The real reason nobody reads my blog is that no one, or at least hardly anyone knows I exist.

The above link says the following:

The real reason why nobody reads your blog is this: massively successful blogging is about establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. It’s all about who you know. Really!

I need more people to know me. I don’t think its so much that I don’t know many people. I’ve spent years on the internet lurking - too shy to say anything. I know a lot of people, they just don’t know me.

I’ve been planning to work on using Twitter more, but too many things have came up and I haven’t had time yet.

I can’t even start thinking about adding more blogs at this point - I’ve been working hard writing - but still hardly any readers.

I wonder how accurate feedburner is with the number of subscribers? I know people unsubscribe - but I’ve lost a lot of people just since Friday. They couldn’t have been subscribed for too long, so it seems odd that that many people would unsubscribe so soon.

So, needless to say I’m way behind on my goal regarding that.

Not doing well with comments either - getting lots of friends at Blogcatalog though - that’s about it.

The other thing I’ve had on my mind - I haven’t really been using Twitter. I found this at Performancing recently: Twitter As Resource?. It looks like something I could learn something from. That’s next on my list to do.

My dad died two years ago from pancreatic cancer - I just found this paper a few days ago - it was written in 2003 though.

Tooth loss, pancreatic cancer, and Helicobacter pylori

He smoked most of his life and had false teeth, so I guess I know why he got it now. Too bad his doctor didn’t keep up on current research or he would have realized my died had a high risk of pancreatic cancer and they would have realized what was wrong earlier instead of just saying he was a diabetic.

If anyone has heard up more recent research about this, please let me know, I’d love to follow this story.

I’ve been really bad about writing on here, been spending more time on my other blogs instead.

here are some fun things I’ve found on the web recently:

http://www.peepresearch.org/smoking.html

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast01apr_1m.htm

I used to love peeps, but I can’t eat that much sugar anymore.

I like this too, a list of science things everyone should know:

http://www.startribune.com/389/story/369290.html

I’ve long wanted to write a post about how much I hate doctors. I even considered at one time having an entire blog discussing how incompetent they are.

Here’s my latest experience with my (soon-to-be-fired) doctor:

We are starting the process to adopt a child from China. There is a form from our agency that needs to be filled out, which I brought with me and gave it to her. She apparently did not even bother to look at it. The form clearly stated that I needed to be tested for HIV and hepatitis among other things. And there were instructions on the form saying that it needed to be filled out exactly and completely.

So what happens?

Today in the mail I get a letter from my doctor about my blood test results. Not on the form I gave her at all, but just on a separate sheet of paper. No mention of the HIV or hepatitis results were made at all. Likely she didn’t even test for them - which I had kind of suspected as she had failed to tell the lab person that I needed to have a urinalysis done when I was there too.

The form also needed to be notorized which I discussed previously also, and was told there was a notary in the office. Of course even if she did have the letter she wrote notarized, it wouldn’t have helped, since its the form I gave her that needs to be notarized.

So now, when I hear back from her office which may not be until next week, I will have to have blood tests done all over again. And I have a gut feeling that our insurance won’t cover it and I’ll have to pay a lot of the cost myself.

So doctor lesson #1: don’t expect a doctor to be competent enough to actually be able to read and follow directions correctly.

Once I’m done with what I need from her with this adoption - she’s fired - and I’ll be looking for a new doctor.

The November 2005 issue of National Geographic had a great article about longevity. The talked about 3 different groups of people who tend to live longer than average: Sardinians, Okinawans and Seventh-day Adventists in California.

All three groups don’t smoke, place a high priority on family, are active and social and eat lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The Sardinians also drink red wine and eat pecorino cheese. The Okinawans eat small portions, find purpose in their lives and keep friends. The Adventists eat nuts and beans, don’t drink alcohol or caffeine and eat only a little meat.

Pecorino cheese is apparently made from sheep’s milk and is high is omega-3 fatty acids. The only kind of pecorino I’ve been able to find around here though is romano, which is ok, and I’ve been using it on pasta and salads. I would like to find other types of pecorino cheese though. You can read more about pecorino cheese here: http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/cheeses/italian/pecorino.htm

Pinot Noir is a red wine with really high levels of resveratrol. Resveratrol is an anti-fungal substance found on grape skins when grapes are attacked by fungi (botrytis is the particular fungus, from what I can tell). Resveratrol is an anti-oxidant that may slow the growth of several different types of cancer cells and is also believed to reduce ‘bad’ cholesterol and increase ‘good’ cholesterol.

The skin is left on the grapes when making red wine, so red wine is higher in resveratrol than white wine. Pinot Noir is really high in resveratrol because the grapes have thin skin and they grow in tight clusters that make them more susceptible to fungus problems. Pinot Noir made in the state of New York (especially the Finger Lakes region) has the highest level, but it can vary from year to year.

How the wine is processed also affects the amount of resveratrol in it. Some red wines are filtered to remove tannins but this also removes the resveratrol.

Apparently pinot noir is a difficult grape to grow and all the pinot noir wine I’ve been able to find is pretty expensive. Its unclear also whether or not the resveratrol stays stable for very long after the bottle has been open. Some places say it breaks down quickly, others say not if its kept cold and dark. Apparently resveratrol supplements do not stay stable however, that seems clear from what I’ve read.

More information about resveratrol can be found here: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/resveratrol/

It’s also unclear to me how much resveratrol is in grape juice and the varieties of red grapes found in most grocery store. But considering the price of pinot noir wine, it seems that most any resveratrol I get will be from grapes and grape juice!

CNN has a transcript on their site about the National Geographic story: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/24/acd.01.html (scroll down a little to get to it).

A related interesting thing is this life expectancy calculator: http://livingto100.com/lifecalc.html?accept.php

In summary, I found the National Geographic article to be pretty interesting and I’d write more about it now but I have a bad headache - and no - its not from drinking red wine!

The last few weeks have been busy and stressful. After my friend from high school died, one of our cats died and then my mom moved from the house we’d lived in since I was young, and where my dog was buried and my dad died. I helped her paint the new house and move. And then the holidays all came!

So, I haven’t worked on any web sites, including this blog, for a while but am starting to get back to it.

I found out today that someone I went to high school with has cancer and is likely dying.

She’s just a few months younger than me - and taking her last few breaths.

I’m hoping to be a mommy someday still - and she’s laying in a bed dying.

I remember when my dad was dying from cancer, he was 77 and had a long full life.

Her life should, at most, be half over.

But instead she’s laying in a bed dying.

Just as my dad was.

I hope that I never stop appreciating how lucky I am like I do at this moment.

Someone sent this to me a few days ago:
http://www.talgas.com/pics/unattended-children.jpg

I thought it was pretty funny!

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home, That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan from ‘Pale Blue Dot’

Some other Sagan links:
http://www.coseti.org/klaescnt.htm - a lot of information about the movie ‘Contact’

http://www.sciencenter.org/SaganPW/ - A planet walk dedicated to Carl Sagan with numbers given for a scaled down version of the solar system.

http://paleblue.us/about.html - another blog inspired by ‘pale blue dot’