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Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:41:09 GMT

Weather Has Little Effect on Mood

), come to the rather surprising conclusion that there is only a very small effect of weather on mood - and this is backed up by two previous studies.

How are you feeling today?To examine the link Denissen and colleagues collected data over the internet from 1,233 participants across Germany. For one month between July 2005 and February 2007 all the participants completed daily questionnaires. This asked them about both their positive and negative emotions on that particular day. These reports were then compared with data from the German Weather Institute, which was combined to create weather variables: average temperature, wind power and number of hours sunlight.

Once all this data was collated the rather surprising results emerged. On average the weather had no effect on people''s positive moods. In other words more sunlight, less wind or a higher average temperature didn''t make people feel happier.

On the other hand the study did find that the weather affected people''s negative moods. For example, less sunlight was associated with greater tiredness. But, while the weather may have the potential to make us feel worse, the effects measured in this study were tiny: almost too tiny to be noticed. It seems low temperatures, wind and rain may bring us down a little but not as much as we might have thought.

And this study isn''t the first to reach similar conclusions about the connection between weather and mood. Two previous studies, one by Watson (2000) and another by Keller et al. (2005), found surprisingly small or sometimes non-existent effects of weather on mood. And for those of you thinking that it might be the German participants who are unusual, these other studies were carried out on Americans.

Seasonal Affective DisorderSo how come many of us are convinced the weather affects mood? Denissen et al. (2008) suggest that we may be responding to a culturally transmitted idea that weather affects mood. Effectively we think the weather has significant effects on our mood because everyone else thinks and says it does.

We may also pay a disproportionate amount of attention to a very small number of people who really do have what has become known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). These people report that their moods are very strongly associated with the weather. While it might be assumed that this connection is the same for everyone: winter = sad, summer = happy, the data collected by Denissen et al. (2008) doesn''t support this. Instead it suggests there are just as many people with SAD who become sadder in the summer and cheer up in the winter. But for the vast majority of us there is no effect.

Time outsideOne of the things the study didn''t measure, though, is the amount of time participants spent outside. Perhaps the reason for finding little effect was that people in industrialised countries aren''t that exposed to the weather - some estimates suggest we spend 93% of our lives indoors.

Previous research by Keller et al. (2005), however, did control for this variable and found that then good weather did increase positive moods. Still, the effect of the weather remained small, and limited to springtime.

Whatever the reason, winter shouldn''t be as depressing as we might imagine. Just keep telling yourself that as the wind howls, the evenings draw in and the rain batters against the windows!

» Related: Monday isn''t the most depressing day of the week..

[Image credit: EJP Photo] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:24:39 GMT

Be a discerning smoker

Stepping outside on Saturday evening to go to my car, I was reminded of how wonderful grilling food smells on the cool, crisp, leaf-scented air. Ahhh! I just stood there for a few seconds and breathed in the mingled scents of the neighbours’ grilling pork chops and my maple leaf-covered lawn. A truly Canadian form of aromatherapy!

As I was driving away, I fantasized about how that aroma could have been even more enticing if my neighbour had added some wood chips to his grill as it was preheating to add a smoky element.

Smoke has been a growing flavour trend for several years, but now it''s being more clearly defined on menus and food package labels so that consumers can choose the type and intensity of smokiness they prefer. Besides the wide variety of regular wood chip varieties sold at most hardware stores, these new wood ''biscuits'' are making adding smoky flavour to your food ever easier. All you do is add one to the grate as you preheat the grill. Once the grill is hot, the biscuit will smolder and fill the covered grill with great smelling smoke. Then, after you cook, you dip the spent biscuit in cold water and toss it in the composter. No muss, no fuss!

Truthfully, I think most home grillers can get good results using almost any combo of untreated wood chips, some water, a foil pan and food; however, aficionados who want to match their smoke to the most appropriate foods can use the following guide to help them:

Fruit woods (apple, pear, peach, cherry, persimmon): cooking poultry, fish, shellfish, pork (chops and tenderloin), veal, cheese and fruits

Hard woods (hickory, maple, mesquite): game, poultry, stronger cheeses, tuna and steaks

Soft woods (cedar, alder): salmon, arctic char, trout, turkey, pork (chops and tenderloin), creamy cheeses and fruits.

If you have more basic questions about wood smoking on a home barbecue, check out this post from earlier in the year.

Do you grill into the autumn or pack away the propane until spring?

Posted by: danamccauley      Read more     Source

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:12:08 GMT

College Revelations

I think I forgot to mention that I would be spending the last few days touring colleges. Well, that''s where I was, for the curious. I''m not sure what one is supposed to learn from these visits, but while spending the night in my friend Sherry''s dorm, I learned that my glasses are supremely more flattering than those Buddy Holly geek-chic frames favored by so many hipsters. Shame. They are so fun to wear.

Other fashion tidbits I picked up? Well, one of my tours boasted a few stylish girls who almost manged to steal my attention from the gorgeous campus. One girl, a New Yorker (of course), wore flat, black, vintage lace up booties, ripped red tights, a sweet floral dress, and a baggy plaid jacket. Topped with a blond bob cut completely straight across on the bangs and tips, she looked achingly cool. Another look that captured my attention wasn''t unique enough to bother sharing, but the girl wearing it had drawn wingtip, brogue-like styling across the toes of her Keds, and I thought they looked amazing. And my tour guide had the most perfect pixie cut I''ve seen in ages.

Don''t worry about me, grasshoppers; most of my focus was on the schools I visited. But fashion doesn''t tremble in the light of higher education, and neither does my style-watching brain. Posted by: Kori      Read more     Source

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:14:52 GMT

We hemmed and we hawed

We hemmed and we hawed. We dithered and we debated. We vacillated and we oscillated. We wavered and we shilly-shallied.

In the end our decision to swim or not was made because of a recent visitor to our woods: the sun. The sky had been filled with gray clouds all morning, and while this made doing our chores more pleasant, it didn''t bode well for an afternoon swim. So when the sun started making furtive appearances between the clouds, appearances that lasted longer and longer, we decided to take what was probably our last opportunity to go jump in a lake for the season.

I had chatted with Good Neighbor Brian a few nights before, and I spoke of our thoughts of getting in a last swim, saying I feared the water would be too cold after so many successive cool nights. He guffawed at this, saying that while the top few inches might be cold, the deep water still retained its summer heat. Good Neighbor Brian was mistaken.

We crept into the water, warmer at the surface than deeper down (which I had suspected, actually). You''re probably familiar with the sensation of easing into cold water. The icy feel inches up your legs as you progress. Once your feet have been in the water a few minutes, they don''t seem to feel the cold (and not because they''ve gone numb), but the chill on your thighs is what you''re paying attention to anyway. Then you go a little deeper and the water starts to soak your clothes. Somehow this seems even colder than the icy water against your skin. But you keep going, hesitating most of all before letting the water wash over your shoulders. You shudder and suck in a breath. And then it all passes and you don''t feel so cold any longer.

But cold lurks in the deep waters. Kicking our feet and even paddling with our hands would swirl icy drafts of water up from below. This wasn''t a problem in August when even the deep water was comfortably warm, but actual swimming proved a shivering prospect for us in the middle of September. Thus we swam over to the shallower area where we could stand on the bottom. By not making any movements, we were able to enjoy being in the water without feeling too cold.

The lake was filled, though not to full pool. It was down about two feet from that level, though our earlier inspection of the spillway showed that water had flowed over it not long before. The chunk o''glass I have in the middle of the lake, showing where the best fish structure is hidden, was under water, and it looked like Isla de Peligro was also surrounded by water, but I didn''t venture that far, having found a relatively warm spot in the sun and fearing making any unnecessary movements. This was also the reason I didn''t go after Peregrine, which I could see floating in the shallows to the west.

When I say that we had found a warm spot in the water to stand, what I mean is that we weren''t shivering as we stood there, hugging ourselves. The water was not warm, and every time the sun was obscured by a passing cloud, we could feel it. Our summertime swims can last a couple of hours. I don''t think our swim on this September visit lasted a half hour. Unfortunately, the way out of the water lay across the deep. We had to swim our way over there to clamber out, and this meant stirring up the cold from below. The whole way was probably less than a couple hundred feet, but it was a cold way, and it seemed like the water was thicker than normal as we pushed our way through it.

Once out of the water, though, we felt the warmth of the sun on our skin again. We changed into dry clothes and stowed the rest of our gear to prepare for the drive home. Only a diversion to find a couple of peach Nehi floats slowed our progress, and that seemed worth the detour.

This likely was our last swim of the season, though a spike in temperature coinciding with a visit to the woods may give us just one more chance. A fellow can dream.

Missouri calendar:

• Fawns have lost their spots.
• Persimmons start to ripen.

Today in Missouri history:

• Joseph Nash McDowell died on this date in 1868. As a doctor he founded the first medical school west of the Mississippi in St. Louis. It eventually became the medical department of Washington University. He was an eccentric man who wanted to test the preservative qualities of water dripping in caves by having the bodies of his recently deceased children suspended from the ceiling in one near Hannibal. Some neighbor children, including one believed to be Samuel Clemens, snuck in the cave and were frightened by what they saw.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:22:54 GMT

A Unique and Stylish QWERTY Clamshell Device

Sprint will be launching the unique LG Lotus in October, which is a stylish and unique QWERTY clamshell device inspired by ladies makeup accessories. Due to its unique and chic form factor it also recieved he prestigious Red Dot Design Award. It will be available in Textured Purple and Satin Black colours for $149.99 on a two-year contract. All in all a perfect fashion device for all the messaging freaks out there.

Here are the specifications:

Network: CDMA 800/1900
Size: 84 x 61 x 18 mm, Weight: 105 g
Display: Main Screen 262k TFT colors (240 x 320 pixels), External Screen 65K TFT colors (176 x 220 pixels)
Camera: 2 MP with Zoom and Video Recorder
Connectivity: GPRS, Bluetooth 2.0,
Memory: microSD / TransFlash
Applications: Sprint Music, Sprint TV, Sprint Radio, Sprint Navigation, Email (POP3 / IMAP4 / SMTP), IM(AOL / Windows Live / Yahoo!), Wireless Backup

Source: Mobiledia Posted by: Umair Khalid      Read more     Source

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:11:31 GMT

Ping Pong Playa.

"After a string of documentaries, including In the Realms of the Unreal, and an Academy Award win for Best Documentary Short, Jessica Yu makes an unlikely, deceptively slight narrative feature debut with Ping Pong Playa," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "What''s perhaps most surprising about the film, however, is that Yu (who has also directed a fair amount of television drama) is actually quite adept as a comedy director."

"Ping Pong Playa proves that Chinese-Americans are not immune from the national stunted-adolescence crisis currently plaguing white comedy protagonists," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Yu''s film, a 180-degree tonal shift from her previous Protagonist, diligently retreads Adam SandlerNapoleon Dynamite territory."

Updated through 9/5.

Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:32:32 GMT

Think Yourself Healthy by Appreciating the Exercise You Already Do

by Alia Crum and Professor Ellen Langer of Harvard University suggests the incredible answer is yes.

Dr Ben Goldacre at Bad Science (although this is good science!) describes the study which was carried out on hotel attendants who were informed how much exercise they were already doing as a regular part of their job. Here''s Ben''s conclusion:"....amazingly, despite no change in actual exercise levels, in the intervention group, simply being told about the value of what they were already doing caused a significant change for the better on every single one of the objective health measures recorded: weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure."To illustrate with just one of the outcomes they measured, the average weight of those in the intervention group reduced from 145.5 lbs to 143.72 lbs. Over the same period the control group showed no significant change. For those of you working metric-style that''s 66.14 kg down to 65.33 kg.

That''s like dropping a bag of sugar. In four weeks. With no additional exercise.

Now that''s the power of the mind-body link right there, measured in pounds and ounces.

[Image credit: eef] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:28:56 GMT

Revolutionary Romantic.

The series Lindsay Anderson: Revolutionary Romantic opens today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and runs through August 28.



At Moving Image Source, Steve Erickson addresses the question, "If Anderson''s best work ranks among the highlights of British cinema, why has he fallen so far into obscurity?"

Updated through 8/17. Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:17:19 GMT

Irritating Psychobabble: Disorders Win!

for your (least) favourite examples of psychobabble - technical psychological terms used out of context.

You responded with many great suggestions, 30 of which I published. 750 of you (and counting) voted for your favourite and now the results are in.

There are three clear front-runners who received one-third of the votes between them. And so, without further ado....drum roll please....the most-hated psychobabble top 3 are:

I get really OCD about.... (12%)

Retard (10%)

Bipolar (10%)

Thanks to everyone for voting in this poll and for the further suggestions in the comments to the vote. I think we have found a worthy winner in the misuse of the diagnosis ''obsessive-compulsive disorder''.

What struck me about the list of psychobabble phrases you suggested and voted for is that many of them are clinical diagnoses. This seems to reflect how much the modern psychiatric professions'' drive to categorise mental illness has permeated our cultural lives. The names of disorders now trip off our tongues like never before - it wasn''t always this way.

A short article from TIME on psychobabble from 1977 lists quite a different set of phrases as an inescapable part of the ''psychological patter of the ''70s'':
"Are you relating? Going through heavy changes? In touch with yourself and doing your own thing? Are you up front, or just hung up and uptight?"
To modern ears these phrases are redolent of a past era. It''s impossible to hear them without visualising the stereotypical hippie. Talking to TIME, writer R. D. Rosen describes this language as:
"....difficult to avoid and there is often an embarrassment involved in not using it, somewhat akin to the mild humiliation experienced by American tourists in Paris who cannot speak the native tongue."
If Rosen thought things were bad in the ''70s, just look at the state of psychobabble now. At least the psychobabble of the ''70s was warm and fuzzy, while what we have now is clinical and cold, cynical even; driven not by the language of intellectual or emotional growth, but by the language of disorder.

[Image credit: Angel Photographer] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:59:36 GMT

The Germans cars are coming

Just when you thought car makers were about to ditch U.S. Soil, VW announced today it will be building a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee to initially produce 150,000 cars a year and employ 2,000 people.Invading US soil is part of VW's plan to overtake GM and Toyota and make VW the world's dominant car maker. Plans are to sell 8000,000 cars in the US by 2018.

It surely helps that the dollar has fallen and the euro is strong. German maker BMW is also expanding output in the US within their Spartanburg plant.

Maybe if GM, Ford, or Chrystler had plants in a town called Toledo in Germany we could increase production. Posted by: James Koopmann      Read more     Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:40:19 GMT

Mr Clock Radio

A very creepy clock radio. Mr Clock Radio has 50 different wake-up shows with multiple wake-up settings.
Take a look at the video to see Mr Clock Radio in action. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:24:49 GMT

Maps at Classmates

Classmates.com has a new feature that I really like. Now when you go to one of your friend's profiles you can click on button that says "View on a Map" and you'll be able to see where they live on a map. Now you'll be able to see where all your friends are living.

If you go to your School or Work page you can see where all your friends from that School or Work are living. Over on the right side of the page is an icon that says "Where are they" next to it. When you click on this you'll be able to see where your whole group lives.

* Although Classmates.com has given me a one year gold membership so I can explore their site more thoroughly, this will in no way influence my entries about them or change my opinion about their site. Posted by: Linda Roeder      Read more     Source

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:50:39 GMT

Monday munchings

Who gets credit for this? Who munched on the leaf on the left, giving it that nicely symmetrical shape?

I had thought at first that some sort of insect had done this (aren’t there leaf cutter bees and ants?). Yet the symmetry of the cuttings seems too good for the work a tiny insect could do. Yes, an insect could probably cut such swaths from the leaf, but I don’t think it would try to achieve a pleasing balance.

What is hard to tell in this photo is that the tip of the stem of the plant has been snipped off as well. That suggests a deer is the culprit. I’m not sure a deer has any more aesthetic sense than an insect, but here’s how I think it could have worked.

The deer could have grabbed both edges of the leaf in its mouth at once, folding the leaf down the center. It would then munch off what it could, chew it to satisfaction, then have another bite, folding the leaf in a similar manner and getting similar cuts on each edge.

I suppose the deer didn’t like the taste of the leaf (I think it might be a cherry tree) since the leaf beside it is unharmed.

Actually, I’m sure this kind of thing goes on in my forest all of the time — the leaf cutting — but I can’t recall ever seeing it before my last trip to Roundrock. A long time ago I vowed to pay better attention to the small details in the woods. I’m not sure how well I’m doing.

Missouri calendar:

• Bobcat kittens are born through the month.

Today in Missouri history:

• The site for the town of Franklin was chosen on this date in 1816. The town later became the starting point of the Santa Fe Trail and was the boyhood home of Kit Carson. Franklin was washed away by the Missouri River, but New Franklin still stands today.
• The crinoid became the state''s official fossil in 1989.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:59:36 GMT

agnificent Miller Sells for $2,035,000

When Joe MacPherson began his collection of sports, racing, custom cars and vintage motorcycles many years ago, he probably never thought it would eventually be worth in excess of $10,000,000. But that's how much was raised by RM Auctions at Monrovia, California on Saturday. Enthusiasts from all over North America had the opportunity to pay tribute to Joe and purchase a piece of the state's renowned car culture as 50 historic motor cars, 25 vintage motorcycles and a range of selected memorabilia from Joe's Garage went on the block. The entire collection was sold, with the top price of $2,035,000 going for the supercharged 1923 Miller 122 racer seen above. The late Joe MacPherson was a successful auto dealer, a lifelong collector, a sports car racing fan, and a gentleman who was proud to display his collection to the many visitors who passed through the museum's welcoming doors. Posted by: Philip Powell      Read more     Source

Sat, 24 May 2008 23:34:38 GMT

Travels With Teddy

"Are we there yet?" These four words can turn a road trip into road kill. That said, come summer, many families will be taking road trips as a means of cutting the high cost of air travel. Fortunately, author Trefoni Michael Rizzi can show you that getting there really can be half the fun. He's driven across the United States on numerous occasions, and suggests that parents make each stop along the way an exciting destination.

Rizzi recommends checking maps or GPS units for National Parks, monuments and historic sites along the route. To keep costs down, purchase the America the Beautiful - National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass

Here are some other suggestions:

Family Car Games. Put away the video games and DVDs and play family games like "collecting" license plates from different states and counting how many different animals you can see from the car. These games help build family memories, engage your children with the landscape and turn the drive into an on-the-road contest.

. Fill A Scrapbook. Give each child a disposable film or small digital camera. It will help them connect with what they are seeing and at the same time, they are building a scrapbook to remember their adventure.

. Bring A Friend. Bring along your child's favorite teddy bear or stuffed animal. Traveling with a long-time friend is a comfort on a trip to new places, they make great pillows for naps in the car and they (the teddy bear) love having their picture taken wherever they travel!

Learn more by purchasing a copy of Rizzi's book Teddy's Travels

Posted by: Lisa Marie Mercer      Read more     Source

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:20:45 GMT

The Higher Costs of Single Living

Being single can mean many things: fun, spontaneity, independence, loneliness, and even higher living costs. A new article from the Guardian UK says "Who Can Afford to Be Single Now"? It talks about a subject that many married people just don't seem to get, that being alone means you have to handle the bills yourself. That often means higher energy bills, food bills, and then there's that little detail of paying to go out in order to meet someone new!

The other thing is that singles don't seem to hit the bulk or discount grocery stores like married folks do. When I was single I grocery shopped much different. I went out a lot, so often times dinner was a last minute thought. I thought I was saving money by making my own meals, but in reality but not shopping in advance and having things on hand, I was spending much more than I did when I got married.

What are your thoughts? If you're single, how to manage to keep up with the rising costs of living?

Image via Morguefile.com Posted by: Cherie Burbach      Read more     Source

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:12:20 GMT

Will the Web 2.0 Bubble Burst?

A video about the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco predicts that their will be another tech bubble burst in the near future. Do you remember back before the tech bubble burst and Internet companies where giving away tons of things, like t-shirts and mugs, to their viewers for free? They're starting to do it again.

Big tech companies like Ning are putting away money in case the bubble bursts. Meanwhile new smaller tech companies are starting up every day. Some of them may make it but with the economy going the way it is, many may not.

What do you think about the Internet economy? Will there be another tech recession? Posted by: Linda Roeder      Read more     Source

Sat, 17 May 2008 02:25:40 GMT

Inner Critic

What is your inner critic telling you?


© danagraves

Recently I was doing a speech and I asked the audience how many of them were their own worst critics and almost every person raised their hands.

What you need to ask yourself if you're being positive or negative with the criticism. Are you beating yourself up with your little voice telling yourself you screwed up, you failed, etc? Or are you positively critiquing your work?

For many years I would beat myself up over everything and was very negative toward myself. Over time I realized how destructive I was being and worked on only listening to a more positive inner voice. Like all habits, it will take time for you to tune out the negative and start listening to the truly constructive.

For example:

"I sucked at that speech, those people probably sat there and laughed at how bad I did. I will never get another speaking engagement after this one"

Obviously the little voice is being pretty negative and offering nothing of value. Now compare that to this:

"OK you had a good intro, you could have made your transitions a little better, you had good organization but you needed a better close".

Now this is clearly constructive criticism that can help you improve your performance.

So stop listening to negative criticism whether it be internal or from external sources.

Rich from the New Foot Smell Blog also has some comments on this subject. Posted by: John Dornoff      Read more     Source

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:44:11 GMT

Train Pushers

Oshiya or ''pusher'' is an informal Japanese term for a worker who stands on the platform of a railway station during the morning and evening rush hours, and pushes people onto the train. This video is a good example of just how crowded it gets on Japanese trains. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:19:03 GMT

Maybe if I prayed....

This is a post in two parts. Part one is about how I read things in the news that really set me off, like this grand piece of stupidity from CNN: Moms'' new battle: The food price bulge.

Now at first glance this seems to be a cheery little story about how moms have found ways to save money and slash their grocery store shopping, but it''s really once again a glorification of poverty, from those who wouldn''t know poor if it bit them in the ass.

The moms in this story grow their own herbs and veggies (meaning they probably own their own home, since few apartments come with sufficient land to plant tomatoes and beans, much less corn. They also stock up on sale and discount items they bought with coupons, which shows they have pantry or garage space.... because it doesn''t look like that stuff is stacked up in their living room.

I can''t help myself, I just HAVE to relabel all the photos from the story:

OK, that was hard.... I didn''t want to get too mean because, you know, they could be perfectly nice people.... they just don''t know what poverty is really like, or how to deal with it without compromising their kid''s health. BTW, did you SEE the stuff used to make laundry soap? Do you have any IDEA what that stuff costs compared to generic detergents?

One of the amusing things is that the photo shows boxes of sticky sweet breakfast cereal stashed into shelves.... just the kind of thing you DON''T want to rely on eating if you''re having to mix everything with rice or bread, since mom and the kids will weigh 300 lbs by the end of the year. Unfortunately, you don''t see coupons for fresh fruit and vegetables very often. Generally they''re for things like sugar laden kids'' breakfast cereals, frozen breaded and fried chicken, and high sodium soups. So when mom is cutting back to spending $200 for a family of 4 you know she''s feeding everyone nothing but crap.... oh, except for the stuff she''s growing out in the back 40.

Even moms who spend $200 for a family of 4 per week are generally going to run out of things.... usually they''re relying on stuff they already have in their pantry. Middle and upper class families (the ones with enough land to grow tomatoes in their back yard) are likely to have food in the big freezer in the basement, or a well stocked pantry already, and these cut backs are just part of their monthly food intake.

There are families out there who are eating ramen noodles every day because that''s the only option they can afford. They don''t own their own homes and planting tomatoes would mean filling their bathtub with soil in their cheap apartments. They don''t have a freezer in the basement, and yes they buy cereal with coupons and get criticized for letting their kids get chubby. Schools wonder why the kids don''t do well on tests when all they eat are carbs and sugar. Parents are run down and unhealthy. These are what families who REALLY live on $200 or less a month look like.

Part 2 of this post is where my friends tell me that I should live like that rather than spend so much money on food. I buy RBBH free milk, organic free range eggs (well, in all fairness I''m allergic to the antibiotics used on most eggs), and loads of veggies and some organic lean meats. I spend about $500 a month at the grocery store, but to be fair, that also includes toilet paper, cleaning products, feminine hygiene products, school supplies (cheaper than Walmart sometimes!), shampoo, soap, over the counter medications, and discount gasoline for the car (Smiths Rewards program saves me about 15 cents per gallon!)

They think that I should eat ramen and rice (despite my current weight loss attempts) and pray.

Praying is going to make my situation better, because of that whole thing about God not giving his children a snake (or a stone, or other non-useful stuff.... although I suppose you could always eat the snake....) when they ask for a loaf.

There are millions of people asking for loaves in the world right now. Apparently God doesn''t deliver. I just tell my friends I''ll save God the bother, since He already has His hands full, and get my own damned loaf. Better yet, I''ll cut back in other areas and instead of bread, get a couple boneless, skinless chicken breasts and some fresh greens.

God isn''t going to be lifting anyone up above the current economic crisis. No one is there. Yet more and more people rely on a god and Kellogs to get them through this tough time. This tough time isn''t something you can just wait out. It''s here, it''s real, and it''s going to get a heck of a lot worse. Time to STOP taking stop-gap measures like the Ramen Diet and prayer and getting serious about how to live a healthy life as the economy goes down the crapper. Posted by: Dori      Read more     Source