| farming |
[May. 7th, 2012|10:50 pm] |
The manure spreader broke again today - last week it was a main bearing, which allowed a chain to slip & totally trash the sprockets. This week, what I thought was a pinhole (& was babying along) turned to to be a rusted-through hydraulic cylinder. Oops. Who would have thought?
Drizzling again tonight - fertilizer needs tilled in, but not until it dries a bit. Dad is up & about, but apparently he's eating ~6 small meals a day and still feels queasy a lot of the time.
Time to go to bed very soon - as usual, I got home late (12:30) from dropping Lore off - this time, mainly because we wanted to see The Avengers. Of course by 12:30 in the morning, my judgement is completely off-line, so it was later still before I dragged myself off to bed.
Sadie's birthday was Friday, so I gave her the book I'd gotten at Costco for her. Hmmm - not on Amazon, but the bird clock is. http://www.amazon.com/SINGING-BIRD-CLOCK-FEATURES-AMERICAN/dp/B0040H8BR8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1336444711&sr=8-4
Aha - it's the Eastern North America version of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/1932855416/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0
Annoyingly, the included batteries ran out of juice after 3-4 bird call plays. At least they're AAA - easy to replace.
Lore got her knee injected today, and is getting it x-rayed tomorrow (with a referral to a knee surgeon.) She may need knee surgery to get a bit of cartilage shaved out of somewhere it's not supposed to be. :-( |
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| thoughts |
[Apr. 21st, 2012|09:20 am] |
http://jezebel.com/5887627/the-ten-scariest-places-in-america-to-have-ladyparts
I read this article about the current War on Women in the States, and I had a few thoughts that other people don't seem to be having.
It has been remarked by a lot of people that religious conservatives, no matter their religion, tend to go after women's rights. (... human rights in general are on the hit list, but women's rights seem to be a priority.) Why is this? Are religious conservatives not bright enough to try & use power in some other way than reinforcing the traditional society / social order that they thought they grew up in?
These events in the States have happened because the Republicans have gotten their hands on power in a lot of states at the same time. Obviously they've been planning this War on Rights for a long time - things like this don't happen by accident. Why not do something productive with all that planning time? It was a subliminal part of the article - "And with legislators concentrating on regulating pregnancy rather than protecting women". I know that small and medium businesses pushed for the Republicans, and now are finding that the Republicans are too busy with their other stuff to help them out. (Fark.com, but I forget what day.) So... is it too paranoid to think that the Multinationals are having a great old time, watching the social controversy go on & on, and absolutely nothing at all being done to regulate them? It's like... how the big companies like a society to be destroyed (Iraq, Afghanistan) so they can then come in & pick up the pieces. (Blackwater, that's it.) It's an interesting thought, but confirmation bias makes it tricky to tell if it's true or not. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 20th, 2012|10:15 pm] |
Dad is getting out of the hospital tomorrow — I hope he won't need to go back in again.
Sam's birthday tomorrow, too — should drop by & give him his present. (Darth Paper Strikes Back) |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 18th, 2012|11:21 pm] |
Finished the canola yesterday — it was very close. I'll have to use the shopvac to clean the remaining seed out of the planter.
Matt came to help for the first time yesterday. Bad luck that the center part of the packer gave up the ghost — the disc worked fine while he ran it today. I was running around getting parts today & will hopefully get it back together tomorrow. (Fingers crossed.)
Hoping that a) not touching caffinated drinks, and b) using a weekly / daily pill container for my vitamins will help me feel more rested. This way I should actually take them — it's too much trouble to run around looking for them in the morning. Multivitamin, C, D, low-dose ASA, and «Stressease» (mostly Bs). Hopefully the Jameson «Natural Sources» are plants & animals, not petroleum.
I seem to be a very hopeful person tonight. :-) |
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| LJ |
[Apr. 16th, 2012|11:12 pm] |
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I was meaning to catch up on LJ stuff while planting (I've got a backlog of stuff to post), but I haven't liked the accuracy on the GPS. (To be exact, it's not a square field + I didn't do the first side with the GPS.) Manual driving doesn't allow writing or editing. |
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| farming hints |
[Apr. 16th, 2012|11:12 pm] |
1. Working the fields - if you make a "snowball" out of dirt & it falls apart, the field is dry enough to get the tractor out on it.
2. Don't do seeding in the morning, do something else, and then get back to seeding later - the marker trenches dry out & become harder to see. (Wind may also cover them with loose stuff on the field.) Leaving the field at night - put a stake in to make sure you can find the end of the trench - the GPS may not be enough help to find it.
3. Herefords get their 3rd tooth set (or something like that) sooner than other breeds (and that's what they use for the 30 month marker.) Ship herefords first priority or lose money for them "being over 30 months".
4. Don't necessarily trust the GPS steering unit - any rain within sight (i.e. between you & a satellite) can throw it off, likely due to the different speed of light in different mediums. As spring can be rainy.... |
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| pesticides and people |
[Apr. 6th, 2012|09:35 pm] |
Yuck! :-(
Common pesticides linked to lower birth weights
Effect comparable to smoking
Pregnant women who showed higher exposure to common agricultural pesticides had babies with slightly lower birth weights, a study by Canadian and U.S. researchers has found.
Simon Fraser University health sciences professor Bruce Lanphear and his colleagues tested the urine of 306 pregnant women in Cincinnati, Ohio, twice during their pregnancies. They were looking for chemicals that would show the women had been exposed to organophosphate pesticides, which are used to kill insects.
The telltale chemicals, called metabolites, are generated when the body breaks down organophosphates. Organophosphates represented 36 per cent of all insectides used in the U.S. in 2007, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives this week, found that for every 10-fold increase in the concentration of the chemicals found in a pregnant woman's urine, her pregnancy was reduced by half a week and her child's birth weight decreased about 150 grams.
Lamphear said that's comparable to the decrease in birth weight seen in the babies of women who smoke.
'One of many risk factors'
The amount may seem insignificant for any individual child, he acknowledged.
"But this is just one of many risk factors that a pregnant woman might encounter," he added in a statement. "If a woman has four or five risk factors, the impact can be substantial."
Lower birth weights and premature births are linked to respiratory problems and problems with learning and behaviour.
According to the researchers, the women in the study were exposed to levels of organophosphates comparable to those in most other parts of North America.
Lamphear recommends that pregnant women can reduce their exposure to organophosphate pesticides by choosing organic foods; by washing fruits and vegetables carefully; and by choosing not to use pesticides in and around their homes.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/04/06/health-pesticide-birth-weight.html |
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| Personal health |
[Apr. 6th, 2012|12:25 pm] |
I do believe I'm going to start taking a daily low-dose aspirin (81 mg). Lore's geneology research has turned up a lot of cancer in my ancestors.
Aspirin's anti-cancer effects backed by more research
Papers published in the Lancet suggest ASA may prevent and treat cancer
Newly published international papers are adding to growing research that Aspirin, commonly used now for people in danger of heart attack and stroke, may also help prevent and treat cancer.
Two papers in the Lancet and one paper in the Lancet Oncology, all published Tuesday, chronicle research suggesting daily use of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA, sold under the brand name Aspirin in Canada and other countries) can reduce the long-term risk of cancer death.
However, researchers from the U.K. and Italy, led by Prof. Peter Rothwell of the University of Oxford and John Radcliffe Hospital in England, stress that the short-term effects of daily use of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, as well as how risky or beneficial it may be over time, have yet to be determined.
Currently, in North America, medical practitioners are urged to put anyone who has had a heart attack or stroke on anti-platelet therapy (low-dose ASA, to prevent clots) because it can greatly reduce the risk of deadly recurrence.
The Lancet-published papers break down like this:
Article 1: The authors studied individual patient data from 51 randomized trials of daily Aspirin versus no Aspirin use to prevent heart attacks. They found Aspirin reduced the risk of a cancer death by 15 per cent compared with control subjects, and this improved to a 37 per cent reduced risk of a cancer death for patients taking the medication five years and longer. The reduction in cancer deaths for those taking Aspirin resulted in a 12 per cent reduction in deaths not related to the cardiovascular system. "In view of the very low rates of vascular events in recent and ongoing trials of Aspirin in primary prevention, prevention of cancer could become the main justification for Aspirin use in this setting," the researcher wrote.
Article 2: For the study on the effect of Aspirin on how cancer spreads (metastasis), new data was collected on metastases of cancers that were diagnosed during all five large randomized trials of daily Aspirin (75 milligrams or more daily), versus control for the prevention of cardio-related events in the U.K. They found that, with an average followup of 6.5 years, the use of Aspirin reduced the risk of cancer with "distant metastasis" by 36 per cent, cut the risk of colon, lung and prostate cancers by 46 per cent, and reduced the chance of bladder and kidney cancers by 18 per cent. Aspirin reduced the overall risk of fatal cancers in the trial populations by 35 per cent, but not the risk of blood and other fatal cancers. "These findings provide the first proof in humans that Aspirin prevents distant cancer metastasis," the researchers note, adding that metastasis had been prevented in previous studies involving animals.
Article 3: This paper reviewed the effect of Aspirin on metastatic cancer using a review of observational versus randomized trials. Researchers found observational studies showed a 38 per cent reduced risk of colorectal cancer, compared to 42 per cent in randomized trials. Similar matches in risk were found for esophageal, gastric, biliary and breast cancer, prompting the researchers to say, "Observational studies show that regular use of Aspirin reduces the long-term risk of several cancers and the risk of distant metastasis."
Aspirin prevented around one in 30 deaths from cancer among those who had a daily dose for about five years during a 20-year period.
In a commentary linked to the published research, scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston said the studies make "a convincing case" that the cardiovascular-protection and anti-cancer benefits of Aspirin outweigh the harms that may include excess bleeding (hemorrhage), and "moves us another step closer to broadening recommendations for Aspirin use."
However, they warn, "these analyses do not account for less serious adverse effects on quality of life, such as less severe bleeding."
Although the Lancet-published studies received no specific funding, Rothwell has received honoraria for serving on advisory boards, clinical trial committees and giving talks from some pharmaceutical companies with an interest in anti-platelet agents, including Bayer, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sanofi-BMS and Servier. |
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| Dad |
[Mar. 13th, 2012|11:05 pm] |
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My dad goes into surgery 7 am tomorrow & is scheduled to be in until noon. Can't be there myself — the cattle have to be fed, and there's a truck coming for grain at noonish or a bit later. :-( Have to get up early-ish to get enough grain in the shipping bin. |
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| auger |
[Mar. 13th, 2012|05:52 pm] |
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Oh bloody hell — with a second set of eyes juggling my assumptions, solved the problem in 15 min. |
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