One expected feature of a society in crisis is that people would start to learn about their mistakes and apply scientific logic to solutions when it becomes apparent that the ‘magic cures’ offered during an unraveling were as ineffective as snake oil.

Now, I’m not saying that its impossible to lose weight by eating at Taco Bell – there are just much healthier and cost-effective ways to drop a few pounds.  Of course, if you eat the dry meat-free burrito or whatever they’re trying to pass off as a healthy alternative, you’re going to consume fewer calories and you might even be nauseous enough to avoid further hunger cravings.  On the other hand, if you spent a little while cooking you could make your own mix of fresh veggies in a wrap – without two days worth of salt that comes with the Bell.

So it was bad enough to see that Taco Bell is trying to push a healthy image for their particularly unhealthy food, but imagine my surprise this morning when I saw commercials for a cookie diet.  They looked like they were probably made out of oatmeal, but the message they’re selling this year is all about the gain without the pain.

If your only goal is to lose weight, all you have to do is spend more calories than you consume.  Easy simple stuff.  Fats and sugars have the most calories, so analyze your typical diet and find the foods that tempt you there.  Find some way to create your own replacement with fewer calories or simply find a new favorite you can enjoy with less guilt.

Exercise!

Even if you just want to lose weight for purely superficial reasons and don’t care about the health benefits, you still need to exercise!  Skinny might be better than fat, but our human aesthetic sense still evaluates an entire health picture.  Plenty of men recoil from the sight of ‘supermodels’ who look like they desperately need a sandwich.  This also helps burn the calories, but it shouldn’t be an excuse to add that double-chocolate milkshake to your reasonable dinner.

Enjoy!

Yeah, its still important to find diet foods that make you happy.  Eating is a simple and essential pleasure in life, so try different stuff until you can balance your caloric needs with what your taste buds tolerate.  If this means an occassional trip to Taco Bell or an oatmeal cookie, that’s probably not the worst thing that could happen.  Just don’t expect to eat a half dozen chalupas every night while thinking a few situps will help offset the ‘slip.’

I’ll just come out and say it – I think Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and the fear of global warming is the biggest distraction to ever derail environmentalism.

CO2 is an extremely common chemical – its a natural component of our atmosphere, its essential for plants, and its a constantly produced byproduct of non-plant life.  Yes – it has greenhouse properties, but its just one of thousands of warming and cooling agents we daily add to the air. If we really wanted to deal with CO2 we would get cracking on the development of nuclear power sources or we’d plant more trees.  This nonsense with cap and trade is looking more and more like a power-grab by the established interests that won’t even do much to address the supposed problem.

Meanwhile, pay no attention to the actually toxic things inside the air or even your tap water.  Millions of Americans drink water contaminated with arsenic or uranium, but we’re holding a global political conference to discuss the gas you exhale.  Its not just toxic elements either, we’ve also got this growing issue of drugs and pharmacuetical waste ending up in the water supply.  It doesn’t just affect humans drinking tap water and coffee, it also effects the river and ocean life that props our whole ecosystem up. To get a new drug approved, you pretty much just have to prove that its less lethal than the disease its supposed to treat – but this says nothing about the toxicity these chemical delivers to otherwise healthy fish, plants, and human individuals.

So we strip mine the rainforests – we let the toxic debris run off into our once pristine rivers and seas.  We continue to overfish the oceans and watch as our sonars drive dolphins & whales insane.  We have literal piles of radioactive coal ash lying around near our towns and cities, and we have hundreds of locations in this country deemed unfit for habitation or agriculture.

But holy crap, we have to do something about that CO2 in the atmosphere! We have slightly more of it than we used to – even though we really don’t have that much if you’re considering a real geological time-scale.

So the fish are deformed, the trees are diseased, and every one of us is drugged from you to me to my pet dog over there.  I hear it will all be ok, if we just get a lid on that evil carbon dioxide…

Well, something hit me.  It was just a matter of time since Aisling caught it first and she’s been lying around the house sick for a week, but I was hopeful it would pass over me with some minor symptoms.

Now obviously, its probably a good idea to actually talk to a doctor if the sickness gets real bad or continues to get worse for more than a few days.  I’m kind of busy though, so I don’t have time for a prolonged illness – and luckily I had plenty of supplies on hand to deal with it.

Hot Tea, Hot Food, Hot Showers, Sleep, Repeat

It hit when I woke up Sunday morning to a bad taste in my mouth and aching muscles.  First thing was first, I sprayed some lemon juice extract down the throat and swished it around a bit.  Its a little strong, but it knocked the bad taste out immediately and probably put a major block on the infection’s momentum.

Next step is to brew up some green tea.  Coincidentally, it happens to taste great with some of that lemon juice.  After a few big mugs of that, I was finally awake and at least a little bit hungry.

Well, the processed soup won’t work because the wheat would make me even sicker.  So I had to broil up a few steaks and steam some broccoli & carrots.  And it must have sit just right, because in the next 48 hours I would end up eating about 2 pounds of each one.

Of course, after lunch it was time to have a hot shower and head back to bed.

Another four hours of sleep is just enough to get the appetite back.  Eat some more greens, drink some fruit juice, and head back to bed for the night.

By Monday morning, I was a little worried that the routine hadn’t worked.  I went for one more round of tea and grub, then headed straight back to bed.  When I woke up at noon, I decided sleep was still a better idea.  Finally, when I got up Monday evening from my fourth consecutive nap, I knew the bug was as good as defeated.  The sinus pain was gone, the aching had dulled, and I finally had some energy and a clear head.