Picture of the day.

Heres a little pic taken from whiritoa, This tree is a pohutakawa tree. One of the most popular trees in the north island.

Thinking About Health

Too much of a good thing.
As most of us have well noticed. People are fat! Yea, they're really, really fat haha. People just don't seem to care about it either. Too much fat leads to health problems which can include hypertension, poor blood sugar regulation, heart disease, certain cancers, gallstones, arthritis and lower back aches. People with increasing Adipose tissue (fat tissue) have a higher risk for health problems than people who are only slightly fat. But the health effects of excess fat depend on several important factors besides quantity of adipose tissue.
Family medical history
Excess body fas is really risky for people who have already developed fat-related health problems, or who have a family history of these disorders. On the other hand, people over 70 years old may benefit from a little extra fat tissue. Many health professionals recommend an extra 10 or 15 pounds for people over 70 to help them resist wasting away if the become ill.
Beware of the deadly sins:gluttony and sloth :D
people with a moderate amount of excess adipose tissue who eat a health diet and exercise regularly have health risks similar to those of the leaner body shape. So in other words the health risks seen in overweight people may be caused by poor health habits (too much food, too much alcohol, or too little exercise) rather than by the presence of excess fat. So do a little exercise, stop eating KFC and try not to party too much.

Atheist Billboards, Up for Christmas

I'm disgusted to see this. Whatever these people do, they will not be able to convince everyone in the world to become atheists. Thankfully, there are still Christians and other people in the world who are intelligent enough to believe in Christ.

Atheist Billboards To Debut During Holidays
Message Questions Existence Of God
Russell Haythorn, 7NEWS Reporter

POSTED: 9:22 pm MST November 13, 2008
UPDATED: 10:38 pm MST November 13, 2008

DENVER -- A controversial billboard will likely be popping up in a neighborhood near you, just in time for the holidays.

The billboard is paid for by a Colorado atheist group. The message sits against a blue sky backdrop and says, "Don't believe in God? You're not alone."

Ten billboards will pepper metro Denver, while one will be put up in Colorado Springs.

"And we're putting them up in November and December because of the holidays, when church and state issues tend to come up a lot," said Joel Guttormson, with Metro State Atheists. "To let non-believers, free-thinkers and atheists know that they are not alone, especially in a country like ours that is predominantly Christian."

Pastor Willard Johnson of Denver's Macedonia Baptist Church called the billboards a desperate effort to discredit Christianity.

"The Bible is being fulfilled. It says that in latter days, you have all these kinds of things coming up, trying to disrupt the validity of Christianity," Johnson said. "If they don't believe in God, how do they believe they came about? We denounce what they are doing. But we do it with love, with gentleness, with decency and with compassion."

Bob Enyart, a Christian radio host and spokesman for American Right to Life, said it's hard to ignore the evidence.

"The Bible says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. Evidence. If we ignore the evidence for gravity or the Creator, that's really dangerous," said Enyart. "Income tax doesn't not exist because somebody doesn't believe in it. And the same is true with our Creator."

The billboards will go up Nov. 17. The atheist group, called Colorado Coalition of Reason or COCORE, also wanted to put up signs in Fort Collins and Greeley, but a billboard company there refused to carry the message.

Johnson said atheism is a rebellion against Biblical principals and the billboard will likely offend many Christians.

COCORE said this is about First Amendment rights.

"And I've read the First Amendment up and down and nowhere does it say that I have to care about your feelings. We're either 10 to 16 percent of the population, and the reason we don't really know is because people are scared to come out because they're ostracized by the people around them," said Guttormson.

Source

UN: Pollution Huge Threat to Asia

Brown clouds of pollution a huge threat to Asia: UN
BEIJING (AFP) – Enormous brown clouds of pollution hanging over Asia are killing hundreds of thousands of people, melting glaciers, changing weather patterns and damaging crops, the United Nations said Thursday.

Car traffic, factory emissions and indoor cooking are among the culprits for the "Atmospheric Brown Clouds", which are up to three kilometres (1.8 miles) thick, according the UN's Environment Programme (UNEP).

Releasing a landmark report on the phenomenon, the UNEP said getting rid of the clouds could help ease many environmental problems in Asia.

"The Atmospheric Brown Cloud is both complex and in need of a great deal more attention," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told reporters.

Unlike greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, which take decades or longer to disperse, the clouds would disappear in a matter of weeks if the sources of the problem ceased to pollute, the report said.

Five Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) hotspots have been detected around the world, three of which are in Asia.

Asia's dense population and heady development of recent decades are two of the main reasons for the clouds, with one vast expanse of soot hovering across the Arabian Peninsula through to China and the western Pacific Ocean.

The clouds are so prevalent that black soot has been detected at Mount Everest base camp at levels normally expected in urban areas, according to the report.

The soot that has fallen on the glaciers of the Himalayas and other mountainous regions of Asia have amplified the effects of climate change, because the black particles absorb more heat.

However the clouds can both magnify and mask climate change, because the pollutants also block sunlight.

But the report said many of the consequences of the clouds were indisputable, such as accelerating the melting of glaciers, which in turn has a long-term negative impact on water resources and crop yields across Asia.

The pollutants have also contributed to decreases in the Indian summer monsoons and a north-south shift in rainfall patterns in China.

"The human fatalities from indoor and outdoor exposures to ABC-relevant pollutants have also become a source of grave concern," the report said.

The UNEP estimated that as many as 340,000 people died each year in China and India alone from cardiovascular, respiratory and other diseases linked to exposure to the pollutants.

From: Yahoo News!

Thinking About Health.

Effective stretching.
A certain amount of flexibility is a must for you muscles. The more elasticity your muscles have the bigger range of motion your joints will have. If your not stretching at all, gradually your muscles will “seize up”. I teach yoga so I know how important it is to stretch properly so here’s some tips:
To see an improvement in flexibility, stretching exercises must be done regularly-daily if possible- for many weeks. Your muscle tissues will stretch best when you apply gradual pressure or gentle force at elevated tissue temperatures. 10 or more minutes of warm up is good to do before stretching. Exercise heats the muscle more deeply. That’s why the call it “warm up”. Flexing cold muscles does not increase flexibility and can cause injuries in extreme cases.
Just relax.
The easiest and safest way to increase flexibility is with static stretching. A good static stretch is slow and gentle after warm up. Get into a comfortable stretching position and relax into the stretch. Take some deep breaths and go into the stretch as much as you feel comfortable. Try to hold it for at least 30 seconds. If your tensing up then your stretching too much.
So the most important tip to stretching is to relax. You may have gone to some sort of exercise class and looked around at a person trying their hardest to stretch as much as the person next to them. Pushing their muscles to the limit so they don’t look silly or something haha. They are unintentionally activating the motor neurons that initiate muscular contraction in the muscles they are supposed to be relaxing, which of course means they are tightening the very muscle they are trying to stretch. Pretty silly right? So next time you stretch remember to relax- Sam

Picture of the day.

Heres a nice little closeup pic.

Learn Tagalog

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
Ta⋅ga⋅log
   /tɑˈgɑlɔg, tə-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [tah-gah-lawg, tuh-] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -logs, (especially collectively) -log for 1.
1. a member of a Malayan people native to Luzon, in the Philippines.
2. the principal language of the Philippines, an Indonesian language of the Austronesian family.

It's a beautiful language, for one- and unfortunately I can only speak the "low class" type. I love hearing people speak in the old Tagalog, so to speak. It's a very poetic and descriptive language.

For the most part, Tagalog is very easy to learn. Harden your tongue a bit, and read the words as they look. Not much to think about on the pronunciation side of things- at least for the most part, until you're faced with a word like nginunguyanguya.

Anyhow, here are rules and some simple and quick phrases to learn:

Each Filipino vowel sound consists of only one sound.
Compare with English "a" as in "baby, which has two sounds: "bEIbi"
or English "o" as in "post": "pOUst"
or, finally, English "i" as in "bike": "bAIk."

In this sense Filipino vowels are pure
like vowels in Spanish or Italian.

Pronounce every vowel as a separate sound.
There are no diphthongs in Filipino; diphthongs are vowel combinations pronounced as one syllable.

Pronounce as in English Example
a father Magandang umaga, good morning
e egg Nene
i each ibig, want
o long totoo, true
u food kukunin, will take

Pronounce consonants as in English with the following considerations:

1. "g" is always hard, as in "get," never as in "gel."
2. "c, f, q, v, x" exist only in words adopted from other languages.
3. Pronounce adopted words as in their home language.
4. All other consonants are pronounced as in English.
5. In addition, there is the "ng" consonant; in the Filipino alphabet, it comes after "n"
6. More on the pronunciation of "ng" shortly.

To produce the "nga" sound, do the following.
a. Say "hanger"
b. Say "hang a."
c. Say "ang a."
d. Say "ng a."
e. Say "nga."

Practice "nga" with the following words:
· ang
· mga (short for "manga," the plural marker for nouns and pronouns)
· nang
· ng (pronounced like "nang," but is a different word)
· mangarap, to dream
· sanga, branch
· ngayón, now
· kailangan, need

There are four classes of word stress and accent. All Filipino words fall into one of these four classes:

malumay no accent
malumì grave accent
mabilís acute accent
maragsâ circumflex accent

Each class name is an example the stress and accent of the words in the class, that is, the words in each class have the same word stress and accent as the class name. Thus, all words in the malumay class have no accent. All words in the malumì class have the grave accent. All words in the mabilís class have the acute accent. All words in the maragsâ class have the circumflex accent.

Technically, the accents are part of the written language. In practice, many Filipino writers omit the accents. If you grew up with the language, you would know how to pronounce words from the context. If not, you would find the accents useful aids to pronunciation.

Kumustá Hello (casual)
Kumustá pô Hello (respectful)
Mabuti I'm fine (casual)
Mabuti pô I'm fine (respectful)

Go to Tagalog1 to learn more.