HomeBlend Gourmet

A Prosecuting Attorney was caught by the Idaho State Bar Association threatening a mother who had filed charges against a man who “abused” her son in Church after he whispered to a friend during a Sunday School Lesson.

The Sunday School teacher picked up the 16 year old boy and threw him around the room, bruising his back and neck.  The mother took pictures of the bruising and called the police, filing a report against the man.

The prosecuting attorney called the woman, who happened to be on the phone with an Attorney freind from Boise.  The conversation was overheard by the Attorney, who called the Idaho State Bar Association and had them listen in to the conversation as well.

The Prosecuting Attorney threatened the mother saying that if she pursued the prosecution of this man, that he would in turn file charges against her son for “disturbing the peace” because he whispered in class disrupting the Sunday school teachers lesson.  The total conversation was overheard by not only the woman’s Attorney, but the Idaho State Bar Association as well!

A little bit of power in the wrong hands…what can I say?  It’s nice when there is proof that people in this county need some serious help.  Now if we can just find someone to help instead of back up the proof!

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They are getting ready to open a new #”Jamba Juice” in #TwinFalls #Idaho!  Congrats to Ryan Arfmann, #Franchise Owner! Listen for my #”Health Tips of the Day”, Sponsored by “Jamba Juice”.

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I’ve known #Big Fella for a while now…He’s been offered nice #kitchens, big deals, Corporate deals…but he wanted to keep his #show “real”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqSij7J48_I , he wanted his ingredients to be easy to get and cheap so that the middle class and poor could access a show that was for them about cooking, but that was entertaining.  He passed up all the money offers because they wanted the control over what you could see him pitch…I say…Bravo!  I get to do the nutritional consulting for my friend and his cooking show, you can put your brand on his show…he will cook with it, we will look at different ways to incorporate it into foods, foods you may not have thought about!  I do consulting for a couple of Franchises locally selling “smoothies”.  We have shown the public several ways of using these products that wouldn’t be conventional…like, for example…you can take all fruit smoothies, take them home and make “fruit leather” out of them..yeah, never thought about that, did you?  We’ve taken a couple of different items from our clients and used them in different applications you never would have thought of!  Big Fella does the same thing!  His show is funny, inventive and delightfully informative, so look for it on Fox…and if you don’t get his show in your area…call Fox and request it!

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Got a call from a client, #Blood Sugar is over 300 and doctors can’t control it…gave her some advise, 1st day blood sugar 131, 2nd day-120, What did I say? I’ve been at this for 26 years, so I know what the body will do and how it will act when you do certain things.  I didn’t have her go run a marathon…this woman has been sick for over a year now with the doctors doing tests, more tests, surgeries and still no diagnosis and no results.  I interviewed her for 30 minutes and started her on a specialized diet, with some added advise…with blood sugar ranges between 300 and 400 only controled by medication (+ insulin) and some diet therapy from Registered Dieticians…that was the best they could do.  In one day of taking my advice, her blood sugar dropped significantly.  I will continue to advise this client until she gets her health and weight back to optimal range.

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I got a letter the other day from the State of #Idaho and the #IRS stating that they were going to levy my #bank account for monies owed…well, I had amended my #tax return and had filed an extension on my company, cause I’m not a CPA and would have ended up paying 3500.00 in taxes when I had had a 16,000.00 loss last year…ended up only owing the State 85.00 and the Fed’s gave some back, so I didn’t really owe the money.

But I got to call my CPA, (A very good CPA with Smith, Kunz and Assoc. in Rexburg Idaho!) and he took care of it, but I’ve had friends that haven’t been so lucky!

I had a friend that bought a house in a run down neighborhood of Tennessee.  Urban Renewal was suppose to come in to the neighborhood and turn things around.  The Economy put the squeeze on this guys business…he sought “credit counseling” help.  He paid a service 1,200.00 to get his house re-modified, but the guy ran off with his money (not an unusual story!), by the time my friend figured things out, it was to late and he lost his home.

So, he goes to an apartment, still out of work and still trying to make things work…he starts to get a toe-hold and then the State of Tennessee puts a tax levy on his bank account and takes everything he has, and he only had a little over a thousand in his account, enough to pay his rent and buy a little food for him and his family.

The guy can’t get a break!  So, why am I writing this blog?  Because I don’t think it’s right that a government can go into a man’s home and bank account and leave him with nothing to keep a roof over his head and food in his families bellies!  We are talking little kids…like under 10.  The very basics of life are denied US citizens, and that is just not right.

I understand people owing money and having to collect…believe me, I do.  I have run companies since 1984, but you have to pick your battles or you are going to end up in a revolt!

First of all, some of the problems stem from the fact that people aren’t prepared to fight…they either don’t know what to do or they don’t have the money for an attorney…which is a whole “nuther subject that I could rant about!

People get these notices and they don’t know what to do, they call the companies and try to work things out, but the policy of the company collecting may be that they don’t want to negotiate, so they do things and say things to make the customer hang up or walk away from the table, people don’t know what their rights are before they go in to work things out…oh yeah, you have to have rules to fight with!  I gotta tell you, bankruptcy is the perfect weapon these days!  Did you know that you don’t need an attorney to file a bankruptcy petition?  You have to pay the filing fee, which is minimal at that point.  Then, you can take that bankruptcy petition and go back to all your creditors and say…Okay, right now the market value for this type of debt is .07 to .10/1.00, or 7 cents to 10 cents on the dollar…so, that’s what I am going to offer you in return for a dismissal of the debt or an “accordance of satisfaction”…if you (the creditor) doesn’t take this deal…then I’m going to go through with the bankruptcy and you get nothing!…I would do this at the very beginning of this process…did you know that if you can negotiate with all your creditors…you can withdraw from the Bankruptcy so it doesn’t go on your record?  Think about it…so if you have a debt, lets say of 31,000.00, you can settle that debt for 3,100.00 instead…it’s worth the 500.00 you may pay in filing fees.  I had an attorney that charged me 2,600.00 for filing a bankruptcy that we withdrew from….and I think the filing fees were something like 250.00 or something…and the guy was my cousin!  Can you say, “Ripped Off”, major!  I have seen some of my friends file with an attorney for 550.00 total.  Again, if you have a lot of debt, it may be worth the 550.00 to file the bankruptcy and then negotiate or settle the debt…just know that in some states, bankruptcy court doesn’t take much time from the time you file until you are in front of the judge…and sometimes, if you try to postpone your court date, in the state of Idaho, they will only postpone it till the next day, so get your ducks in a row and as soon as it’s confirmed that it’s filed, start negotiating!

Did you know that you can negotiate or settle a tax debt too?  The federal government is more willing to settle then the state, I’m not sure why, I guess the Federal Government is large enough that it doesn’t make sense for them to be Jerks than the State.

You can go to the IRS website and there is information there to settle your debt.

Years ago, my dad had relatives that owes over 100,000.00 to the IRS.  The relatives left the country on a church mission and left my dad to negotiate the bill.  He negotiated the bill down to 10 cents on the dollar and then worked for almost a year without pay on another job (This was in the early 1960’s) so he could pay off the debt in time for these relatives to come home.  Back in the 1960’s…10,000.00 was a lot of money and he was only in his twenty’s with a family of his own…the point is, 10,000.00 was a lot of money, 100,000.00 was impossible and he was able to negotiate the amount down to something that was at least workable!

I had a friend that years ago, went to Berkley…got his bachelors and his doctorates in 5 years graduating with a Law Degree specializing in Tax Law.

He said it was horrible!  He said that he had an 85 year old woman…the IRS had seized her bank account and her home…sold everything she had for a tax levy…but she was sure she didn’t owe any taxes…so he started to investigate.  The IRS had the wrong Social Security number…they had taken all this woman’s money, sold her home she planned to die in, sold all her belongings, all her heirlooms that she could never replace and that she had taken a life time to collect…and then, come to find out, after destroying this woman’s life and making her absolutely miserable…she wasn’t the person they were suppose to collect from, they had the wrong social security number.  They put the money back, but they couldn’t replace anything else, so the woman had no where to go and had nothing left that gave her comfort in her final days…thanks Tax man!

He told me there was a guy, successful business, nice house and family.  The IRS came and took his house and business…his wife left him, thought he had been messing around, thought she didn’t know him anymore..so he lost his house, lost his business, lost his wife and kids…everything…then, come to find out, the IRS had the wrong person again…Thanks Tax Man!

My friend said that he worked the field for about 5 years and couldn’t take it anymore…He said that he watched State and Federal Taxes ruin peoples lives, caused so much suicide with no accountability what-so-ever…

you know what is funny, is that this country was founded on Ethical Tax principles…put down by Attorneys!  Again, another time, I could rant on the unethical bedside manner of Attorneys for decades!  If you’re interested…then go into your State Bar associations newsletters and look at all the attorneys that do business in your area that are either under review or are going through disbarment…it’s frightening!

There are a lot of tools out there that the common guy can use to help himself, but you really have to know how to use those tools, when and where.  Bankruptcy doesn’t have to be a bad thing if you can use it to your advantage.

And Credit Counseling?  Scam artists!  I’ve only seen very few that can help or want to help, most are just referral agencies for law firms, most unscrupulous!

I was doing a piece on “remod’s” and called the #1 credit counseling agency down in California.  They tried to talk me into hiring this law firm to “assure” my remod.

I went through the whole thing, writing a congressman the transcript of the conversations between the counselor and me…well

the counseling agency wanted me to pay an attorney, their attorney 2,900.00 in order to do the remod, when they found out that all their telephone conversations and all the emails sent was going to a Congressman that worked with Senator Dodd, they told me that I didn’t qualify for a remod.

That is really funny, since I went to the mortgage companies myself, delivered a hardship letter and proof of everything and my second mortgage company came back within 10 days and approved a remod…from 15% down to 5% and then took the late payments and put them on the back of the loan…we are still waiting on the first mortgage, but don’t expect much from them…we are at 7.25% and are hoping for maybe a 4 or 5%.  The point is, the counseling service was going to charge 2,900.00 for something I did myself for free.  Citifinancial is our second mortage company and they were unbelievable to work with…Saxon is our first mortgage, and we are still waiting on them…

Things are tight all over, and if you have the tools, know how, when and where to use them…the “Tax man cometh” doesn’t seem such a daunting statement at all!

thanks for letting me rant!

d

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Jamba Juice has a new Functional Fruit they are using…Yumberries!  I tried some out this weekend…the Super Yumberry, the Yumberrie All-fruit…the only one I didn’t get to try was the Yumberry topper, which I will try today.  If you like things fresh, clean and a little tart, the all fruit is the way to go…for 10 calories more, you can have them add sorbet and get a smoothie.  They were both great…I liked the all fruit better, but my daughter had the smoothie and said that she has now found an all time favourite.

I’d heard of the Yumberry, out of China mainly…kinda like the Acai or Gogi, those sorts of properties…high antioxidants low glycemics.  I had my All fruit after I had been working in the yard getting everything ready for the garden…it was great, had a clean taste and i didn’t think it was all that tart…kinda like a strawberry really.  The smoothie I had after a day of planting a garden and fixing all the watering systems…I was hot and exhausted and the smoothie went down great, picked me up and I was able to go home and put a couple more hours into the yard work.

With all the variety that Jamba is setting into place…there should be a taste, flavour and function just right for you!

There are summer specials going on right now…so hurry down to Jamba Juice and get in line!

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#EPA has been studying particulate #contamination in the #US for over 20 years…the #BP #oil spill is nothing compared to what we do to ourselves!

Back in 2000, I was working on my PhD, looking at biochemical responses to natural and man made contaminants in our food and water.  What triggered all this was one of the first reports of US fish becoming bisexual and mutated.  This wasn’t in water outside the US or in the oceans where we dump all our trash and it circles around in an endless trash cyclone somewhere …this was in waters smack dab in the middle of the US…where anglers fish and eat their catch all the time, where people live, work and raise their families.

I became intrigued by this contamination that would evolve a species in a period of years, instead of decades.  The research showed that, yes-there were industrial plants further up the river…the Love Canal of that particular state, but there was something else that was found…gray and black water overflows from communities coming out into that river.

So what caused the fish to evolve into “bi” sexual fish?  Estrogen’s was one of the main factors…

Estrogen can do a lot for females…regulate the heart with iron, keep the metabolism in check, keep skin tissue looking young and of course reproduce, sure…but what happens when we have to much?  Cancer, Tumours, Brain dysfunction, birth defects and so forth.

There are a couple of things that can elevate the Estrogen in the environment…one is a society taking “the pill”, any left over estrogen in the system will spill out in urine.  When you flush the toilet, all that water goes into the septic or sewer system…if you have a good system, it will take that black water to your sewage treatment plant, where it’s treated.  If you have a septic system, then it’s taken to your septic tank for treatment and then released to a leach field where it “leaches” down through the ground and back into the drinking water…or your neighbors.  Just because you water comes from the other side of your yard from your septic doesn’t mean you don’t get someone else’s black water, if you have neighbors, your probably drinking theirs.

So, if it’s treated, what’s the problem?  here is the problem…Estrogens will cleave on to hydrogen, not carbons…so when you try to “filter” them out…they are hooked on to water molecules, so they don’t filter out. So now you may say…what’s the big deal?…we all have to have estrogen in our systems, even males in order for the body to function correctly…except that when you look at how much we get from our food, our water, our environment and our bodies…it becomes to much for us to handle.

Birth control pills aren’t our only source of Estrogen…it wasn’t for the fish either…and that is why 20 years ago, the EPA joined in the effort with nations around the world to figure out how to fight this.

Sugars can mimic estrogen or have the body produce more estrogen than we need…so can processed foods high in carbohydrates.  Other estrogen mimicking chemicals…Hair Conditioners, Fabric Softeners, body lotions, insecticides, pesticides and my all time favorite…Chemical Sweeteners!  Wonder why you can’t lose wait drinking diet sodas…well, there is one reason…it’s tricking your body into taking up more estrogen.  Some may say that this is not a bad thing, at least now when your co-worker gets irritated and grumpy, you may be able to offer him a midol and a Snickers to calm him down!

You may be thinking that Hair conditioners and body lotions don’t really concern you either, cause you don’t eat those, but actually…you do.

When you shower, all that water that is rinsed off with the hair conditioner in it, the lotion and the fabric softener that was just rinsed in the washing machine goes down into the septic or sewer.  It doesn’t hook on to carbon filters, it hooks on to water molecules…which doesn’t filter out…so when they try to treat it, it doesn’t clean, it just goes back down into the water supply…this is called particulate contamination…particles still contaminate the water.

Who drinks the “high estrogen” water?  We do!  What does that mean?  It means that the probabilities of a community that has high estrogen use from females, high sugar diets, processed food diets and inadequate sewage and water treatment will result in higher levels of all types of Cancer, Arthritis, Brain tumors and brain dysfunction’s.

When I first started my project here, there is a nuclear site not to far away.  This “Snake River Valley” had the highest rates of Cancer in the state of Idaho, so I came here to study.  We found the water flow from the upper end of the state to the 1000 Springs area gradually became more contaminated the further down we went…and despite all the locals saying it was from the Nuclear facility, it wasn’t even close.  There was no contamination coming from the nuclear site, it was all coming from the grey water and black water treatment plants and from septic areas…it was coming from the cities, towns and subdivisions.

I had put in for some grant money to study this phenomenon with the EPA on the City of Rigby, it seemed the perfect fit for the study.  At the same time, the INL (Idaho National Laboratory) had started a study in particulate contamination as well as a couple of Universities in the area from their hydrology departments on the aquifer in Eastern Idaho.

The City of Rigby had a permit, an NPDES permit, which gives that city the right to pollute within certain parameters into federal waterways.

The City of Rigby didn’t have a wastewater treatment plant, they only had lagoons at the time…I’m not sure that that has changed…

They would gather all the waste from the city and put it all into pools.  They had an aerator that would churn the waste to pull it apart and then they would process the waste until it was potable, then, their EPA permit said that they would “sprinkle” the potable water on to a field, so it could continue to filter down into the aquifer…but that is not what the city did, they put a pipe called an “over-flow” pipe into the lagoons and discharged the “Potable” water into the federal waterway called “The Great Feeder Canal”, this would then dump the sewage into the Snake River.

Okay, you may say, “what’s the big deal if it’s potable?”…it’s potable…it’s not drinkable, there is a huge difference!

In 2000 the NPDES permit for the City of Rigby expired and the man that was in charge of this permit for years…was the new mayor.

At the time, there was huge and massive development going on in the area.  The City of Rigby is a rural area…a “bedroom” town, so there is not a whole lot that employs people, they sleep here and work somewhere else…or, they do construction.

I’m not opposed to construction…my father made millions of dollars as a developer and contractor throughout his life…he built nuclear facilities too, but he really did his homework on each of his projects…infrastructure was key for him and he spent a lot of money in the beginning of his projects to make sure that the infrastructure was always there and large enough to hold capacity for growth.

These guys didn’t do that.  My dad had a Chemical degree when he made his first million…so he was educated and he always had a lot of empathy for communities…these guys, not so much…no education, no degree…just a lust for greed and a lack of decorum for the most part.  The Mayor was in construction…most of city council was in construction…all their families were in construction…so, when I was sent by the EPA to tell the city council that their NPDES permit had expired and they needed to cease all discharge from their sewage operations into the federal waterways…they were less than cooperative!  Why?  Well, first of all, the only way the EPA can fine you is…you have to be in violation of the permit..if you don’t have a permit, then your not in violation!  Weird huh?

Rigby didn’t want a permit cause they knew the more they pumped contamination into the water and got away with it, the less it would cost. Most EPA fines are rather large and can bankrupt a city within a few weeks, even with the best of liability insurance.

Want to know a common practise in Jefferson County Idaho?  Under the city of Rigby there is an anomaly called the “Rigby Fan”.  This is a large outcrop of lava that lies in the Aquifer.  When the irrigation season is in full bloom, the water from farming goes back into the aquifer, pushing the water south…the more water the more the flow…when it hits the “fan”, the water rises up within 7 1/2 inches within the first layer of basalt…this is called Sub-water and it floods basements and all low lying areas.  The contractors will build a house from March until about the first of July, then they will leave them alone until the middle of August..because the sub-water rises up during that time of the year and floods the leach plain.  If the contractors don’t know, then it never happened.  So, they build over it…then the next year, when the sub-water comes up and floods the septic or the basement…the contractors didn’t know, so they aren’t liable…it’s the homeowners problem then…tricky,huh?  This is a common practise in this area, so common that people on Planing and Zoning know, so when they ask for the particulars on new subdivisions coming in, those surveys are not given in the “Sub” season, only during the off season when the water rising up isn’t an issue.

So, the City of Rigby fought the NPDES permits, and so did the Idaho Department of Environment and Quality…who were also related to people in city council.

The other problem?  The City of Rigby has an antiquated sewer system…the pipes that hold the city sewer are over 30 years old now and have deteriorated to just plates holding the sewer.  When the sub-water comes up in the summer, there is nothing to contain the gray and black water.  In this area there is only 7″ of any type of natural filtration, so when the sub-water comes up, then it spills the grey and black water over the plates and into the basalt layer of rock…which is like huge rock with large gaps in it.  The contaminated water will then seep into the Aquifer or drinking water.

Now the City of Rigby has very deep wells…one going over 800′ down…so what’s the danger?  The danger is that Rigby is not only near the Snake River, but it also has very powerful canals that run through it.  Because of the pull of water, the contamination that is fairly near the surface of the Aquifer is drug down to all the communities below it.  One particulate can take 10 years to travel 10 miles, but when put near a vacuum like in Rigby, it can travel the distance in just a few months contaminating all areas between and including the larger city..Idaho Falls.

The contamination doesn’t only have to do with Hair Conditioners, Fabric Softeners and body lotions, it also has to do with food.

Estrogenics are nutrients that make the body produce Estrogen.  Ever wonder why the female body isn’t suppose to go through menses until 13 and the average age now is 8 or 9?  The more food we have, the more sugar we eat, the more processed we get, the more mature our bodies get…faster.  The fatter we are, the more estrogen we produce and eliminating sugar and opting for chemical Sweeteners isn’t going to help…hello people…they are “CHEMICALS”!  They will either mimic estrogen or they will help your body produce estrogen!

Sanjay Gupta, MD does a series called “Toxic America”.  The other day he did a segment on children and toxics…he touched a little on Food contamination.  He said that if you washed the food it would be okay…except someone didn’t tell him all the truth.  Organophosphates, which is commonly used here in the US is a pesticide and a very good one at that…well, it will kill pests.  Side note, did you know that Sucralose and Aspertame were pesticides?  They were being developed as pesticides in labs..and they work quite well!  But when they discovered that the chemicals were sweet, then switched their marketing plan…so all your precious chemical “Sweeteners”…were originally designed to be deadly!…

Anyway, Organophospates are very effective pesticides, but they are also very devastating to the system.  This also is an estrogen mimicker…it will cause vision problems, lung problems, it will cause hair loss or male patterned baldness and can cause weight gain, because the body is trying to protect the nervous system from the effects of the chemical.

The USDA did a test on organophosphates in the food.  They took the vegetables and fruit and WASHED them, then did the test and a large percentage still had enough organophosphates in them to affect the brain function and development of a child.  The thing about organophosphates is that when you spray them on to the crops, it doesn’t stop there.  When you water, the chemical goes down into the ground.  The plant’s roots take the chemical up with water and then circulates the chemical throughout the plant…so when you eat it, even if you wash it, you are still going to get enough of the chemical to affect cell function…if not more.

There are hundreds of little town like the City of Rigby all over the United States, the world for that matter…most are operated by the ignorant like this one, or by those that have greedy goals in mind.  The fact of the matter is, the oil spill is heavy on our minds now because we see the devastation caused by this disaster, you can see the oil pluming out, you can see the wildlife struggle, you can see the oil as it glops on to the shores and into the marshlands and we are all alarmed.

But there were warnings…the fish that changed sex over 20 years ago…the disappearance of wildlife and habitat, our offspring with mental disabilities, the increase of cancer and other disease, the probability that our lifespan has decreased by 25 to 30 years.

Many years ago, there was a cry for recycling, reuse, live simple…but no one heard.

We are coming up on a new era in the Mayan, The Ronga Ronga, the Chinese Calendars…all ancient and all that say the same thing…there will be a Change, it will change the earth or kill us…perhaps this contamination will be the beginning of the end that was predicted long ago…Perhaps the first sign of human downfall was the fact that our hearing seemed less than perfect and we have now become deaf to our own destruction.

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I have a big yard where I live and since 1991 I have grown fruits and vegetables that last me a whole year.  Now, I will have to say that it’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it in the end and they taste different too.

As a chemist I have always been concerned about what was not only going into my body, but what I was feeding my family as well.

I spend at least 6 weeks in the fall canning my own food because I knew exactly what I was feeding my self and my family that way.

With all the issues of pollution and toxic effects these days, it’s always a good thing to grow your own stuff and with containers and hydroponics, it’s easier than you think!

You can take a fish tank and make a hydroponic garden without much to do, you just need the filters, some Styrofoam and some nursery pots with a little fiber in the bottoms of it.  put some black construction paper around the outside bottom of the tank and a daylight light on top and you’ll be growing in no time.  I like to do all my herbs this way…basil, oregano, thyme and so forth, I keep it right in my kitchen so I have something fresh when I’m cooking.  I give it a rest in the spring and summer, but in the fall and winter, it’s a life-saver for my cooking!

Container gardening is always a good thing too, especially if you are limited on space.  You can make a hypertufa container, or get some at the nursery.  I have my college kids do this.  They have small containers of herbs everywhere for them, and for other things like cabbage, lettuce or spinach, onions, chives or strawberries, we cascade the containers down so they get more yield out of less space.

There are a variety of things that you can do to grow your own fruits and vegetables, and if you can’t grow your own, then go to a local market and ask for organics.

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#Business Cards and #Brochures are the cheapest way to #market your business…are yours memorable?  http://www.fruitthin.com

I just spent the last week researching, sketching, planning, writing, designing and prototyping my new business cards and brochures.  With the economy being so bleak in this area, marketing dollars have had to really count.  I got a business card in the mail last week that was unusual, my husband passing by my desk picked it up, looked it over and said…”wow, that’s interesting!”

First of all, he never comes to my office, second…when he does he never finds anything interesting on my desk (I’m a formulae chemist) and third, he never picks anything up…in the 26 years that we’ve been married, he’s never picked anything up on my desk to look it over…yeah, and he’s a chemist too!

So I started thinking about that…this little marketing tool that didn’t cost much, caused someone that wasn’t even involved in communication to pause what they were doing, pick it up, look it over and for a brief moment, think about that persons business.

So, I started doing the research on catchy business cards and brochures.  I looked at all kinds of business cards and found some really cool ones, non-conventional at best, something that would really catch your eye! Some of them were really pricey, but others were just inventive.

For my classes, I had to really be inventive and ended up designing a 3d card.  So far, everyone that has seen it has said…”Wow!  that is the coolest card I’ve ever seen!”  I used my desktop publisher and some Business Card and Brochure stock, you can buy at Staples, I used a casual font so it wasn’t to stiff or formal, ’cause my classes aren’t and I did all the arts and crafts work myself from stuff that was easy and cheap to get.  I designed two different types of cards…the craft cards for clients that are going to bring me a lot of work business to business, and then a card for just plain advertising to the public.

My brochures are small enough to fit in a woman’s bag without being bulky enough for them to throw away, so I think they will keep the information.  My information was just enough to cover the basics…Who could use this and What it is.  I didn’t clutter it up with Text that was jabber or ranting, just the facts, obviously…because the brochure is half the size of a normal brochure, so I had to scale down the information…but in this day and age, less is more, smaller is more intriguing!

If you are looking for better local marketing with a bigger bang for your buck…you may want to take a good look at your business cards and brochures…Are they memorable?  Would they make someone that isn’t even interested stop and think about you?  Isn’t that the point of marketing?

Thanks for the rant!

d

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#Diet soda now promoted as# medicine to stop #kidney stones …#”Journal of Urology” says…so we should all be skinny and healthy, right?  You gotta read this article!

(opinion)
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) The “most retarded science journal of the year” award goes to the Journal of Urology which has published an article suggesting that diet soda is actually an effective type of medicine for preventing kidney stones (April 19, 2010 issue). The research was led by Dr Brian H. Eisner, a urologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who is apparently completely clueless about human nutrition and the toxicity of aspartame.

According to Dr Eisner, diet sodas are not only good medicine for preventing kidney stones; they’re also a good source of water hydration. Noting that patients need to consume 2-3 liters of water each day, Dr Eisner said in a Reuters article, “If drinking these sodas helps people reach that goal, then that may be a good thing.” (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS…)

If you’re thinking this is some sort of April Fools joke, it isn’t. Dr Eisner and the Journal of Urology are somehow convinced this is good research and that diet sodas may actually have a positive medicinal effect on the human body. Instances of such “scientific” stupidity appear to be increasing in western medicine where doctors remain wildly ignorant of the effects on the human body caused by processed ingredients or toxic chemical additives.

Aspartame, used as the primary sweetener in diet sodas, is a potent neurotoxin according to experts like Dr Russell Blaylock. Many believe it promotes headaches, vision problems, endocrine system problems and nervous system disorders. It has never been proven safe for human consumption by any honest testing.

Most diet sodas also contain alarmingly high levels of phosphoric acid, a substance that causes a huge increase in acidity throughout the body, suppressing immune function, weakening bones and contributing to kidney stones (not preventing them).

The truth about diet soda
There is absolutely no question that drinking diet soda is atrocious for your health. That a mainstream western doctor would somehow conclude diet soda to be a medicine for preventing kidney stones is equivalent to declaring “pizza prevents heart disease” or that smoking cigarettes prevents cancer. It shows not merely the shocking nutritional ignorance of Dr Eisner himself, but the utter lack of nutritional knowledge among his peers at the Journal of Urology who somehow saw fit to publish his study.

This is called science? Keep in mind that the entire claim is based on the idea that certain diet sodas contain citrate and that frequent consumption of citrate from natural sources (lemonade, lime juice, etc.) is well known to prevent kidney stones. Consuming natural lemonade actually does prevent kidney stones, but you can’t extrapolate from that and claim a lemon-flavored diet soda will accomplish the same thing. That’s like saying that since fruit helps prevent cancer, then drinking fruit punch must prevent cancer, too.

This research, by the way, never even tested diet sodas on human subjects. It’s really just a “thought experiment” from someone who isn’t even very good at thinking. The entire paper is the scientific equivalent of saying, “Hey, I betcha that thar diet soda might prevent them kidney stones ‘cuz there’s citrate in it!”

And the Journal of Urology was just silly enough to actually publish it as science. It makes you wonder: What are the requirements for having a scientific paper rejected by the Journal of Urology?

No coverage of medicinal herbs
I bet a paper touting the very real benefits of the Amazon rainforest herb Chanca Piedra would be rejected by the journal. Chanca Piedra is known as the “stonebreaker” herb throughout South America. It really works to dissolve and eliminate kidney stones, but you’d never see that in a science journal in North America. No, they’re too busy touting the “medicinal benefits” of diet soda, if you can believe that.

At this point in the article, I would normally point out how little credibility remains in the world of western medicine and its loony research conclusions. This is an industry that calls homeopathy “witchcraft”, that thinks medicinal herbs are dangerous, and that now apparently believes diet sodas are a form of medicine. Any discussion of “credibility” about such an industry is frankly just pointless.

If aspartame and phosphoric acid was somehow good for you, America would be the healthiest nation in the world! And if diet sodas actually worked, then all the people drinking them wouldn’t be so obese, would they?

And if diet soda prevents kidney stones, they why are most of the people suffering from kidney stones the very same people who drink a lot of soda? If anything, diet soda causes kidney stones. But I suppose the Journal of Urology can print exactly the opposite and call it “science” if they want, right?

That’s exactly why modern “science” has lost so much credibility these days. Because practically any corporate-sponsored idea, no matter how ridiculous, can end up being printed in a “scientific journal” even if its conclusions violate the laws of the known biological universe.

If diet soda prevents kidney stones, then mammogram radiation prevents cancer, too.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS…{SubscribeHealthRangerBlock}

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