Clueless: Smart Phones & Movie Theaters

This post is to deliver a message to the clueless:

Yes, it does annoy people when you turn on a device with a bright screen in a dark movie theater.

Yes, it is rude.

A small bright screen firing up in a pitch black room is distracting. Having to get up and ask you to shut it off spoils part of the movie. Getting into that spoiled movie often costs over $10 per person.

If you can’t go for 90 minutes without checking your email you should not go to movie theaters or you should make the radical move of going out into the hallway.

Other people paid to get into the movie besides you.

Enough said.

Veggie Strongman Dies At 104

strong man Joe Rollino
Mr. Rollino at a party in Brooklyn for his 103rd birthday. He was one of the last links to the old Coney Island strongmen.

This post is dedicated to my recent guest “Hammer”. Not all of the wisdom of the world can be found in a single book or in the Masai tribe….

Mr. Rollino stayed away from meat. And cigarettes. And alcohol. He said he walked five miles every morning, rain or shine

snip…

On Monday morning, Mr. Rollino went for a walk in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a daily routine. It was part of the Great Joe Rollino’s greatest feat, a display of physical dexterity and stamina so subtle that it revealed itself only if you happened to ask him his date of birth: March 19, 1905. He was 104 years old and counting.

A few minutes before 7 a.m., as Mr. Rollino was crossing Bay Ridge Parkway at 13th Avenue, a 1999 Ford Windstar minivan struck him. The police said he suffered fractures to his pelvis, chest, ribs and face, as well as head trauma. Unconscious, he was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he later died.

snip…

“Pound for pound, in the feats that he practiced, he was one of the greatest performing strongmen we’ve ever had, if the lifts he’s credited with are accurate,” said Terry Todd, a co-director of the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas, who knew Mr. Rollino for more than four decades. “He certainly wasn’t one of the strongest all-time strongmen, because of his size.

snip…

Old photographs of Mr. Rollino are displayed in several neighborhood shops. People called him Puggy. “If he shook your hand, he’d break it,” said James Romeo, owner of Romeo Brothers Meats and Foods on 15th Avenue. “He wasn’t feeble.”

Charles Denson, a historian and the author of “Coney Island: Lost and Found,” first met Mr. Rollino at his 103rd birthday party at a neighborhood restaurant. “He was one of the last links to the old strongman days of Coney Island,” he said. “Coney Island was the training ground for strongmen. He was one of the best.”

The full New York Times article

” – but people have drank milk for centuries”

Bathsheba with The Letter Of David by Rembrandt 1654.

The picture above is called “Bathsheba with The Letter Of David”. It was painted by Rembrandt in 1654. I came across it in “The No Dairy Breast Cancer Prevention Program” ( page 101 ).

As you can see the model Rembrandt used has a large tumor on her left breast. I am not an art expert of any kind. I don’t know if the tumor was painted there as part of the story of the painting or if this particular model just happened to have breast cancer.

Dr. Plant mentioned the painting in her book as food for thought to people who make the point ” -but people have been drinking milk for centuries”. People have also been getting cancer for centuries and often enough to show up in the art of the time. In the year 1654, any cows milk people were drinking was likely raw, unpasteurized and organic. So, while modern production methods undoubtedly contribute to the unhealthy nature of cows milk it isn’t the whole story. For more details please click on the above link to my review of her book.

A frequent topic of conversation about medical science and research is how it seems like many diseases are more frequent in our time. Nobody doubts that the changes people have caused in our environments helps explains this. However, the very salient point is made that with improved diagnostics another possibility is that it only seems like particular diseases are increasing. Some diseases seem to be on the increase because we now know how to recognize those diseases and we now have the institutional infrastructures to measure the occurrence of those diseases as well as communicate about it.

In other words, yes, back in the good old days people drank milk, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were free of breast cancer. It could be that they didn’t know what it was, that they didn’t call it the same thing we did or that they didn’t communicate about it as much as we do.

The painting above at least tells us that breast cancer existed back in the year 1654.

So, if you are concerned about your health you might take the argument ” but people have always drank milk” with some salt.