the dossiers

Adelle Davis

admin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:38:55 +0000

Food-science expert and nutritionist, “First lady of nutrition” (1904-1974)

Daisie Adelle Davis, American health and nutrition expert, dietician, progenitor of the health conscious (“health food nut”) movement, advocate of unprocessed additive-free foods and high-protein breakfasts [wiki]

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

AD Today: the Adelle Davis Foundation, active online discussion group

B-vitamin shopping list

Pepup

Invented the pepup cocktail for vigor and energy: whipped milk and egg yolks

Original recipe

Corbis photo of Adelle Davis drinking milk, circa 1970

The pepup is discussed, along with new modern variations & improvements on it, in English writer Michael Allen’s book, The Truth About Writing: An Essential Handbook for Novelists, Playwrights and Screenwriters (Kingsfield 2003). Allen recommends the pepup as a daytime energy drink for writers. [PDF]

Mentioned briefly in short online essay “What’s a Mother to Do?” by Ardith W. Walker

Books

Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit

Let’s Get Well

You Can Get Well

Let’s Have Healthy Children (“America’s most famous food expert gives the vital nutritional do’s and don’ts for expectant mothers, babies, and growing children.”)

Let’s Cook It Right

Exploring Inner Space: Personal Experiences Under LSD-25 (as Jane Dunlap) (Mystical experiences mentioned in The Secret Chief Revealed by Myron J. Stolaroff.)

Quotations

“As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself.”

“Thousands upon thousands of persons have studied disease. Almost no one has studied health.”

Articles and info

“Adelle Davis Revisited” is a site containing information on modern supplements, vitamins and routines related to Adelle Davis’ ideas.

“The Legacy of Adelle Davis,” a critical look by Stephen Barrett

Adelle’s Granola

5c old-fashioned oatmeal
1c cut almonds
1c unrefined sesame seeds
1c sunflower seeds
1c shredded coconut
1c soy flour
1c powdered milk
1c wheat germ
1c honey
1c vegetable oil

combine all dry ingredients
combine honey and vegetable oil in separate dish
combine all ingredients, spread on two cookie sheets
bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour or until slightly brown

(From Life magazine, Oct 1971)

For further reading

Sigrid Undset

admin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:46:18 +0000

Norwegian novelist (1882-1949)

Wrote about Scandinavian countries in the Middle Ages. [more] [wiki]

Became a Catholic in 1924.

Awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. [more]
[autobio]

Her modernist novels vividly depict medieval life

Books

Kristin Lavransdatter

The Axe: The Master of Hestviken, vol 1

Gunnar’s Daughter

The Unknown Sigrid Undset: Jenny and Other Works

Articles and info

“Reading Sigrid Undset” by Cynthia Grenier, CERC (1999).

By degrees my knowledge of history convinced me that the only thoroughly sane people, of our civilization at least, seemed to be those queer men and women the Catholic Church calls Saints. They seemed to know the true explanation of man’s undying hunger for happiness — his tragically insufficient love of peace, justice, and goodwill to his fellow men, his everlasting fall from grace.

For further reference

Asperatus clouds

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:57:42 +0000

A new cloud classification — the first new classification since 1951.

First seen in 2005/2006

Clouds look like the agitated surface of the ocean — called undulus asperatus, Latin for “rough” [wiki]

Discovered by Jane Wiggins of Des Moines, Iowa, who snapped a digital photo from a downtown office building in June 2006. [pic]

Photos

Google search

Flickr search

UK Guardian’s gallery

Large photos in gallery at io9

In the media

AP article

USA Today

National Geographic, June 2009 (illustrated)

CBS news story includes criticism of new cloud category

Shigeaki Hinohara

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:24:17 +0000

Japanese doctor, almost 100 years old and still practicing (1911- )

Shigeaki Hinohara

Famous for his recipe for living a long life

Has been working at St. Luke’s International Hospital (Tokyo) and teaching at St. Luke’s College of Nursing since 1941

Was passenger on a jet that was hijacked in 1970 and then dedicated his life to helping people

Set up the Life Planning Center in 1973 (motto: “lifelong health”)

Helped save and restore the Massachusetts home of Manjiro Nakahama (John Manjiro, the first Japanese person to live in the USA, 1843) and gave the dedication in May 2009.

[long profile] [short profile and photo] [news]

New Old People’s Movement

Seeks “healthy people 75 years and older” to be part of his new “movement.”

When we reach 75 we should start something new in order to discover those unused genes and develop them. It could be painting, or making music, writing poetry, sports or volunteer activities. One of my patients in his 60’s had been admitted to St. Luke’s with cancer, and was getting neurotic with anxiety over the disease. So I suggested he try to find something he enjoyed, like painting. He tried to avoid the issue, saying he was too clumsy with things. But once he took up the brush, his talent came out, and 10 years later he was holding his own one-man exhibitions and winning awards.

Books, interviews, advice and writing

Published more than 150 books since turning 75

Honohara’s famous words of wisdom, a simple formula for longevity

Interview with the Tokyo International Forum: “At 75, we should develop genes we have never used and keep challenging the new!”

How to Live Well (2001) (original title: How To Die Well; Japanese, Ikikata Jozu or “Good At Living”)

Ongaku no Iyashi no Chikara (The Healing Power of Music)

Ikiru koto no shitsu

Oi o hajimeru

Oi to shi no juyo

Gendai igaku to shukyo (Sosho gendai no shukyo)

Inochi no utsuwa: Jinsei o jibunrashiku ikiru

Inochi o mitsumete

“Iyashi” no waza no pafomansu

Osler’s peregrinations in Asia: A report on an unusual event

Wrote stage adaption for the picture-book Happa no Freddy (Freddy the Leaf) (2000)

Wrote the forward to Art and Nature: Healing Design for Health in the UK & Japan, a book containing the work of over 70 archictects on health care design

Co-edited Osler’s A Way of Life and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations

Mentioned in The Power of Life&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&nou=1" style="width:120px;height:240px;margin:7px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0">, Caregivers: Drowning in a Sea of Cognitive Challenges, First to Arrive: State and Local Responses to Terrorism, Metamorphoses: Memoirs of a Life in Medicine, and other books.

For further reference

Low-light photography techniques

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:10:33 +0000

Tips and techniques for indoor photography and photographing night scenes

Quick tips for shooting in low light

These are the basics.

Use the fastest lens you can — that is, a lens with the widest aperture — and one with the widest focal length you can. A wide, fast lens is always preferable in low-light situations: a 28mm f/1.8 lens, for instance, would be ideal for indoor low-light shots
Use the slowest shutter speed you can. You’ll have to be rigid with holding the camera — use a monopod or tripod if you can, or hold the camera hard and level against your body. A rule of thumb for hand-holding a camera without blur is given on a thread linked below: for image clarity, the minimum shutter speed is 1/[focal length] used. So if you have a 50mm lens, you can successfully shoot at 1/50 a second in the hand, but with a 250mm lens you couldn’t shoot any slower than 1/250 a second.
Higher ISO settings will let you get pictures in lower light, but they increase grain. Try setting a lower ISO and a slower shutter speed, allowing for crisper and less grainy photos — provided the camera’s held still; the basic rule here is to use the lowest ISO you can
If it’s too dark to use autofocus, try setting the focus manually

If you’re going for candid people shots, turn off the autofocus beam
Always remember to play with the white balance: in low light your camera’s sensor isn’t going to be the best with picking up color; the auto, manual, and preset settings will give you a range of different effects
Keep the camera steady, which means using a tripod or monopod all of the time; in low light, the difference between even a very steady hand and a tripod will be great
If you’re using a flash, play with the settings; try using a diffuser or an off-camera flash if you can
Shoot in RAW mode when you can; you’ll be able to grab more out of the uncompressed RAW-format files than a typical JPEG
If you’re shooting out-of-doors, try shooting at dusk or dawn if you can, instead of at night: you won’t have to follow so many of the above rules, so it’ll be easier to take better pictures

Digital “pushing”

If you don’t have a fast enough lens, so when you’ve set the aperture to the widest possible setting you’re still shooting at too slow of a shutter speed for holding your camera in the hand, what you can do is try to “push” the digital image: set the exposure compensation down one to two stops so that you can shoot at a slightly faster speed. Shoot a RAW image instead of a lossy JPEG, and then use your RAW conversion software to “push” the image.

If you have the time, you can always try bracketing: taking a series of shots with the exposure compensation adjusted + a bit, at 0, and - a bit.

Fill flash tricks

You can try a very slow shutter speed with flash; HP’s guide (linked below) suggests 3 seconds with flash for a night portrait shot. Also see if your camera has a Night Snapshot or Night Shot mode; this mode can adjust the shutter speed and gives a fast flash at the end of the exposure for interesting effect. (Be sure to try this with a tripod.)

MacTalk user gallet explains his fill-flash trick for getting good, colorful and atmospheric shots under tungsten lighting. Basically:

Set flash to TTL
Underexpose by about 1.5 or 2 steps
Use a “daylight” color balance / white balance setting
Set the ISO to 800 and don’t go higher than that
Use a shutter speed of 1/30 a second — shooting at Shutter Speed Priority mode if your camera has it — and hold the camera steady

The slower shutter speed allows for some blurriness in the photo, which gives interest to candid people shots. But these settings will also ensure that you’ve got a colorful image with no overwhelming dark areas.

Some photographers recommend setting an even lower ISO setting, such as 400, and upping the shutter speed to 1/60. There will be less blur, but if full clarity across the frame is what you’re going for, that would be better.

Another photographer on the same board, Sitthixay, recommends experimenting off these basic guidelines and not be afriad to try setting the camera on Aperture Priority and Manual modes. An example of a nighttime Aperture Priority shot at f/4.0 with ETTL flash and taken at 1/20 a second is his people shot of New Year’s Eve in Kuala Lumpur. He notes that rear curtain sync was set on the flash in order to emphasize movement; notice how the entire image is colorful but the two foreground figures are in sharper focus than the rest and seem to jump out of the frame. Other photographers have used this technique with 1/20 a second, a set aperture of f/5.6 and flash compensation set -1/2 or -1. With a smaller aperture and increased exposure time, some areas of the image will be all blur and light.

Color tricks

For indoor club or candid people shots, try turning the color temp up if your digital camera has that setting. For example if the normal setting is around 5200, crank it to the 7500-9000 range. Everyone will have a tan, but the overall effects on the color will be interesting.

Study the output of others

Read the EXIF data on the digital camera shots of other good photographers. Some good examples of indoor photography and club photo galleries are at Cooljunkie and Ryan Pfieffer, and the very bright and colorful night photos of Forrest Stewart.

For further reference

You need light to make a photograph. In low light scenarios you’re trying to squeeze out the most from your camera and the scene to make a great shot; here are more links with information on how to do so.

The Nocturnes is a site dedicated to night photography and has workshops and plenty of examples.

Ken Rockwell has a very good article with tips and advice on this subject: Night Photography.

“Get Great Photos in Low Light” by Derrick Story is a good article that covers the basics for shooting in low light with a digital camera.

Low light photography: a long series of short ideas and suggestions.

Hewlett-Packard’s online photo tip guide has a section called “Night and low-light photography” with various good tips.

Steve Mirarchi’s online tutorial, “Concert, Stage, and Low-Light Photography”

M. Kirschbaum’s long and informative 2005 article, Tips for Night and Low Light Photography

“The New Low-Light Photography” is a 2008 article on the new digital SLRs and the possibilities for low-light shots that their image sensors now give (“ISO 1600 is the new 200”).

More…

George Leonard Herter

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Minnesota entrepreneur, outdoorsman and author. In 1939 Herter (d. 1994) began running his family business dry-goods store in Waseca, MN. Opened an additional store in Mitchell, SD and by the 1950s he began a mail-order supply business, eventually producing the world-famous Herter’s catalog of outdoors equipment and sporting goods supplies — from duck calls and fishing lures, knives and ammo, rifle dies, cleaning supplies and clothing to snowmobiles and fiberglass boats — an eclectic catalogue that soon included Herter’s self-published wildly eccentric (and basically insane) books, from a famous cookbook to books on winemaking, guns, and other survivalist topics. [wiki] [google]

The Herter’s Catalog

The motto of Herter’s, Inc. showed up on every printed page of their annual catalogs: Where wildlife cannot live, humans cannot survive. Back in the day, the company’s products were used and cherished by hunters, fishermen, trappers, boaters and outdoorsmen of all persuasions. If you spend enough time on fishing forums today, you’ll run into the older folks reminiscing on their youthful days perusing through a Herter’s, such as these nostalgic thoughts and memories of the 1974 Herter’s catalog. The catalogs liberally included Herter’s essays and advice, which were heeded by them all — such as his informative and quixotic “How to Buy an Outdoor Knife.” [full text, scroll down]

Pages from the Herter’s Catalog

While no entire catalogs have been digitized and put online, you can catch tantalizing glimpses of some of the catalogs online if you know where to look. Try here for images of some pages: a page from the 1955 Gun Accessory Catalog,
a full-page scan of the Herter’s minibike (the “Herter’s Hudson Bay Hunter, Fisherman, Beach, Tundra, Trapper and Camper Bikes”), a box for the “world-famous tiger tail” (scroll down), and
a color cover.

The various goods and products themselves were of generally high quality, and are sought-after collectibles today. [search]

Herter’s, Inc. was nominated as part of the MN150 exhibit, (150 people, places and things that shape the state of Minnesota): Whether you were 10 or 100, a pilgrimage to Herter’s captured every young sportsman’s imagination through the latter half of the 20th century.”

http://discovery.mnhs.org/MN150/index.php?title=Herter’s%2C_Inc.

While the Herter’s showroom is gone, vestiges remain; GLH made arrangements so that Cabela’s would now handle distribution of their products and to this day Cabela’s continues to handle the world famous herters.com Internet domain. You can browse the remaining inventory, which at this wrigin includes outdoor camouflage clothing and world-famous life-size duck decoys.

Herter’s books today

Some books were written and published in conjunction with his wife, Berthe E. Herter. George Herter enjoyed talking about his associations with Ernest Hemingway, and in fact he made thousands of original claims. He claimed to have the true knowledge of the Martini cocktail and its originator, who (claimed Herter) also invented another “world-class” cocktail, the Martini Verboten, whose second ingredient is apple cider vinegar.

While Herter produced large quantities of his books, some titles can be difficult to obtain. Collectors hoard and cherish their copies. Many remain in the possesion of individuals who first purchased them, or passed on to their families, but some are finally beginning to become available. Check eBay [search] and Amazon, where many of the important Herter titles can still be obtained at reasonable prices:

How to make the finest wines at home in old glass or plastic bottles and jugs for as little as 10 [cents] a gallon has little about old bottles and jugs but much entertaining reading on beer, wine, cocktails, recipes and home-brewing.
How To Get Out Of The Rat Race And Live On $10 A Month
Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices is GLH’s Masterwork and could be the oddest most insane cookbook ever written. First sentence: “I will start with meats, fish, eggs, soups and sauces, sandwiches, vegetables, the art of French frying, desserts, how to dress game, how to properly sharpen a knife, how to make wines and beer, how to make French soap and also what to do in case of hydrogen or cobalt bomb attack, keeping as much in alphabetical order as possible.” Huge! Profusely Illustrated! [more] Note that some editions also contain Herter’s descriptions and information concerning the various and most important Famous Restaurants and Night Clubs of the World!
European and American Professional Sourdough Cooking and Recipes is charmingly illustrated and would make a fine holiday gift for any occasion.
Professional guide’s manual
George the Housewife and How to Diet and Never be Hungry contains Herter’s unique approach to dieting, a method and technique quite possibly not used by any other program ever devised. Does not produce hunger!
PROFESSIONAL FLY TYING, SPINNING AND TACKLE MAKING MANUAL and MANUFACTURERS’ GUIDE
George The Housewife …
Secret Fresh and Salt Water Fishing Tricks of the World’s Fifty Best Professional Fisherman (Plus The Professional Secrets of Fishing Rods and How Fishing Rods are Made). Completely Illustrated. Fantastic thoughtful and uniquely “retro” gift for the sport fisherman or outdoorsy type guy.
How to Live with a Bitch. A practical guide on marriage. Personal advice and tips, based on Real World Experience.
Herter’s Professional Course in the Science of Modern Taxidermy (with Myron E. Barrie).
Condensed Professional Loading of Rifle, Pistol, and Shotgun Cartridges Including Pressures and Velocities and Reloading Data for Gun and Ammunition Manufacturers Professional and Amateur Target Shooters, Game Hunters and Guides (with Jacques Pierre Herter).
Professional and Amateur Archery Tournament and Hunting Instructions and Encyclopedia (with Russell Hofmeister).

Reminisces and articles

“The greatest cook book writer in history” — so begins Mark Gelbart’s 2005 article on The Bull Cook.

Also that year, Stephen Bodio posted a GLH reminiscence that discusses some of the books. Bodio points out a few Herterisms, including this gem, from 1963’s The Truth About Hunting in Today’s Africa: “Most people don’t realize that being eaten by a hyena doesn’t hurt very much.”

Bob Zimmerman wrote an essay on his memories of the Herter’s catalog back in the 1960s.

The article “Classic Cookbooks Create Some Wild Conjecturing” contains a recipe for Steak Aflame.

Don’t miss Out Your Backdoor’s memories of Bull Cook and the Herter’s catalog — he talks about how it contained silk, gems, cured salmon and maple syrup (!) and postulates that Herter’s began to decline once the ban on selling guns through mail-order went in place.

From Guns Magazine, April 2005: “… in my youth their catalog was the wish book for all things outdoors.”

George Campbell’s 2007 reminiscence of a boyhood poring over the Herter’s catalog, “Remembering Herter’s — An Iconoclast’s History” (scroll down) reminds us that George Herter was a master marketer.

In 2008, Herter was profiles in the New York Times (Dec 7 2008).

More reminisces and memories of the Herter’s store…

For further reference

Online discussion and mailing lists

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:47:05 +0000

Where are people talking about what?

These are old-fashioned email mailing lists — still the best way to communicate with other people online.

Lsoft’s lists [search]

The Mail Archive

Yahoo Groups

Geomapping

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:45:29 +0000

Geomapping is a Web 2.0 technology for storing and showing data saved in digital maps. [flash movie demonstration and intro]

Wikimapia: a community-driven geomapping project

A preview of Microsoft’s project

More…

Browser hacking

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:42:23 +0000

Greasemonkey is a Firefox plugin to change the look and feel of Web pages you view. userscripts.org is a big growing collection of custom Greasemonkey scripts.

AdSense strategies

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:03:55 +0000

A concise, no-nonsense guide to getting up and going with Google AdSense

Absolutely anyone can make a penny with AdSense. It’s not hard to make a dime, either. A few dollars are possible. But the big bucks? As Harry J. Misner says, it’s all about making dollars, not cents — see his explosive new book on strategizing, The Best Damn GOOGLE ADSENSE Book.

You want results? The first thing you have to do is keep up with Google AdSense developments. Do that through the official Adsense blog … and The Unofficial AdSense Blog. You’ll also want to study Eric Giguere’s site, which is loaded with AdSense tips and ideas. There’s also Problogger’s long tips for AdSense.

Does it really work? In 2005, USA Today describes how, for some DIY bloggers and webmasters, Adsense is a total bonanza. Of course, it’s not without work.

Quick, quick intros

There’s a lot to take in, so if you still need the “AdSense 101” introduction, see this short article on how to monetize your blog.

That tells you what it’s all about. When you’re ready to strategize, you need Joel Comm’s guide, The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense.

Go to the experts

You have to keep up and one of the best ways to do that is to participate in online forums. Google provides its own help forum for AdSense; go there first. Another good forum where plenty of hte “pros” hang out is the Google AdSense forum at Webmaster World.

When you’re up and going

The most important thing you can do, once the design is done and your site is up and going out of beta, is get more traffic. Here’s 21 tactics to do so. Also take time to study the many articles in this newsletter archive; while one article shows 77 free ways to get traffic, there are a lot many more in these archives.

You can also try to apply Sitepoint’s 12 killer ways to make extra income on the web.