Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Another Experiment with High Dose Vitamin C

I like to experiment on myself occasionally. For instance, I haven't had any soda for 15 months. I wish I could say that I've lost tons of weight and feel great, but that isn't the case. However, knowing how nasty soda is for me, I am only occasionally tempted to indulge in an ice-cold, sweetly carbonated Pepsi. I ruthlessly squash the urge.

If only I could apply this same self-will to portion control of the foods I like best, such as my homemade crispy black bean tacos with cabbage/cilantro/red onion slaw. My kids are so done with that dish, but I still love it so much, even when I don't have feta cheese to add to it.

Right now I'm experimenting with high dose Vitamin C. I'm trying to find my bowel tolerance (the number of grams of Vitamin C that it takes to cause diarrhea), and I started out by taking 3000 mg total throughout the course of the first day. Then I read some more articles, such as this very helpful one, and decided to greatly increase my dosage amount.

Today, I've already had 4 grams (4000 mg) of ascorbic acid Vitamin C fizzy tablets in water. At our request, my in-laws bring home many tubes of fizzy Vitamin C tablets from England (though the tablets are made in Germany) whenever they go to visit. While I can stomach the black currant flavored ones (I'm not a huge fan of black currant), I prefer the orange flavored ones. When I run out of those, I'll buy some more pure ascorbic acid Vitamin C from a drugstore or health store, or I may order more acerola cherry powder.

I'm taking 2000 mg of the stuff every one or two hours today. I think I may be reaching bowel tolerance, which is great (if one can ever be excited about deliberately giving oneself diarrhea) because it means that despite my being overweight, I am pretty dang healthy internally. I would increase my dosage rates if I start feeling sick or if I am stressed. But for now, I'll find bowel tolerance and then reduce my dosage to 80%-90% of bowel tolerance on a daily basis.

I am also taking more zinc, but I had forgotten about the side effects of taking zinc on an empty stomach. Blech.

Tip: don't take zinc tablets on an empty stomach. If you don't actually vomit, you'll be suppressing the urge to vomit for hours.

You're welcome.

Last thing:

I know everything I write lately is completely dry and humorless. I blame it on my job. For years now I have been writing thousands upon thousands of words of dry and humorless content for the Internet. In fact, except for all the random trivia I have stored up in my head because of the research I have to do, I have become an utterly boring person in general.

The cure for being boring and humorless has got to be enjoyable, though. Right? I think I've found my next experiment.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

The Curious Reason I May Have Become a Flat Earther

Here's a thing:

Back on November 7, 2015, I and several others were walking through a parking lot around 7pm. It was dark, and our eyes were suddenly caught by an extremely bright, unusual light in the western sky. We stood and watched this light until it slowly faded out. It was so unusual that I didn't forget it.

When I looked it up on the Internet the next morning, there were several articles (herehere, and here, among others, written in the two or three days following the incident) and a couple videos about it. This video, taken by amateurs in Southern California, includes some foul language (some F-bombs), but the light show they captured is exactly what I saw.



So the government says it was a rocket test over California, and they closed down air traffic over the Pacific. Fine. Just because it looks nothing like a rocket trail or like any light I've ever seen in the sky before, fine. We're used to explanations from the government that stretch the limits of credulity--not that I actually believe in aliens from outer space for a number of reasons. But I do believe the government has technology far beyond what they normally allow the public to see.

But that's not the issue I want to address, even if it is a good subject.

The question I have is this: if that rocket test happened over 670 miles to the southwest from where I was standing, how did I see it?

In the video above, the light is high in the sky, and it's massive. Standing where I was in Northern Utah, I saw it high in the sky, as well. In fact, to the direct west of my location is a range of very tall mountains. Given the curvature of the earth, I should not have been able to see that light either because it was below the horizon line or (even if it was very, very high in the sky above LA) still hidden behind the range of mountains. Yet I saw that light high in the sky, unobscured by the mountains. People reported seeing this same thing from all over the Western States.

There are two explanations I can think of.

Either the officials failed to mention that they shot off multiple rockets in various places throughout the West simultaneously (a theory that is not confirmed in any of the articles about the subject)

or...

the earth is actually flat and there is no curvature of a global world that would obscure my ability to see a light of that magnitude and height even from 670 miles away.

I can think of no other explanations.