Classic Rupert Bear Miniatures

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Oh, these look so cool!  Hand-made and painted Rupert Bear figurines!  The Rupert Bear Annual is the most imaginative and visually interesting and artistic storybook that was read to me as a child, and later read to myself, and later still read to my own children.

Look At The Fine Detail!

I Wants - If ever you'd like to get me a gift, these are something I'd love to have.  Currently I have:  zero.  www.classicrupertbearminiatures.com

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Update September 2014 -- Since my original posting in 2011 about the miniatures, they became unavailable.  Oh, that worried me, so I tracked down the sculptor, Colin Patten, and was able to purchase some of his remaining figures.  They are of excellent quality.  I was very glad to receive them.   He had put the Rupert Bear collection on hold as other work projects were taking up all of his time.  I just took a peek and they are now available again, plus new characters as well!!!

If you love these, you just may love Colin's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings collection of Middle Earth! www.themiddleearthcollection.com  or, even more impressive, his company that creates museum history pieces www.historymaker.ie -- just amazing!

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Essential Reading For Vegetarians Vegans

Becoming Raw - By Brenda Davis, Vesanto Melina, Rynn Berry Wow! Fantastic!  No matter what you currently eat, try including a lot more raw foods into your diet.  The writing team of Brenda and Vesanto have made another fantastic comprehensive book.

Becoming Vegan - By Brenda Davis, Vesanto Melina For those raised consuming animal products, this book gives the very basic information on having a diet and lifestyle free of animal products. Perhaps, even if you weren't raised consuming animal products, you could very well learn many things from this book.

The New Becoming Vegetarian - by Vesanto Melina, Brenda Davis If you were raised consuming animal products and would like to reduce your intake and are not yet ready to eliminate all animal products from your diet, very well, then this is the book for you. It is called The New simply because it has been updated.

Diet for a New America - by John Robbins This book doesn't seem to be talked about so much these days. It was written back in the 1980s, that is one reason, but another reason is that people are just so much more informed these days. He grew up the son of the Robbins side of the Basken Robbins ice-cream empire. Somewhere along the line, the put two and two together and saw that his diet was not doing him or his family any good. John essentially went on a food journey, to discover the food that he ate. His first book was probably going to be the only book he'd ever write, so he crammed as much information into it as he could. Therefore, it's a pretty tough read, in that it is just so full of facts and figures and for many, just a mind blowing new point of view. This book spurred a whole new movement where not only was one's diet connected to one's health, but to the health of animals, and of the whole planet.

Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture - by Jeremy Rifkin This book deals with the topic of how we in North America (and Western Culture) came to the point where we are eating the massive amounts of meat we are today. Many other books look at meat eating from a health perspective or environmental perspective, but this book really looks at meat eating from a historical perspective. Once you see the broader picture of our current food culture a new perspective can bring about all sorts of new thoughts and ideas.

Vegetarianism: A History - by Colin Spencer This book follows the history of vegetarianism, or perhaps more appropriately, the history of not eating meat. Just as Beyond Beef follows the history of meat eating culture, this book follows the history of the vegetation eating culture. It is very eye opening to discover that abstaining from animal flesh is not a new modern idea, but a very old and ancient one. Originally published as The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism by Fourth Estate, London, 1993. Published as Vegetarianism by Grub Street, London, 2000.

Silent Spring - by Rachel Carson The modern environmental movement is said to have been spurred by a book called Silent Spring. It awakened many North Americans to the modern world around them where chemicals such as DDT were being used for just about everything imaginable and permeating the air, soil, and water.  This book was one of David Suzuki's early influences. Every generation seems to find their own 'movement' and thinks it very original and radical when in fact it is merely a continuation of a previous movement or perhaps even history repeating itself; such as the oppressed rising up against the oppressors, there have always been fighters, and those that will speak out while the masses follow the herd. You will find that the words of your ancestors still ring true today and it is up the current generation to carry those words onward to the next generation.

Living The Good Life The Better Way - by John Lausevic and Ruth Lausevic (1993, Better Way. G & R PUBLISHING CO, (Waverly IA). This was a self-published book, therefore perhaps next to impossible to find, but it is a great cookbook and I wish it was more widespread. Every recipe is so short, simple, with a handful of ingredients and a line or two of directions; I would never have suspected that such easy recipes could be so delicious. These are truly tried-tested-and-true recipes. Yum! They now live in Western Australia. Facebook id=1159713904 |  facebook.com/djani.lausevic

Macrobiotic Pregnancy and Care of the Newborn - by Michio and Aveline Kushi First off, you do not need to be following a macrobiotic diet, or any sort of diet for that matter, to read this book.  Prior to my children being born I read every book I could get my hands on.  None of these books contained a lot of the information found in this particular book.  This book really helped fill in a lot of the blanks which other books were, basically, completely ignorant on.  I believe that becoming a parent and raising a healthy child begins before conception, for healthy parents will bear healthy children, as the opposite is also true.  There is a great companion book to this one called Macribotic Family Favorites [sic] which is full of healthy recipes for growing children.

Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating - by Jane Goodall I think it is safe to say that there are no humans left on this planet that are currently eating a truly natural wild diet, but a close relative of ours still is. They do not have that bit that humans have that I can only describe here as the bit that makes us strive for 'more', therefore their lifestyles have not changed over the eons. Through studying them, we can get a hint at what our own natural diets were like prior to us wanting 'more'. Our bodies, digestive system, and so forth are so similar that to not study the diet of chimpanzees in relation to our own would be quite unfortunate. Yet, here is someone who has written a book on the subject (along with a helping hand from a couple co-authors), so read it, eyes wide open.

...more to come.

Windows XP Firefox Bookmarks to Mac (no html file)

Did your Windows XP computer die on you suddenly, and you did not recently export your bookmarks to an HTML file as a back-up? You have since purchased a new computer? Perhaps it is a Mac? Perhaps you are accessing your old Hard Drive as an external drive? Have no fear, your bookmarks have been automatically saved. You cannot "import" them as that would require the exported bookmarks.html file, which you did not export, because you were not expecting your computer to die. But, you can "restore" them in the same way.

Go to folder options and choose to View Hidden Files (on Windows)

On Mac: Open Terminal application.

Type: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

You can change it back to false later.

Then relaunch Finder (Apple Icon, force quit)

This will reveal this directory:

Documents and Settings/[user_name]/Application Data/Mozilla/firefox/profiles/[number].default/bookmarkbackups.bookmarks[date].json

Copy the more recent json file to your new computer.

Open Firefox, open Bookmarks - Organize Bookmarks. Choose to Restore - From File. Choose your json file, and presto, finally, you are done. Yippie!

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing%20up%20your%20information

Chlorine In Tap Water Evaporates

Steve Lower - Dept of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University (retired)

Scocasso!: "What about chlorine? We all know it's in our tap water (and what else, I do not know), and the smell and taste is not very appealing. Many people use water filters to remove some of this chlorine, at least, the smell and taste of it. What is the effect of chlorine in tap water on humans that consume it regularly? "

Steve Lower: "As far as I know, there is no evidence that chlorine or its decomposition product hypochlorous acid is harmful at the concentrations allowed for water disinfection. The only problem arises when the water contains organic materials such as humins from decayed vegetation or nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff; chlorine react with these to form chloramines which can be carcinogenic."

Scocasso!: "I know people from other countries that have come to live in Canada, and many of them boil their water in order to reduce the chlorine; or so they tell me. Does boiling water really evaporate chlorine from the water?"

Steve Lower: "Yes, any gas dissolved in water will be expelled when it is boiled. But this applies to oxygen as well, so boiled water should be aerated before added to an aquarium - or better yet, use a bubbler aerator in the aquarium.

  "A good activated-carbon filter such as the Brita will remove most chlorine and its by-products."

View his interesting websites here to learn more: 
http://members.shaw.ca/slower/SteveChem/
http://members.shaw.ca/slower/SKLstuff.html

Packaging Observation

Before and After Packaging
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President's Choice Organics line has changed the look of their products. White space is added. Different images are used. The leaf is no longer a raster image, but a vector image. It is also changed from a rectangular shape to a leaf shape; the same shape that was used to dot the 'i's in Organics/Biologique. The PC 'ribbon' is flattened on the end and a copper/gold colour added. Sans Serif font is used now... well, a whole lot of shifting has happened. Personally, I think it now looks more akin to the old No Name packaging.

Colour Observation #012

KISS Solo Albums

I always really loved the artwork for the KISS solo albums. The way the characters were divided into four colour, purple blue green and red is really cool. It is painted to look like there is a white light to the front left, with a coloured light to the back right, illuminating their hair and part of the face with colour. The Starchild is purple, colour of love and passion. Space Ace blue, the colour of the coolness of space. Catman green, the colour of the jungle, and The Demon red, the colour of blood and the devil. Cool stuff.

Colour Observation #011

BC Hydro Logo

I've always thought that the BC Hydro logo was really great. The government company supplies electricity with the use of Hydro Electric Damn -- water power. Which usually means using a lake that is either natural or man made, and creating a good drop point for the water to fall down pipes to the turbines to create electricity. The logo by itself may not conjure up the proper image of such, but once the words are put next to the logo, once can immediately see what the image represents. I hope they never alter or 'update' the logo design. I do believe that they have updated the text, but not the actual logo as of yet.

The white electricity is moving along the wire. It's a common representation of electricity as seen in cartoons especially. But, it also looks like two mountain peaks reflected in the water to me. Most hydro dams are located in valleys with mountains on either side.