A reader requested that I elaborate on the acidity of blood, how it gets that way, and what we can do about it.
First, an elementary school science primer: acid is the opposite of alkalinity. Stomach acid is neutralized by calcium, as stated on the bottle of every Tums® and Rolaids® product. Your toothpaste contains it, your daily vitamins contain it (although to a much lesser degree), your spinach contains it, and probably your orange juice if you drink a calcium-fortified one.
But some acids last longer than in your stomach and mouth—some acids make it through the bath of digestive juices in your stomach and travel into your blood stream, causing more problems than you realize. Some foods even start out as alkaline, but get converted into acidic by those very digestive juices, leaving you vulnerable to acid overload and the problems it brings.
How do you know you’re in acid overload? Well, there’s a variety of ways: cancers, stomach problems, intestinal problems, gout, dental problems requiring fillings, skin problems such as breakouts, eyeglasses with metal frames that turn green where they contact the skin, jewelry that turns green even though it isn’t cheaply made, frequent yeast infections, brittle hair, and the ever-popular self-test with pH tape dipped into the urine (test tapes available at health food stores). Beyond that, a blood and/or urine test from your doctor can also tell you.
If you find yourself in this situation (or suspect you are), there are things you can eat and avoid eating to get back into balance:
EAT PLENTY OF: leafy greens, fruits and vegetables.
SPECIFIC ALKALINIZING FOODS: lentils, lemons, raspberries, nectarines, watermelon, onions, pumpkin seeds, sweet potato, persimmons, pineapple, mineral water, baking soda, sea salt.
FOODS TO AVOID: sugar, jelly/jam, beer, soda, cocoa, vinegar, most grains, coffee, cereals, molasses, maple syrup, black tea, fish, lamb, pork.
HOW TO MAKE “AVOID” FOOD MORE ALKALINE: use lemons or lemon juice for lemonade, on meats and fish, or pineapple for glazes, sauces, dips, or side salad ingredients. Sweet potato can accompany darn near anything. Just don‘t eat high-acidic foods alone—mix them or serve them with alkalinizing foods (leafy greens, fruits, and veggies) and/or with mineral water.
In general, meats, nuts, and grains (with the exception of wild rice, quinoa, oats, coconut oil, and dairy products) are on the medium-to-high acidic list. Vegetables, fruits, and leafy greens are all alkaline at different levels. As long as you don’t overload on acidic foods at each meal, but rather, strike a balance instead, you avoid tons of health problems down the road. Most cancers, gout, dental problems, liver/kidney problems and other chronic diseases stem from years of abusive eating.
While you’re busy planning to acid-detox through food, let me give you one more bone to chew on: calcium. While you might think you’re getting plenty of calcium in your diet according to USRDA standards, let me tell you now that it isn’t nearly enough—and to top it off, we only absorb a tiny fraction of the calcium we get through food and supplements. Of all the forms of calcium available to us, we absorb the “citrate” variety best, and only about 50% of that. This means all the people who fall for the coral calcium hype are throwing money down the drain, followed by people who take oyster shell, and people who take calcium carbonate—we simply don’t absorb those types, and they get excreted, literally into the sewer system.
Calcium citrate is best absorbed by humans, and at the 50% rate (the best of all the absorbable forms—citrate, maleate, and oxalate), this means that you must take DOUBLE the recommended dose to receive the full benefit without fear of loss due to excretion or under-supplementation. Since doctors today recommend taking 1000 mg. of calcium daily to avoid osteoporosis effects, you must take 2000 mg. to get the required amount into your system. Adequate calcium will also help to alkalinize our blood and urine.
When blood is left in an acidic state, it gets semi-filtered by the liver (where it does damage), then the semi-filterings get sent to the kidneys, where they can cause more damage (to kidneys and bladder). Ever have burning urination not caused by an STD, bladder, or kidney infection? It could be excessive acid, or acidosis.
Burning blood and urine also leaves you susceptible to inflammation and all the trouble that can bring—arthritis in all its forms, wrinkles, tissue and muscle pain, fluid retention, you name it.
A quick recap of what you can do to avoid acid-induced medical conditions from ever occurring is:
• Balance acidic foods (or foods that retain acidity past the stomach acid barrier) with alkaline foods with each meal—this means meats, grains, and legumes with fruits and vegetables in equal amounts. Leafy greens go a long way toward alkalinization.
• Make sure you’re consuming adequate amounts of the right kind of calcium supplements. Stomach acid remedies do not go past relieving acid in the stomach, and never reach your blood stream. Rapid hair and nail growth, as well as self-healing teeth, will tell you whether or not you are absorbing enough calcium.
• If mere balancing isn’t enough, start including super-alkaline foods such as lentils, lemons, raspberries, and foods listed above for added assistance with acid reduction beyond the stomach acid barrier.
If all else fails, look into L-glutamine supplementation—this amino acid helps the kidneys regulate acid levels in the blood, and helps weakened kidneys remove more acid from the system. You want to do everything you can to eat a “balanced” meal, supplement with calcium and/or L-glutamine, and adding super-alkaline foods, because acidosis left unattended can not only make your life a living hell, it can also put you on a transplant list—the next phase of hell. Acid can and frequently does kill off once-perfectly-good organs, as well as opening the door to cancers and other devastating diseases.
When my husband had to undergo heart surgery years ago, I fed him hospital chef salads minus the eggs for each meal, and it cut his post-op time from 7 days (proposed) to 5 days (actual). On Day 5 he was in the car riding home. The nurse told us the shortest recovery time ever was 4 days by a man who was a Navy SEAL. Sheer determination and a healthy lifestyle got that man home way ahead of schedule.
It also helped that Hubby was eating good for some time prior to the surgery—the man in the next bed didn’t fare so well: he needed a quad bypass, and was consuming heavy meals of meat, mashed potatoes, and (what looked like) canned vegetables the whole time we were there. It’s NO WONDER he needed a quad bypass! I don’t even want to know what his acid levels were.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Monday, September 03, 2007
How’s Your Health Been Lately?
That’s the question I have to ask when I see article after article pushing people into bulk buying of things that aren’t even necessary to the healthy human diet as a way of “making the budget go farther.”
Which budget are we talking about here? Are we only tackling ONE budget at a time?
You can buy all the 50 lb. bags of beans, flour, oats, and spices you want, but in the end, life will always intervene, making those purchases white elephants in one form or another. Let me give you some examples:
1. rancidity
2. food allergies
3. new or ever-changing dietary restrictions
4. relocation
Instead of only relying on bulk purchases to save me money, I borrow a trick from Doris Jantzen Longacre (the author of More with Less): shorten the shopping list.
I have spent countless hours researching medical and nutrition journals trying to find THE foods we should eat, and believe me, the Food Guide Pyramid isn’t even close! The Pyramid is loaded with recommendations that are politically motivated and ingrained into our medical establishment as dogma, and that dogma has been around for over 50 years. The Pyramid has never really had a good update, only the graphics have been spiffed up and exercise has been added—no new (or fewer) food categories, no new (or fewer) servings of anything (I believe less carbs in our diet is very much in order), and never, NEVER an entry for water, the most important food in our lives.
Too many times, the food focus has been on “cheaper” rather than “fewer and more effective.” Just like less is more when it comes to junk and clutter, it also pertains to food and nutrition. Too much focus on “cheaper” is what got us into the China dependency—just about everything we wear, virtually all our toys, nearly everything we use for furniture, and about ¾ of everything we eat comes from China (or nearby countries) in search of “cheaper”. We now know that we’re putting our lives at risk by falling for “cheaper.” You get what you pay for eventually.
As many have already done, make the switch to QUALITY rather than “cheaper” by learning to garden or buying locally-sourced food (organic or not) where you know where the farm is, or who owns the store and where the items in it ultimately come from. Like an L.L. Bean jacket or a Land’s End flannel shirt, you want your food to deliver as much quality to you in the form of nutrients your body can use, and this isn‘t done with “cheap” foods. The fresher the food is, the more nutrients it delivers to you—this means gardening or buying locally (organic or not).
More often than not, the very people crying out for universal health care are the same people who say they can’t afford fresh produce—do you see the connection yet? The fresher and more raw your produce, and the more you eat it, the less likely you are to need health care beyond the basics. Food (especially fresh and nutritious) is your medicine, and it does double-duty beyond your food budget—it also covers your health care insurance.
The vegetarians and hippies of the 60’s and 70’s had it right all along—the vegetarian diet is the healthiest and most preventative with some exceptions. For the most part, however, this covers all we really truly NEED to eat—we don’t need grains, meat, and dairy products for the comparatively sedentary lives we lead today, and nutritional yeast can make up for the missing B-12 from eliminating meat.
I did come across a couple of nutritious grains—quinoa and amaranth. These two contain actual protein, vitamins and minerals, and are low in carbs compared to rice, pasta, potatoes, and other commonly used carb-laden starches. Quinoa by itself is a complete protein, making it a good alternative to meat or protein combinations made with grains, seeds, nuts, and dairy.
As one who personally eats this way due to food allergies, it sure has gone a long way to helping MY budget far and beyond what bulk-buying by the pound did for it. I even went so far as to narrow down what specific produce would give me the most bang for my buck nutrition-wise: berries (black- blue- and straw-), plums, navel oranges, red bell peppers, broccoli, and carrots. Out of all the vast arrays offered in grocery stores and farmer’s markets, these foods have the most individual nutrients and anti-oxidants to offer, and that’s where I choose to put my money. I do eat extremely lean meat and mixed greens, but that’s because I like salads. The meat I grind, add reconstituted TVP, cook in a large pan, drain, then stir in nutritional yeast, spices, and psyllium powder (or sometimes flax meal). I then sub-divide the meat into 2-serving portions and freeze, making one measly pound of meat go for five meals. The leaner cuts I get, the more goes into the freezer at the end.
Most of our health problems today stem from a very few items (although the doctors would never tell you this for fear of unemployment):
1. too many calories
2. too little actual nutrition
3. too much protein
4. too many carbs for the activity level
5. too much marketing influence by various food lobbies
6. too much acid in the blood
Consequently, this also coincides with the results of going “cheap” in order to save on groceries and the food budget. Pre-packaged foods happen to contain all of the above problems plus a few more, like off-the-chart sodium levels.
If you are really interested in doing better for yourself and your food budget, I suggest you hone your food parameters to what your body REALLY needs instead of what your taste buds, spouse, or children WANT. It may sound boring, but it sure answers the call of the budget, the body’s need for nutrients, and less energy consumption—it takes less time to prepare (little to no cooking required), and less room to store (no pantry required). Save the canned goods and dry foods for emergencies, because that’s about all they’re good for!
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the nutrition labels and count the number of 0% numbers in the %DV column and the additional vitamin designations just below the label—the more zeros your food has, the more zeros you put into your body. Time after time, I pick up and turn over foods that have more carbs and fat in them than anything else—the most nutritious canned foods I have yet to find are organic kidney and black beans. Even salsa is mostly zeros for nutrients, meaning it’s a junk food by the time processors have had their evil way with it. All these zeros are the empty calories doctors, nutritionists, and gym trainers talk about, whether in their own books, on the radio, on TV, in the paper, or face-to-face, and now you can see them for yourself.
The most nutritious foods are ones without a nutritional “warning” label, and this means fresh produce (I already named the most beneficial pieces known to date), fresh meats/eggs/nuts, and clean water. If you feel the need to bulk buy, concentrate on these foods—you’re taking care of hunger, health care, and the budget all in one shot. The rest is just bad habit, and we all have bad habits we need to break.
Now that the shopping list is shortened, I’m sure your time, space, energy, and monetary budgets are happier for it—no coupons required, because these foods rarely go on sale. They don’t need to—they’re pretty much already at rock-bottom prices, unless you grow them yourself.
You can't pull health off a shelf somewhere and put it in your cart unless you know exactly where it is and what it means to you, "bargain" or no.
Which budget are we talking about here? Are we only tackling ONE budget at a time?
You can buy all the 50 lb. bags of beans, flour, oats, and spices you want, but in the end, life will always intervene, making those purchases white elephants in one form or another. Let me give you some examples:
1. rancidity
2. food allergies
3. new or ever-changing dietary restrictions
4. relocation
Instead of only relying on bulk purchases to save me money, I borrow a trick from Doris Jantzen Longacre (the author of More with Less): shorten the shopping list.
I have spent countless hours researching medical and nutrition journals trying to find THE foods we should eat, and believe me, the Food Guide Pyramid isn’t even close! The Pyramid is loaded with recommendations that are politically motivated and ingrained into our medical establishment as dogma, and that dogma has been around for over 50 years. The Pyramid has never really had a good update, only the graphics have been spiffed up and exercise has been added—no new (or fewer) food categories, no new (or fewer) servings of anything (I believe less carbs in our diet is very much in order), and never, NEVER an entry for water, the most important food in our lives.
Too many times, the food focus has been on “cheaper” rather than “fewer and more effective.” Just like less is more when it comes to junk and clutter, it also pertains to food and nutrition. Too much focus on “cheaper” is what got us into the China dependency—just about everything we wear, virtually all our toys, nearly everything we use for furniture, and about ¾ of everything we eat comes from China (or nearby countries) in search of “cheaper”. We now know that we’re putting our lives at risk by falling for “cheaper.” You get what you pay for eventually.
As many have already done, make the switch to QUALITY rather than “cheaper” by learning to garden or buying locally-sourced food (organic or not) where you know where the farm is, or who owns the store and where the items in it ultimately come from. Like an L.L. Bean jacket or a Land’s End flannel shirt, you want your food to deliver as much quality to you in the form of nutrients your body can use, and this isn‘t done with “cheap” foods. The fresher the food is, the more nutrients it delivers to you—this means gardening or buying locally (organic or not).
More often than not, the very people crying out for universal health care are the same people who say they can’t afford fresh produce—do you see the connection yet? The fresher and more raw your produce, and the more you eat it, the less likely you are to need health care beyond the basics. Food (especially fresh and nutritious) is your medicine, and it does double-duty beyond your food budget—it also covers your health care insurance.
The vegetarians and hippies of the 60’s and 70’s had it right all along—the vegetarian diet is the healthiest and most preventative with some exceptions. For the most part, however, this covers all we really truly NEED to eat—we don’t need grains, meat, and dairy products for the comparatively sedentary lives we lead today, and nutritional yeast can make up for the missing B-12 from eliminating meat.
I did come across a couple of nutritious grains—quinoa and amaranth. These two contain actual protein, vitamins and minerals, and are low in carbs compared to rice, pasta, potatoes, and other commonly used carb-laden starches. Quinoa by itself is a complete protein, making it a good alternative to meat or protein combinations made with grains, seeds, nuts, and dairy.
As one who personally eats this way due to food allergies, it sure has gone a long way to helping MY budget far and beyond what bulk-buying by the pound did for it. I even went so far as to narrow down what specific produce would give me the most bang for my buck nutrition-wise: berries (black- blue- and straw-), plums, navel oranges, red bell peppers, broccoli, and carrots. Out of all the vast arrays offered in grocery stores and farmer’s markets, these foods have the most individual nutrients and anti-oxidants to offer, and that’s where I choose to put my money. I do eat extremely lean meat and mixed greens, but that’s because I like salads. The meat I grind, add reconstituted TVP, cook in a large pan, drain, then stir in nutritional yeast, spices, and psyllium powder (or sometimes flax meal). I then sub-divide the meat into 2-serving portions and freeze, making one measly pound of meat go for five meals. The leaner cuts I get, the more goes into the freezer at the end.
Most of our health problems today stem from a very few items (although the doctors would never tell you this for fear of unemployment):
1. too many calories
2. too little actual nutrition
3. too much protein
4. too many carbs for the activity level
5. too much marketing influence by various food lobbies
6. too much acid in the blood
Consequently, this also coincides with the results of going “cheap” in order to save on groceries and the food budget. Pre-packaged foods happen to contain all of the above problems plus a few more, like off-the-chart sodium levels.
If you are really interested in doing better for yourself and your food budget, I suggest you hone your food parameters to what your body REALLY needs instead of what your taste buds, spouse, or children WANT. It may sound boring, but it sure answers the call of the budget, the body’s need for nutrients, and less energy consumption—it takes less time to prepare (little to no cooking required), and less room to store (no pantry required). Save the canned goods and dry foods for emergencies, because that’s about all they’re good for!
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the nutrition labels and count the number of 0% numbers in the %DV column and the additional vitamin designations just below the label—the more zeros your food has, the more zeros you put into your body. Time after time, I pick up and turn over foods that have more carbs and fat in them than anything else—the most nutritious canned foods I have yet to find are organic kidney and black beans. Even salsa is mostly zeros for nutrients, meaning it’s a junk food by the time processors have had their evil way with it. All these zeros are the empty calories doctors, nutritionists, and gym trainers talk about, whether in their own books, on the radio, on TV, in the paper, or face-to-face, and now you can see them for yourself.
The most nutritious foods are ones without a nutritional “warning” label, and this means fresh produce (I already named the most beneficial pieces known to date), fresh meats/eggs/nuts, and clean water. If you feel the need to bulk buy, concentrate on these foods—you’re taking care of hunger, health care, and the budget all in one shot. The rest is just bad habit, and we all have bad habits we need to break.
Now that the shopping list is shortened, I’m sure your time, space, energy, and monetary budgets are happier for it—no coupons required, because these foods rarely go on sale. They don’t need to—they’re pretty much already at rock-bottom prices, unless you grow them yourself.
You can't pull health off a shelf somewhere and put it in your cart unless you know exactly where it is and what it means to you, "bargain" or no.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
The Speed of Life
When you look at life from a distance, it seems like it’s a giant wheel with everything happening, moving away, and then coming back around again later in a different form or under different circumstances.
Within that giant wheel of life, there’s a horse race happening, as is so eloquently described in the book Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin and Heidi Toffler:
Position 1: in the lead, always moving at breakneck speed (Warp 9 for you trekkies), is business. New innovations are being discovered, created, amended, redesigned, reused, sold and re-sold in every minute of every day all around the globe.
Position 2: in second place, we have civil society with its grassroots’ pro- and anti- stands on just about every issue known to man, and various associations and congregations to further unite, divide, or otherwise create “churn” among the people.
Position 3: in third place, we see the American family. Typical households used to be large and contain many generations under one roof, but we moved to a “nuclear” format when industrial and urban conditions changed. Today, we see all sorts of family arrangements—nuclear, same-sex parents, single mothers or fathers, step families, senior couples, communal arrangements, etc. While most family functions have been outsourced to the government or other entities, the American family is starting to insource more and more functions, such as working and/or shopping from home, home schooling, banking and investing online, and many others.
Position 4: in fourth place, we have work. Labor unions, the definition of work, and work itself have undergone change after change as a result of horses 1, 2, and 3 above, and continue to change along with technological advances and business innovations. We used to work in the fields, then the factories, then corporations, and now some of us work from home or a remote site. Labor unions and work place legislation either haven’t kept up with the changing work world, or have no way to apply themselves to the new settings. The once-regimented and easily-controlled factory-style workplace rarely exists any more, and this #4 horse needs to figure out how to catch up with the rest of the pack, or just leave the race.
There are even slower horses than this, though, as I describe here…
Position 5: In fifth place are agencies, regulation, and bureaucracies (does this shock anyone?). When it’s far easier to start a new bureaucracy than close down an old one (think Homeland Security here), and takes 10 years or more to get approval to build infrastructure or for a new drug, something’s desperately wrong. This horse gets looked in the mouth a lot as a result—probably from subsisting on a steady diet of red tape.
Position 6: the American public school system. Designed during a mass-production factory era, it served the function of turning out MORE mass-production factory workers. While competition continually drives business, technology, and family into faster and faster speeds into uncharted territories, the public school system hasn’t budged an inch from the factory format. The public schools now serve a political purpose as blocks of union votes, institutions of union entrenchment, and monopolies—teachers, even bad ones, get paid whether your child learns or not. Meanwhile, the horses of work, business, and family have run away with the pack while we run around preaching “no child left behind” and do nothing real and effective about it. THIS is what “no child left behind” is REALLY about, not just test scores and nutrition!
And the horses that barely leave the starting gate at all are…
Position 7: This nag is (or rather are) the giant economic institutions such as the UN, the WTO, the IMF, and lots of other acronymed building names that affect economy (not only ours, but others as well). People within these organizations may change, and world economic crises may come and go, but these leviathans never seem to accomplish much in the wake of swirling event currents all around them because of political bickering that produces a negative vote or worse, none at all, due to stalemates.
Position 8: This horse should just be shot in the barn, and its name is political structure. The pace at which issues come up and changes happen is far more than our political structure can handle (or anyone else’s for that matter). One politician in particular says that when ongoing fundraising isn’t being pursued, elected officials have about 2 ½ minutes of uninterrupted time each day on Capitol Hill, and that isn’t sufficient for reading bills, having conversations, doing research, or even consulting with anyone about legislation up for vote. More and more of the job is being shoved off onto staffers (who come to the office with preconceived notions, biases, or prejudices that could sway a Congressman’s vote one way or another very easily). A good question here is this: we elect the Congressman or woman, but who elects their staff, of whom they rely upon for judgment and interpretation? Combine staffers’ activities with those of lobbyists, and you get an elected representative who represents anyone but you.
Then we have people calling their congressman, short-circuiting the system even more—is it any wonder this nag is dead on arrival?
But wait, there’s one more way in the back of the barn that should get a one-way ticket to the glue factory…
Position 9: flea-bitten, shaky, and runny-eyed, it’s the law. This institution moves at glacial speed compared to the frantic pace of business, society as a whole, and the American family. The field of law itself is changing all the time with such specialties as intellectual property law, gay rights, environmental law, an the outlandish-but-coming artificial intelligence law (that has to do with clones, lab-created beings, beings from elsewhere, robot rights and sentient being protection when we finally learn how to make robots “sentient beings,” quickly followed by gay robot rights, robot unions, and all the things we have as humans). Can you just picture our current Supreme Court having to make ultimate legal decisions regarding robots or cavemen re-created in a lab from genetic scratch? We’re on the cutting edge of genetic and robotic innovation, and there’s absolutely no legal structure in place to protect or support what might come from it. Getting these new fields into ESTABLISHED law is something else, however, as politics and religion always seem to find a way into the cracks before innovation does—an example is Microsoft anti-trust proceedings. By the time it got to court, the anti-trust problem would no longer be relevant, and would have long been technologized away.
Now you know why things take so long to get done in this world, in this country, and in this moment. If you look closely enough, you can even learn which horse to bet on, or saddle up for your own ride to prosperity or poverty. You also know which horses to avoid and/or likely to turn up lame when you most need them.
Within that giant wheel of life, there’s a horse race happening, as is so eloquently described in the book Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin and Heidi Toffler:
Position 1: in the lead, always moving at breakneck speed (Warp 9 for you trekkies), is business. New innovations are being discovered, created, amended, redesigned, reused, sold and re-sold in every minute of every day all around the globe.
Position 2: in second place, we have civil society with its grassroots’ pro- and anti- stands on just about every issue known to man, and various associations and congregations to further unite, divide, or otherwise create “churn” among the people.
Position 3: in third place, we see the American family. Typical households used to be large and contain many generations under one roof, but we moved to a “nuclear” format when industrial and urban conditions changed. Today, we see all sorts of family arrangements—nuclear, same-sex parents, single mothers or fathers, step families, senior couples, communal arrangements, etc. While most family functions have been outsourced to the government or other entities, the American family is starting to insource more and more functions, such as working and/or shopping from home, home schooling, banking and investing online, and many others.
Position 4: in fourth place, we have work. Labor unions, the definition of work, and work itself have undergone change after change as a result of horses 1, 2, and 3 above, and continue to change along with technological advances and business innovations. We used to work in the fields, then the factories, then corporations, and now some of us work from home or a remote site. Labor unions and work place legislation either haven’t kept up with the changing work world, or have no way to apply themselves to the new settings. The once-regimented and easily-controlled factory-style workplace rarely exists any more, and this #4 horse needs to figure out how to catch up with the rest of the pack, or just leave the race.
There are even slower horses than this, though, as I describe here…
Position 5: In fifth place are agencies, regulation, and bureaucracies (does this shock anyone?). When it’s far easier to start a new bureaucracy than close down an old one (think Homeland Security here), and takes 10 years or more to get approval to build infrastructure or for a new drug, something’s desperately wrong. This horse gets looked in the mouth a lot as a result—probably from subsisting on a steady diet of red tape.
Position 6: the American public school system. Designed during a mass-production factory era, it served the function of turning out MORE mass-production factory workers. While competition continually drives business, technology, and family into faster and faster speeds into uncharted territories, the public school system hasn’t budged an inch from the factory format. The public schools now serve a political purpose as blocks of union votes, institutions of union entrenchment, and monopolies—teachers, even bad ones, get paid whether your child learns or not. Meanwhile, the horses of work, business, and family have run away with the pack while we run around preaching “no child left behind” and do nothing real and effective about it. THIS is what “no child left behind” is REALLY about, not just test scores and nutrition!
And the horses that barely leave the starting gate at all are…
Position 7: This nag is (or rather are) the giant economic institutions such as the UN, the WTO, the IMF, and lots of other acronymed building names that affect economy (not only ours, but others as well). People within these organizations may change, and world economic crises may come and go, but these leviathans never seem to accomplish much in the wake of swirling event currents all around them because of political bickering that produces a negative vote or worse, none at all, due to stalemates.
Position 8: This horse should just be shot in the barn, and its name is political structure. The pace at which issues come up and changes happen is far more than our political structure can handle (or anyone else’s for that matter). One politician in particular says that when ongoing fundraising isn’t being pursued, elected officials have about 2 ½ minutes of uninterrupted time each day on Capitol Hill, and that isn’t sufficient for reading bills, having conversations, doing research, or even consulting with anyone about legislation up for vote. More and more of the job is being shoved off onto staffers (who come to the office with preconceived notions, biases, or prejudices that could sway a Congressman’s vote one way or another very easily). A good question here is this: we elect the Congressman or woman, but who elects their staff, of whom they rely upon for judgment and interpretation? Combine staffers’ activities with those of lobbyists, and you get an elected representative who represents anyone but you.
Then we have people calling their congressman, short-circuiting the system even more—is it any wonder this nag is dead on arrival?
But wait, there’s one more way in the back of the barn that should get a one-way ticket to the glue factory…
Position 9: flea-bitten, shaky, and runny-eyed, it’s the law. This institution moves at glacial speed compared to the frantic pace of business, society as a whole, and the American family. The field of law itself is changing all the time with such specialties as intellectual property law, gay rights, environmental law, an the outlandish-but-coming artificial intelligence law (that has to do with clones, lab-created beings, beings from elsewhere, robot rights and sentient being protection when we finally learn how to make robots “sentient beings,” quickly followed by gay robot rights, robot unions, and all the things we have as humans). Can you just picture our current Supreme Court having to make ultimate legal decisions regarding robots or cavemen re-created in a lab from genetic scratch? We’re on the cutting edge of genetic and robotic innovation, and there’s absolutely no legal structure in place to protect or support what might come from it. Getting these new fields into ESTABLISHED law is something else, however, as politics and religion always seem to find a way into the cracks before innovation does—an example is Microsoft anti-trust proceedings. By the time it got to court, the anti-trust problem would no longer be relevant, and would have long been technologized away.
Now you know why things take so long to get done in this world, in this country, and in this moment. If you look closely enough, you can even learn which horse to bet on, or saddle up for your own ride to prosperity or poverty. You also know which horses to avoid and/or likely to turn up lame when you most need them.
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