Inside the Mind of Mikie Metric

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Friday, February 5, 2010 - The United States is beginning to pay the price for the decades of under-educating and over-protecting our younger generations. (Before I go any farther, I want to qualify my remarks. There are now and always have been many young people who study hard, work hard, have acquired good values and work ethics, and are a tribute to their families, their neighborhoods and their country. The problem is that the percentage of young people who fit this description is getting smaller and smaller. Kids who turn out this way seem to have become the exception rather than the norm.) The primary cause for the decline in educational achievement, competitiveness and productivity seems to be the education establishment itself.

I was all set to get into an analysis of the federal, state and local education establishments, but then I realized I was not that knowledgeable about any of it. I was going to try the same thing I used to do on essay tests in school - Use a lot of words and a few facts and a fair amount of BS and hope somebody was impressed. Instead, I will only give my impressions of what I know.

In many school districts around the country, common sense seems to have fallen by the wayside. Because of the excessively-publicized incidences of violence in a few schools, and because of a few ridiculous court cases involving disgruntled over-protective parents, now school districts every where have instituted "Zero Tolerance" systems. This has led to students being suspended for giving a friend with a headache a Tylenol, for bringing fingernail clippers to school, for drawing a picture of a gun on a sheet of tablet paper, for hugging a friend who was crying over home problems, and many similar incidents. It has gotten so bad in some places, that the good kids feel like they are in jail instead of school.

As part of the educational establishment's goal of protecting every child from every possible physical and psychological harm, these steps have been taken in various schools: any playground activity that has any chance of causing a child to be hurt, including tag and all running, has been banned; any competitive games that involve someone being IT and possibly having his or her self-esteem damaged have been banned; sports games such as kickball, soccer, baseball are not allowed to keep score so no-one will be a loser. How in the world can life like this prepare children for the real world? More later.

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - During the past week, I have heard or read comments from many different people - radio talk-show personalities, economists, politicians, etc. - regarding the mid-term economic future of the United States, like through the end of 2011, and according to most of them, the situation seems rather bleak. Right now, the situation seems to be improving. The stock market is edging upward, unemployment seems to have peaked out, and a lot of people are buying, entertaining, and living as if the worst is over. Many of the experts have a different view of matters.

According to them, business has picked up recently because businesses are ordering goods to replace inventories that had been depleted during the down-turn last year. Once the stocks are replenished and the warehouses are full, the bottom will fall out of the economy because there are not enough people working and buying to sustain any kind of reasonable growth. Companies do not want to take the gamble and expand because of the unsureness of the political situation - will cap and trade be passed? will financial institutions make loans available? Will this administration's environmental policies make building or enlarging businesses feasible? Will some reasonable moves be made to ensure the availability of low-priced fuels?

Predictions being made include unemployment figures even higher than we've seen so far, the housing market, which seems to have improved a bit lately, to hit even greater depths, more businesses to fail or move over-seas. And all this is expected if the government does everything right, makes the correct moves to fix the situation, because the fix is expected to take several years. If, on the other hand, the Obama administration continues to take actions that run counter to what is needed to repair the economy, it could take many years to rebuild. On that cheerful note, I think I'll drown my sorrows in a glass of iced tea.

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Thursday, January 28, 2010 - I had the television set on and tuned to Obama's State of the Union speech last night, but I have to admit that I didn't listen to every word. So much of it seemed to be a repeat of speeches I had heard before, and was describing events and a country that I had trouble recognizing. Several times during the speech, I caught a statement that caused me to raise my head from the task I was involved in and say to my girlfriend, "That's just not true!" I don't need to get into specifics, because this has been dealt with over and over on many web sites, in the post-speech commentaries as well as in the Fact Checks done by several sources. My main objective is to express my wonderment at how a person who has obtained the top political position in our country can remain so clueless and out of touch with the values and attitudes of a majority of the population.

Is President Obama so aloof and self-centered that he thinks it doesn't matter what the citizenry believes if it runs counter to his goals and aspirations? Or is the President kept insulated from the bulk of the disagreements and controversy by the people who are "handling" him? No matter how much his disapproval figures grow, no matter how much disagreement with his policies is remarked on by the media, he continues to doggedly plow forward towards Universal Health Care, towards a socialist-style "nanny state" in which the government will handle all the problems the citizens might encounter. In spite of his multitude of speeches giving lip service to bi-partisanship and upholding the values of freedom, capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit, his actions give the lie to his words.

The State of the Union speech was just the latest example of Obama's blaming all the country's problems on the Bush administration, and how the problems were so large that even HE has been unable to undo all of them yet. In last night's speech, the President commented on how bad things had been during the past decade and saying that he couldn't undo 10 years of wrong decisions in one year. It seems that he forgot that the economy was booming, the stock market climbing, unemployment at the lowest level ever, tax revenues soaring (in spite of tax cuts by Bush), until late in 2007. This was hardly the "past decade".

I had the impression that the President's speech was written by someone who had been out of town for the past year and just zoomed into town to write the speech based on what he remembered of Obama's mesmerized followers last year and the biased political updates fed to him by insider hacks. The words coming from the teleprompter just didn't seem to match the reality of the world around us.

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Another morning of gas, minor explosions and loose stools. Why? I was foolish enough yesterday afternoon to put half a packet of old, dried miniature marshmallows in the cup of hot chocolate I had for a snack. I knew that modified food starch was listed among the ingredients on the bag of miniature marshmallows my girlfriend opened last week, but the packet I had was old, left over from Christmas. The little pieces of candy were shriveled and dried out. Besides, maybe they were made by a different company, one that didn't use modified food starch. Such was the way my mind handled the situation. Guess I was wrong.

Breakfast today was good. After eating a navel orange, I thawed out two berry-flavored frozen waffles, toasted and buttered them, while frying two eggs, which ended up with hard yokes. All in all, it was a decent breakfast.

I will need to buy groceries today. I have a list started- meats, frozen veggies, fresh fruit, celery, milk, and various non-food items. I will look for a brand of baked beans that doesn't contain wheat in one form or another. I like to keep beans on hand for a quick meal - I cut up hotdogs in the beans and heat them, since I can't eat the dogs on bread or a roll as I used to do. My cereal is fine for now - a store-brand chex type and gluten-free Cheerio-look-alikes that taste nothing at all like real Cheerios. I would like to get some pasta, but the gluten-free stuff costs about $3.79 for a 16 oz. package. Maybe I'll get one, just to try it out. I would also like to get some frozen entrees, if I can find any in the "real" food department that don't contain some form of gluten. Last week my friend bought me a gluten-free frozen package of macaroni and cheese (using rice pasta) which tasted okay, but it cost well over three dollars for about 8 ounces of food. I'll have to think about that.

Should I buy canned soups, I wonder. The last two cans I tried were not that good. I've noticed that manufacturers tend to double and triple up on the "healthful" aspects of their foods. Not only are foods "low in sodium" , with "50% less fat" and claim to be cholesterol-free, some of them also state proudly that they are "gluten-free". In fact, many of the products have eliminated so many of the potentially harmful elements that the taste has been eliminated, too.
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Monday, January 25, 2010 - When I was told the results of the blood tests came back negative, that there were no gluten antibodies in my blood, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, it would be simpler if I had a recognized condition to hang my symptoms on. On the other hand, Celiac disease carries with it a lot of potentially bad garbage. I figured it was time for more on-line research.

I read that up to 15% of people have gluten sensitivity to one degree or another, while only about 1% of the population actually had Celiac Disease. That sounded good to me. I would rather be sensitive than have a disease. It didn't really change anything for me, however. I still had to try to eliminate wheat products and other sources of gluten from my diet, and in the process, try to figure out just how sensitive I was. I had read that people at the extreme end of the sensitivity scale have to avoid foods that have been processed on machinery or equipment that might have processed wheat sometime in the past. I had a chance to eliminate that possibility for myself when I consumed chocolate covered raisins and nuts and roasted almonds over the holidays that came with that particular warning on the package. I had no adverse reaction.

From time to time, I will have one or two trips to the bathroom that are less than ideal - gas, looseness, outright diarrhea - and be unable to pinpoint what I might have eaten or drunk that would have caused it. I suppose it's possible for such irregularities to occur for reasons that have nothing to do with gluten. Other times, I can come up with a probable reason, like the time last week that I ate one piece of cream-filled chocolate candy from a Whitman's Sampler box, in spite of the label saying the contents contained modified food starch. The following morning I experienced one explosion and three watery BM's before it ran its course.

Maintaining a tasty, interesting, safe diet has proven to be a hassle. I made some home-made pizza the other night, using pre-baked, gluten-free pizza shells. Two 8" shells cost $8.99. I added shredded mozzarella cheese, bottled pizza sauce and slices of pepperoni. When they came out of the oven, they were edible, but nothing like the very thin crusted pizzas I used to buy from an area shop. On a brighter note, one morning last week I made pancakes and eggs for breakfast, using a gluten-free baking mix. Not bad at all. It gives me hope.

This morning I had more unsatisfactory trips to the bathroom and am unable to remember anything I might have eaten that could have caused it. During the search for a reason, however, I found out that the Jujubes that I've been snacking on for the past year contain modified food starch, BUT after this disclosure on the candy box, the word potato in parentheses was included, which means they are safe for me.

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This entry will be a bit more personal than others have been, but it will contain information that might prove to be valuable to some of the readers of this blog. I had been having frequent intestinal problems for the past few months. Symptoms ranged from excessive flatulence and explosive bowel movements to floating stools - puffy pillows of putrid poop that covered the entire water surface in the bowl - to straight liquid that gushed out. The problem began to affect my daily life, with locating the next possible bathroom becoming an essential part of every trip I made away from home. A good example is the time I was buying groceries in a local supermarket and had to make three trips to the bathroom before leaving the store.

At first, I tried the usual cure - immodium. For a few times, my bowel movements became normal often enough to make me think I had solved the problem, but then I would have another bout of diarrhea in all its forms. I began searching on-line, using my symptoms as the key words. One possibility that came up was IBS - irritable bowel syndrome - even though I didn't have the pain or cramps that were listed as one of the main symptoms. There was no specific cause or treatment mentioned, so I continued with periodic doses of immodium and I added daily capsules of lactobacillus acidophilus, the same digestive bacteria that resides in normal intestines, to replace what I had lost with the diarrhea. That seemed to work for a couple of days, but then I was again hit again by gas, commode explosions, greasy floating stools, etc. I read about Crohn's disease but rejected it as MY disease because I didn't have enough of the symptoms.

The next tentative diagnosis was the result of reading between the lines of internet information, putting pieces together and using logic. For the previous few years, I had already been dealing with lactose intolerance - my body's inability to break down and digest lactose, one of the sugars contained in dairy products - because my digestive tract produced too little lactase enzyme. This resulted in undigested sugars reaching my large intestines where they would be pounced on and gobbled up by the normal intestinal bacteria, giving off gas as a by-product. In addition, extra water would be drawn into the large intestine to help with this delayed digestion. The gas and the extra water became gas-charged diarrhea. The good thing about lactose intolerance is that it can be controlled easily, simply by taking lactase enzyme tablets whenever you consume dairy products or foods with lactose in them. Based on this prior experience and my internet reading, I concluded that my new round of bowel misbehavior might stem from an over-all shortage of digestive enzymes. Aha! I thought. This, also, will be easy to deal with because digestive enzymes can be purchased over the counter in tablet form.

For the 72 hours or so after reaching this conclusion, I took the digestive enzyme tablets with all of my meals along with the acidophilus capsule each day and the lactase tablets whenever I ate dairy products. All this pill-popping was in addition to my normal medications for high cholesterol, atrial fibrillation, blood-thinning, enlarged prostate and arthritis. Things went well for about 2 days, with normal bowel movements each day. I thought I had solved my problem on my own. And then, the bottom fell out again. I experienced much flatulence, gaseous stools, liquid spurts of diarrhea, all the same old symptoms. Back to the drawing board.

More symptom searching on the web led me to a condition that I had vaguely heard about before but had discounted because it was too weird - celiac disease, an auto-immune reaction to gluten, a type of protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The more I read, the closer the symptoms seemed to match mine, although celiac disease could also cause many problems that I didn't have. Further research informed me that the reaction to gluten can cover a range of sensitivities and seriousness. Okay, I thought, my symptoms fell well within the boundaries discussed. Next step, how to fix or deal with gluten sensitivity. Again, the answer seemed quite simple. All I have to do is not eat anything with gluten in it. No pills to take, no medicine of any kind, this would be easy! Then I checked the foods I had in the cupboard, closet, refrigerator and freezer. Uh-oh!

This is a partial list of the food in my apartment that I figured I should not eat: Cheerios (wheat flour way down on the list of ingredients), saltines, Ritz cracker look-alikes, Jiffy mix, pancake mix, pretzels, cupcakes, Stauffer frozen entrees, Marie Callendar frozen entrees, breaded chicken tenders, boxes of pasta, Campbell's barbecue baked beans, Campbell's and Progresso canned soups (except French Onion), Ramen noodle soups. This was just the stuff I had already bought. During my next trip to the supermarket I passed by many more items on the Do Not Eat list: fresh-baked Italian bread (and all other breads on the shelves), donuts, all boxed or bagged cereals except Rice or Corn Chex and a few clones, cakes, pies, cookies, most snack foods, nearly everything in the frozen food aisle except unadorned vegetables, at least 90% of the canned soups and prepared foods. What's really tricky is checking for the hidden sources of gluten because they can come under various names: modified food starch, dextrin, wheat (or rye or barley) flour, etc. Here are some of the surprise discoveries I have made: miniature marshmallows contain modified food starch, which is probably derived from wheat (modified corn starch is OK), McCormick Chili seasoning packets list wheat flour low down on the ingredients, a box of Whitman's Sampler chocolate candy contains modified food starch, red licorice strips contain wheat, flavored potato chips list wheat flour in their ingredients, yogurt contains modified food starch, the Fire style taco sauce packets at Taco Bell contain wheat flour. Foods that I will particularly miss: freshly-made pizza from my favorite pizza shop, cheese steak sandwiches, toasted bagels with cream cheese, freshly-made submarine sandwiches, do-it-yourself waffles for breakfast at many southern motels, pancake or waffle breakfasts, chicken and biscuits, nearly all fast foods (except Taco Bell crunchy tacos).

Through trial and error, I am learning the degree of my sensitivity. Two pieces of Whitman's chocolate candy and 5 miniature marshmallows last evening resulted in three rather loose trips to the bathroom today. Two packets of instant oatmeal one morning last week turned into 6 bathroom trips that night. (Oats are on the maybe ok, maybe not list for folks with gluten sensitivity.) Even with these experiences, I know I am not as sensitive as some people. I have been able to eat nuts and candies made on machinery that has processed wheat without bad effects. The other evening, my girlfriend and I ate a ready-made, gluten-free frozen pizza. It was about 12" in diameter, made with rice flour, and almost tasted like some kind of pizza. We had another one a few days later, but this time with extra pizza sauce, pepperoni and cheese. Not great, but much better. Problem is, each pizza cost $6.99, without the extra stuff we added to the second one. This could be a fairly serious problem if we were determined to eat the same types of foods we used to eat, but now without the gluten, because the gluten-free products tend to be rather expensive. Examples: a 12-slice loaf of gluten-free bread = $4.00, frozen rice macaroni and cheese, $4.00, 2 rice-flour pizza shells (12") = $8.99, 16 oz. bag of gluten-free macaroni = $3.79, 16 oz. bag of pancake flour = $6.00, etc.

So far, I have been concentrating on all the things I can't eat, or the cost of substitute items. There is a good side to this diet, however. I can have all the fresh or frozen fruits and veggies I want. I can eat any fresh meat and fish and most non-breaded frozen meats and fish. I can eat nuts, rice, corn, beans, and potatoes. In other words, I can eat most natural foods, but few manufactured foods. That doesn't sound bad, does it? How do I know I am gluten sensitive? For now, only by trial and error. Since I put myself on this gluten-free diet, 85% of my bowel movements have been relatively normal, and when they have not been normal, I could always look back to something I had eaten that I shouldn't have. The official diagnosis will depend on the results from testing blood that was drawn last Thursday. If it reveals antibodies in my blood, I will know for sure I have Celiac disease. If it doesn't show antibodies, I may or may not have it and might need further testing. UPDATE: The blood test came back negative for the celiac-related antibodies, but it did show that my iron level was a bit lower than it should be. My doctor told me this could happen. He said that often a person will be told to NOT go on a gluten-free diet until the diagnosis is confirmed, or if the special diet has already started, to eat food with gluten on purpose in order to stimulate the production of antibodies, and then have blood drawn. I think not! My family doctor is setting up an appointment for me with a G.I. specialist. In the mean time, I will continue to eat as gluten-free as possible.

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Friday, January 15, 2010 (52) - I've heard bits and pieces of the proposed Health Care Bill read or discussed on various talk shows. I've also read newspaper or magazine articles on the same topic. I know that this minimal exposure to the two thousand plus pages in both the Senate and the House bill was just enough to tickle my curiosity bone. Yet, the whole issue could be handled by 5 or 10 pages of carefully worded prose that would be understandable by the average citizen without an attorney as translator.

People should start thinking of medical insurance as being more like car insurance. Do you file a claim when you get a flat tire fixed or when you have the oil changed? Do you expect the car insurance company to foot the bill when you have a new alternator belt installed? Of course not. And yet, you and most people expect their medical insurance to pay at least part of the bill for routine office visits, a dental filling, a new pair of glasses, a generic prescription and so on. I used to think I deserved that because of the premiums I was paying - $33 per week plus office visit co-pays plus a huge $2500 deductible for more serious matters. My weekly payments alone added up to over $1700 a year. How much routine care would that provide for the average fairly healthy person?

So that's my idea - Instead of people and employers paying hundreds of dollars a month for medical insurance that covers every service under the sun, why shouldn't people pay for their own routine care? This would include the yearly medical exam, treatment for a bad cold or minor work injury, having a tooth filled or a routine extraction, generic prescriptions, normal non-designer eye glasses, etc. On average, the money people saved on health insurance would pay for this routine care. In fact, if a person were healthy, he could save money over a year's time. Medical insurance, a much smaller premium paid for by employers, individuals or the government, would then be used for catastrophic expenses such as automobile accident injuries, major operations, and so on. In the mean time, with people paying for their own routine medical care, they would be a bit more judicious with their trips to the doctor, might be encouraged to live a healthier life style, and would be in a position to price shop to find the most reasonable costs for the services they needed. In this situation, doctors would be forced to compete with other doctors, like most other businesses do, and would be under pressure to provide the best services for the most reasonable prices or they would lose patients and their livelihood.

The best thing about this whole idea is that the medical industry would not have to be remade and the government would have little or no involvement in the process. It would be the free market forces that would bring it about.

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Monday, December 28, 2009 (49) - I understand that people have different ways of looking at and interpreting the same events. The disparity of accounts that police receive from witnesses to a crime or accident attests to that. What I don't understand is how people can be exposed to facts and expert evaluations that point to a particular reality, and still deny that reality because it runs counter to their preconceived ideas. The two topics about which this phenomenon is most obvious are the Global Warming debate and how successful Obama has been in fixing the US economy.

I've read many accounts of the events that have led some scientists to become convinced that the Earth COULD be in the midst of a warming trend that MIGHT HAVE BEEN exacerbated by man's activities, and that, if continued at the current levels, MAY cause the Earth's temperature to rise, which WILL PROBABLY bring about extensive melting of glaciers and the ice caps, which will MOST LIKELY cause ocean levels to rise, flooding coastal areas around the world. I have also read other interpretations of the same environmental data by equally competent scientists who say that, at worst, man's activities might have had a slight influence on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but not enough to bring about any notable changes in world-wide temperatures. In addition to that, world-wide temperatures have been falling, not rising, for almost the past decade. Does information like that change the minds of any of the die-hard Global Warming supporters? Not in the least. They know what they believe and don't want the situation cluttered with facts, especially facts that don't support what they already "know" is correct.

The same kind if pig-headed persistence of belief is demonstrated by those who are convinced that Obama is the best thing that ever happened to the United States and his decisions are well on the way to fixing the previously badly broken US economy. Does it matter that past recessions or depressions healed themselves with normal market adjustments within 9 months on average, except when the government intervened to "fix" things, in which cases the depressions lasted several years? Does it matter that every reputable economist on earth has stated that the way to stimulate business and create new jobs is to cut taxes on businesses and free up investment, yet Obama has taken step after step to raise taxes on businesses and add restrictions on how business is conducted? Does it matter that job creation is the single most important factor of healing a foundering economy, and yet Obama has spent his time and attention on everything but jobs for almost the first year of his administration? For his supporters, none of those things matter because their support is more religion than common sense. It is that blind, unreasoning belief that will drag the country down the one-way path to Third-world-hood if we allow it.

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