Your Luvin’: 3/10
Oh, shut up. This is fucking annoying. What is she? 13 years old?
Some Girls: 6/10
Not a bad song, it’s got a nice melody and atmosphere (atmosphere is the No1 thing I always try to find on music btw). But it’s not really exceptional either. It’s just ok.
Superstar: 1/10
Someone pass Acid Pro. I could write such a song too in a single afternoon.
I Don’t Give A: 2/10
We heard this song a million times before in the last 15 years. The only good part in it is its last minute, where it becomes operatic and grand. It’s one of the best moments in the whole album. Too bad it’s attached to the rest of this song.
I’m a Sinner: 2/10
This track is a mess. It tries to channel her 1998 period, but it ends up being a hot mess. It could have worked back then, but it’s 2012 now.
Love Spent: 2/10
This feels like a song that is sang by Cartman trying to become a pop star (the way South Park would have done it).
Masterpiece: 8/10
A nice ballad, written by different song-writers than in the rest of the album, people who actually know how to write music, it seems.
Falling Free: 4/10
Good ideas (channeling Irish/Celtic music) but it ultimately goes nowhere. This song asks for a buildup that never arrives.
Beautiful Killer: 6/10
A good dance track, mostly salvaged by its strong refrain. It could be realized even better though.
I Fucked Up: 1/10
She seriously fucked it up on this track. Useless bullshit.
B-Day Song: 2/10
Not album quality. It feels like a B-side.
Best Friend: 3/10
Wow, it’s R&B from 1996 all over again. Harmless.
Overall rating: 4.2/10
Madonna needs to push herself to innovate. Religion and sex themes can only get her so far in today’s day and age.
I will be 39 years old in a few months, and this got me thinking about anti-aging strategies. Some people tell me that I look younger than my age, but I think it’s time to start thinking about the inevitable. At first, I was naive enough to go search about “what the best face cream” would be. Soon I realized that these creams don’t really work, and they would be wasted money. A cheap, natural hydrating cream for face & eyes would be enough. To really make a difference though, the change must come from inside.
Dr Jack Kruse, the most crazy Paleo doctor out there (also the most interesting), has many blog posts on anti-aging, that go well beyond nutrition and supplements. He goes into reprogramming the human body with cold thermogenesis, even “lite” hibernation and fasting. But these are too extreme regimens, I just want something to ease up my wrinkles, not to outlive Galapagos tortoises.
So I went again to my new best friend, the US government’s PubMed, and started reading. Most of the chemistry described goes over my head, but I can still put 2+2 together and draw conclusions. So after two weeks of research, this is what I came to understand it could give me back 5 years in terms of of looks/energy, and extend that look for a longer period. Please note that this regimen is for skin and hair only, there is additional supplementation for mental & joint health, but Paleo itself is good-enough to provide the necessary nutrients for these two anyway. Also note that this is what I’m doing for myself, it’s not a medical suggestion to you.
STEP 1: Follow Paleo/Primal for life
No way around it. Even if you never put in your mouth a single pill of the ones suggested below, this diet is a must for longevity and overall health. Here is a description of the diet, the top-10 superfoods that must all be eaten, and here’s why dairy can be included in the diet, as long as it’s from buffalo, camels, goats or sheep (but not US cows — only butter & cream from them).
STEP 2: Lifestyle changes
Doesn’t have to be strenuous exercise. 45 minutes, 3-4 times a week. 30 minutes of slow and fast running (alternate, 2 miles overall), and 15 minutes of weights. That’s it. You need no trainer or to pay a gym for it. Or you can alternate that with some yoga too. Consider some meditation too, which can put your cortisol & stress under control. And of course, SLEEP. At least 8 hours day. Make time for it!
STEP 3: Basic supplementation
No matter what diet you follow, there are some nutrients that the modern Western humans are deficient on. These are:
– D3 at 3000-5000 IU, daily, in the mornings. Get tested every 6 months for toxicity levels though.
– Magnesium Malate, daily, 20 minutes before bedtime. Malate is the most absorbable form.
– K2 Mk4, every 2-3 days.
– Fish or krill or fermented cod liver oil, almost daily.
Then, the following are as important, if the diet is not balanced:
– Calcium, only if you’re not doing dairy, every 2-3 days. I’d suggest you go for home-made goat kefir instead.
– C + Bioflavonoids, only if you are not eating fruits for some reason (you should), or if you’re feeling a virus coming your way.
Supplement for other vitamins too accordingly after you do a blood test, or if you track your food intake on a site like Cron-o-meter btw. E.g. you might find you’re low on iron, or manganese, or folate. Especially if you’re trying to get pregnant, you might need to lightly supplement with it for months before conceiving (just make sure it’s not folic acid, folate is a different form).
STEP 4: Skin-specific supplementation
These are the supplements that visibly change the skin and energy levels. On old people these supplements would help too, but not as visibly as in younger people. I include links to the supplements I usually buy myself, these are NOT paid/advertizing links in any way.
– CoQ10-Ubiquinol. 100 mg, daily. In addition to taking the pill, you can also apply its liquid to tooth gums and at a lower dosage, to wrinkles directly.
– PQQ (PyrroloQuinoline Quinone). Every 2 days or so.
– BioSNP’s anti-oxidant & anti-inflammatory formula. A lot of different powerful anti-oxidants in one pill. Take one pill every day (not the suggested 3, it’s strong).
– Acetyl L-carnitine. Ever 3-4 days or so.
STEP 5: Supplementation after a certain age
Don’t take these before the age of 30 or 35. You can increase the days you take these as you age. Take it easy in the first few years.
– R-Lipoic Acid. It must be the R- form. Every 2-3 days or so, in the mornings.
– Collagen Type I and III. Every 2-3 days, not at the same day as the other collagen below, or when you’re cooking with bone marrow broth.
– Collagen Type II. Every 2-3 days, not at the same day as the other types.
Other anti-oxidants you can add to the mix are cranberry extract and Astaxanthin/Lycopene, but the suggested BioSNP formula is already pretty good. For hair, consider taking some Biotin every 3-4 days or so (supplements usually contain way too much in them), and E-tocotrienols (no tocophenols in it). This vitamin E 125 mg version is pretty strong, so take it occasionally and only if you’re somewhat deficient on vitamin E, or use the lower 50 mg version.
FTC 16 CFR Part 255 Disclaimer
Copyright 2002-2022 Eugenia Loli. Some Rights Reserved.
