as of friday morning, my zinc results have been mailed, but they aren't here yet. i need to do some shopping this weekend, anyways - i can't wait. what changes can i make?

first, i'm now eating the fruit bowl every day for breakfast and either eating pasta or eggs for supper. two meals is all i can take.

fruit bowl

i still don't know if the wheat and phytates are blocking metal absorption in the fruit bowl. i know that the calcium & magnesium seem to be fine. zinc results will be useful, and after that i'll need to check copper & selenium, particularly. so, for now i'm going to stick with it:

fruit & vegetables 

- 100 g strawberry  (c,s...cr,se + flavonoids)

- 30 g guava  (b8,c,s)

- 70 g kiwi (b8,c,k1...b,cr)

- 150 g avocado  (b5,b8,b9,b16,b20,c,e,f1,k1,s...b,na,s,k,cr,zn,se....h,l,k,m,c)

- 120 g banana (b5,b16...cl,k,se....h)

- 45 g raspberry (c,s...b + flavonoids)

- pinch of cinnamon (s, mostly)*

- 1 tbsp of paprika (pseudo-a + lutein & zeaxanthin)

+

- cherries (from yogurt, ice cream)  (extra pseudo-a,c,e,s + flavonoids)

- 45 g of blueberry or blackberry or cranberry (or multiples of them)  (extra c,e,s + flavonoids)

"dairy"

- 400 ml fortified soy milk (a, b5,b7,b8,b16,b20,d,f1...b,na,p,s,k,ca,fe,co,cu,zn,se,mo....h,i,l,k,m,c,v)

- 82.5 g of cherry ice cream (a,b5,b12,b13,b16,b20,k2...na,s,zn,se....i,l,k,m,v)

- 50 g cherry yogurt (a,b16,b20...na,s,co,zn,se....i,l,k,m,c,v)

cereal

- 40 g of vector (a,b3,b5,b7,b9,b15,b20,e,f1...na,cl,fe,zn,se,i)

- 45 g of all bran (b5,b8,b15,b16,b20,f1...na,mg, p,s,cl,k,mn,fe,zn,se....h,i,l,k,m,c,v)

- 14 g raw wheat bran (b8,b15...s,cl,zn,se....c)!

seeds

- 8 g of raw, hulled sunflower seed (e,f1...s,se....c) 

- 12 g of ground flax seed  (b16,f1,f2...b,si,s,ni,zn,se....c)

fungi & protists

- 5 g of nutritional yeast (b1,b2,b3,b4,b6,b7,b9,b12,b16...s,cr,se....k,c)

- 5 ml of algal oil (b12,16,f3,f4)

* i should be out of fake cinnamon this month, and will look for real cinnamon this week

! - doubling the wheat bran for selenium & betaine & inositol may not be good for iron, and i'll understand that when i get zinc results, but the iron pills might, in the end, be the best workaround.

so, that's breakfast and it is complete, up to understanding the effects of interactions.

pasta bowl

so, to start with, this is what seems to be sufficient in the pasta bowl:

- vitamins: beta-carotene, b1, b2, b3, b4, b6, b9, b12 (total), b13, c, d, e, f2, k2

- minerals: na, mg, p, k, ca, mn, co, cu, se

this is what seems to be lacking, after adjusting to the 50% requirements, from the 33% ones:

- vitamins: retinol, b5, b7, b8, b12 (natural), b15, b16, b20, f1, f3, f4, k1, s

- minerals:  fe, zn, mo

and this is what has not been measured at all:

- minerals: b, si, s, cr, ni, i

- all amino acids

- lutein

- lycopene

- chlorophyll

- flavonoids

this is what i've done to adjust:

- i've boosted the cheese by a few grams to increase the amount of a. adding some fish should also increase a levels. i've also increased the yogurt by a tablespoon. that should be sufficient.

- the added tomatoes & broccoli together should get the b5 up from 90 to over 100, on paper. the extra tablesoon of yogurt is a few more percent. fish is also high in b5. adding further items will likewise get it up a tad more. this should be fine when i calculate it.

- the nutritional yeast is undercounted in that chart, and about 30% less than it ought to be, taking me to closer to 150% for b7. i'm also going to increase the amount of soy to a full cup. but, fish is high in biotin. i think this is ok, given that i get a ton of biotin from the eggs.

- i'm going to add green beans for inositol. it should help a little with iron, too. with the broccoli & tomato, together, along with the soy, i should be up to close to 500 mg.  that should be fine.

- the fish, cheese & yogurt should get the natural b12 up a bit more. that should be fine.

- the size of the beets is undercounted, here; i'm actually generally eating more like 100-120 g of beets which is a 25-50% increase. realizing that gets me about half of the way there. but, i'm going to add about 10 g of spinach, which is even higher in betaine, to firm it up. 

- the choline & carnitine should come up with the fish, specifically. so should the omega-3 and omega-6s.

- the broccoli & spinach, together, should be sufficient for k1. in fact, with the tomatoes and green beans, and spices, it may be a little too high. but, i'm going to ignore that, for now.

- the oregano alone should get me over 5 mg of salicylates in this meal.

- i would appear to need 7.5 mg of iron to get to my 50% target. tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, garlic & spinach, together, should add something like 1.4 mg. a tablespoon of paprika and teaspoon of cayenne would together have roughly 1.75, a tablespoon of oregano would have 1.5 mg, and a tablespoon of hulled hemp & sunflower seeds would have about 1.0 mg, together. so, that's about 5.5 g. leading me to only need 2.0 mg more. i should get around 1 mg more with fish.

as can be seen, these spices are supposed to be high in iron, along with salicylates and antioxidants. what other spices can i look at?

thyme - 5.3 mg in 1 tbsp

cumin seed - 4.0 mg in 1 tbsp

celery seed - 2.9 mg in 1 tbsp

basil - 1.9 mg in 1 tbsp

i know i like thyme & basil, and i used to put celery in my salt. these are easy, cheap adds. i can try some cumin, but i'm not sure if i'll like it. i'll just try a tsp to start.

these spices are going to increase my k levels and i'm going to ignore it for now.

- for zinc, i would appear to need 5 mg to meet my goal, but i want to wait to see what my serum level is, first. i'm probably going to need the fish to meet this, as spices and vegetables appear to be poor sources of zinc

- i'm not looking at molybdenum right now. soon.

so, the extra adds are:

0) 1 tomato for lycopene and extra c. it also tones down the spiciness and there's a bit of k1 & b8.

1) broccoli for sulfur, k1 & extra c. it's also high in lutein and adds about 10% of b5 and a little b8.

2) more cheese & more yogurt for a, b5 & b12

3) more soy for a, b5, b7, b8 & b16.

4) some fish for a, b5, b7, b12, b16, b20, f1, f3, f4, iron although i'm not sure what type yet.

5) 50 g of green beans for inositol & k1

6) 10 g of spinach for betaine, k1 

7) thyme, cumin, celery and basil for iron. i'll have to decide if i like it or not.

& this is the total outcome, for now

fruits & vegetables:

- 1 beet (>100 g) 

- 1 garlic clove (~5 g)  

- 1 lime, including the peel (~67 g)  

- 110 g of carrots 

+

- 1 tomato (~100-150 g) 

- 40 g of broccoli 

- 50 g of green beans 

- 10 g of spinach

+ 

capsicum

- 1 red pepper (>150 g) 

- 1 tbsp paprika  

- 1 tsp cayenne pepper  

- several dashes of frank's red hot sauce 

+

spices

- several dashes of ground black pepper

- 1 tbsp oregano

- 1 tbsp thyme 

- 1 tsp cumin seed (to start)

- 1 tbsp celery seed

- 1 tbsp basil

seeds

- 1 tbsp hulled hemp seeds

- 1 large tbsp of hulled sunflower seeds

- 1 small tsp mustard seed

protists

- 1 large tsp of nutritional yeast

"dairy"

- 250 ml of fortified vanilla soy milk

- 3 tbsp of fortified pro-biotic yogurt

- 70 g of cheddar cheese

cereal

- 55 g of fortified al dente durum wheat pasta 

- 10 tsp of pasta water

meat

- some fish of some sort to determine after zinc levels are clarified

eggs meal

the eggs only seen to be missing a few things:

- b15, k,.....mg, k, fe, zn, cu.

but, the mg and k are undercounted and probably close to ok.

i can add a little bit of spinach for an easy and near certain dose of b15 & k, which should increase magnesium and potassium as well. that leaves the beneficial metals, which i'll need to look into after i get the zinc results.

ok. that's good for now. 

i have a math degree, and i didn't take any formal economics courses in an actual school until i went back to work on a second undergraduate degree in computer science. and, i started off in physics, so i'm fundamentally empirical in how i interpret reality. i remember having this exact reaction when i first looked at these post-keynesian models in a first-year classroom - even as the simplest, most basic model, the idea that this was even remotely useful in reality was instantly realized as laughable - and i actually was the person that asked the prof if there was any empirical evidence for this, and was at least lucky enough to get a derisive, scornful response that no, of course not, and even teaching it nowadays is just silly. that's really the most important thing i got from taking a few formal courses - you can call modern economics speculative philosophy if you'd like, but it often doesn't even pretend that it's applying scientific methods. it's a bad joke.

 

that said, there's a similar debate in physics about the utility of teaching newtonian mechanics and the overwhelming consensus is that it has too much historical value to drop it altogether. i don't even disagree, really. but, the classical models should be presented later in the course sequence as a historical breadth for experts, and the 100 courses should really be more contemporary, so as to be useful for both general audiences and math geeks taking breadth requirements.

but, steve keen apparently doesn't know what croutons are.

somebody buy the man a salad.

see, this is what i'm talking about with the court shifting hard to the right. this is a decision that i can barely recognize as canadian.

so, prosecutors are essentially given free reign to say whatever they want about the pigs, then. i'm no fan of the institution, clearly. but, they need to have a right of defense against corrupt prosecutors (and that happens.) that want to defame their character in the course of a prosecution, and that was just taken away from them in order to uphold some tory bullshit about the "honour of the crown".

the previous court was all about civil liberties, and they would have never taken a position like this.

when this is over, this is going to be the legacy of justin trudeau - by allowing the opposition to shape the bench, he shifted it hard to the right in a way that stephen harper only dreamed of being able to do; he succeeded in changing the legal culture in the way that the right wanted it changed, where harper failed.

https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/practice-areas/litigation/police-cannot-sue-crown-attorneys-over-handling-of-criminal-cases-scc-rules/355545

no posts yesterday? really?

yeah, but it's misleading.

i fell asleep a little after midnight on friday morning while i was eating pasta and woke up a little before the sun came up, with the requirement to finish the meal. i had opened my fridge up on thursday afternoon to dethaw, and was expecting the landlord to come down in the morning to remove the electronic panel and clear out the drain. i was consequently sort of wasting time until he got here, which didn't happen until after 14:00. i spent the time working on a pasta bowl update post that i didn't finish until i had to get out to the store before they closed around 20:00, and i fell asleep when i got back.   

so, i was typing out a big post that i might not finish for a few more days, still.

i don't need to physically go to the doctors' offices every few days this month, so i want to get all of the running around for the month done before monday, finish cleaning on that side of the space (now that the fridge is fixed, hopefully) and settle in for the next several weeks, which is how i like it.

so, posts might be slow for the rest of the weekend.

enjoy my deny everything sequence, while i'm gone.

today's post is my fourth symphony, inri039.

do i still agree with mayr on this?

mostly, yes.

======

this is my fourth symphony. 

it's a sort of a pun; it uses the medical condition of acidosis, which is when the ph level of a person's blood dips to a level that causes complications or death, to draw an analogy to the environmental destruction being carried out by industrial civilization. it also forwards my intuitive hypothesis that homo sapiens will ultimately end up as an evolutionary dead-end. more specifically, my view is that intelligence, as a trait, is ultimately an evolutionary disadvantage. well somebody else probably has that view too. 

(...i learned later that it turns out to be the seminal evolutionary biologist, ernst mayr, in fact. he made evolutionary syntheses, not hot dogs....) 

the material is presented here in fragmented format to properly outline the structure of the piece. 

that sexy cover art is a couple of bitmaps of neurons played with in paint and superimposed onto each other in coagula. the sound of that sexy bitmap is heard in the song. 

i think i'd rather let the piece stand by title alone, other than to point out that the reaction explored in the piece is really more general than any specific narrative justifies. it's a systems break down. 

the music is half generated algorithmically and half played. the half random, largely atonal notes i had programmed into the generator created unusual jam circumstances that were fun to play with. as an example, the piano part is live, but it's being spurred on by the random synth bass underneath it. the computer was driving me, creatively; i think it produced interesting results, both out of me and in itself. as a rhythm section, the computer holds it's own here - as random as the notes are. 

what centres the track, though, is a classical guitar part that i recorded very late one night. i was weirded out about things and wanted to get some shit out, so i recorded myself playing for close to a half hour. i think a lot of people don't realize just how powerful a guitar can be as an alternate outlet for aggression. psychologically, that's powerful shit. 

i listened to the jam when i got my head clear and i was sort of fascinated by it's just raw emotion. it didn't make any musical sense, but it expressed an idea through it's dynamics. i ran it backwards through an effect designed to simulate a record player dying over exaggerated lengths of times and that became the idea to build around. the shape grew slowly, all the way into the analogy, from there. 

this was constructed over a little more than a month: from 7/7-8/20, 2000. it seems to have been recombined into one track around 2006 but has otherwise not been modified since it was completed. first released as an ep on jan 14, 2014. release finalized as symph004 on oct 8, 2017. as always, please use headphones. 

this ep appears as a single track on my fourth record, deny everything (inri041): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything 

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2000, 2014, 2017). 

released August 20, 2000 

j - guitars of all types, bass, drum programming, synthesizers, piano, loops, noise generation, organ, ebow, flute, mandolin, treatments, effects, found sounds, sound design, generative synthesis, generative percussion, light-sound synthesis, digital wave editing, production, coughs, a broken equalizer, cover art