Archive for category everything else
It takes a village to deadlift a burning BMW in order to save a fallen motorcyclist in Utah
Posted by Amok in blog, everything else, news on September 14th, 2011
In this video, which one of these innocent bystanders would you be? If you saw a situation like this, how would you act?
Would you be at the front lifting the car? In the back rooting on?
Or would you have given up and walked away, not wanting to get involved in an impossible situation that clearly isn’t your business anyway. Can you deadlift a burning BMW by yourself? Is that a good reason not to get involved?
What if we all pitch in?
It’s a little of that 9/11 spirit in action just a few days after.
Was yesterday the Last BBQ? To prevent heart disease, eat to live
Well, did you eat to live? Or did you live to eat?
Since Labor Day is usually cook-out time,for most that meant skewering up some pork or beef over the grill.
Hope you remembered that the No.1 killer in America is heart disease.
According to the U.S. government, there’s more death related to cardiovascular disease than the combined rates of all other causes of death. That’s more than cancer, suicide, accidents, pneumonia/flu, diabetes, liver or kidney disease.
Of course, that’s never stopped anyone, especially my particular subgroup of Asian America–Filipino Americans–from devouring their BBQ and lechon.
Sound like you? Then I suggest you watch the recent CNN special , “The Last Heart Attack,” with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
See it via this link:
The Last Heart Attack– Sanjay Gupta\’s CNN special
The special will give you everything you need to know to save your life, including giving up meat and moving toward a plant-based diet.
The program illustrates the difference between the good (HDL) and the lousy (LDL) cholesterol , and how the lousy cholesterol gets trapped in your arteries as plaque.
Turns out it matters how big the cholesterol chunks are. Bigger ones tend to flow through. Smaller ones tend to get stuck, solidify with other small chunks and cause blockages that result in heart attacks.
To find out whether you have big or small cholesterol coursing through your arteries requires a heart scan.
In the program, Gupta ups the ante by featuring the progress of former President Bill Clinton. Check out how he went from chili dog chomper to veganism. And he did it all to save his heart.
You can too.
Don’t be fooled by stats released last year. The U.S. Office for Minority Health actually said Asian Americans were doing pretty well with a lower percentage of us with high cholesterol and high blood pressure vs. the general population.
But that’s no reason to celebrate with some crispy pata.
Break down the numbers ethnically and Filipinos were exposed as among the worse for cholesterol, high blood pressure and hypertension. That’s not a winning trifecta.
Joining us were Native Hawaiians and Japanese.
But ahead of all of us are Asian Indians. The Asian Indian men were found to have the highest prevalence of heart attacks compared to all, with a heart disease rate three times higher than the U.S. rate. Some doctors say it could mean that the spread of heart disease among Asian Indians is genetic.
In that sense, Gupta’s report is a tad self-serving. But he does talk to experts who say heart disease doesn’t have to be a fait accompli. The effects of all that bad eating can actually be reversed—by some timely and healthy eating.
The recommendation: Don’t eat anything that has a face or comes from a mother.
Cow, pig, chicken, fish, aso. OUT. Whole grains, vegetables, fruits , beans, IN.
Change your life? Change your food. Heart disease is a preventable, food-born illness.
You just have to dare not to eat Filipino.
Since 1989, despite a few lapses, I’ve been pretty much vegetarian for selfish reasons. I want to live.
Last week, my sister had this revelation for me.
“I’m taking the same pills as mama,” she said.
I was shocked. She’s just a year older than me, and apparently is on course to mirror my mother and father, health-wise. Both died of heart disease.
My sister, like you, need to watch the aforementioned CNN special.
By eating to live, you can save your life.
Religion as bloodsport: For extreme believers in the Philippines, it wasn’t just a Good Friday, it was a GREAT FRIDAY!
Posted by Amok in blog, everything else, news on April 23rd, 2011
This was the 25th year for Ruben Enaje, professional penitent, to nail himself on the cross.
That’s a record! And steroid-free, I might add.
See my earlier post on what I think about this Filipino ritual.
Toeing the secular line: On the Easter Bunny, Hell and Crucifixion
Posted by Amok in blog, everything else, humor, news on April 18th, 2011
Before you get to your Easter ham, we have to get through the solemn Passion period, the holiest week of the religious year.
Then you can wash your hands of everything.
Sorry to break it to you, but you will kindly notice there is no Easter Bunny present at the Last Supper.
Personally, I like the Easter Bunny and all he/she represents in that euphemistic parallel world that honors the coming of Spring.
In the prolific bunny, the ears may be large and the teeth cry out for orthodontia, but we really have the perfect symbol for life and renewal.
It’s just not very spiritual.
Deep in the throes of an economic recession, with no real end in sight and the partisans bickering about bottom lines and Donald Trump’s hairline, it doesn’t’ surprise me if you are yearning for something slightly more spiritual than an Easter Bunny can provide.
As a journalist, I’m conditioned to keep things in the Easter Bunny realm, unless I’m doing a story about organized religion. When I covered Papal visits to America, I didn’t have to get into whether there was really a God. Or if Martin Luther was re ally right. I just had to report on the guy in the Pope-Mobile.
That’s the standard approach by the media: Keep God out of it. What’s he got to do with anything. We’re covering humans and what they say. God? Show me two sources.
It’s an important distinction. Reporters are information providers, not missionaries. And we’re respectful of the line that keeps the Holy Spirit on one side and Lady Gaga on the other.
Constitutionally, that’s what America guarantees. You’re free. You can be God-fearing or God-less, no problem. We keep God out of our policy debates. And we keep him out of our reporting.
Reporters only pray when deadline approaches. Just like athletes only thank God when they win. (I didn’t hear anyone on the Knicks after losing by a point to the Celtics on Palm Sunday say, “O God, why have you forsaken me?”)
But Easter and Christmas are different for the media when it comes to approaching religious ideas, mostly because this is the time when even the non-believing believers start to believe. It’s a spiritual migration.
HELL
This year the mainstream media’s most spiritual reflection apppears to be Time Magazine’s “Is Hell Dead?”
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2065080,00.html
Asking if there is a hell is really just another way of asking the age old question ,” Is there a God?”
You can’t have one without the other, right?
That a young evangelical reverend like Rob Bell has a best selling book, “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who ever Lived,” is a nice timely excuse for some kind of re-examination.
I actually like the idea that if the churches were full of love and not guilt, fear, and repression, we’d see more people at churches.
Bell is proof of that. He’s packing in the people. And more conservative pastors consider some of what he says to be pure heresy. But someone wants what he’s selling.
The questions he raises are worth discussion. If there is no hell, does that mean there are no consequences?
If hell is the place for punishment, and it didn’t exist, wouldn’t that be like closing down Rikers Island? If that happened we could save money, make the “bad guys” stay at home, give the cops more to do.
OK, maybe we really could use a hell.
But does hell act as a deterrent?
Does it make you want to commit fewer ill-advised acts? Or do you even think about it at all?
For a minute, let’s say you are a hell believer. Would it be terribly disappointing if in the afterlife, you show up all virtuous, and then it’s revealed that there wasn’t a real place called hell after all.
“Hell? “a voice would say. “That’s a placebo.”
Ah, didn’t you know, you were in “hell” when you committed that act?
Why would God want to create a new place just for you and your bad-acting kind?
Besides, Hell isn’t green. Too big a carbon foot-print. Without it, think of God’s energy savings.
If you’re non-Christian, all this hypothesizing may make you feel superior as a Buddhist or Muslim, or perhaps an atheist. Or not.
But whatever your perspective, an examination of conscience, a spiritual tune-up is always worthwhile. (Don’t worry. No one is trying to inculcate. No missionary will call.)
A HANDS ON APPROACH TO CATHOLICSM
For me, I am a traditionalist in the organized realm. I’m a Filipino American, and the Spanish got there first. I am a Catholic.
As a reporter, I don’t know if there’s a hell or heaven. But as a believer, I have faith in the teachings that there is a there there.
Given that, here’s my secret Spring Break/Holy Week fling:
I’d like to go to the Philippines to see a crucifixion. Maybe even my own.
Call it “Extreme Catholicism,” though I’m really more curious than passionate about driving some nails into my hands.
One guy Ruben Enaje is practically a professional. He’s been nailed 24 years in a row.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5RbuHsbfSI&feature=fvwrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYKGPANGk7k&feature=related
It’s good to see that in the Philippines, crucifixion is an equal opportunity thing.
Given that the Church will frock a man, but not frock a woman, to crucify a woman is practically a sign of progress. Imagine you can have his and her crucifixions, maybe even re-do your marital vows on the cross.
Of course, if I go, I’d have some practical concerns. For example, wouldn’t you want to make sure the nails are sterilized first? Maybe bring your own nails?
And I’m not sure if I’d want to go all-nail the first time around anyway. It may be better to gradually take it in. Perhaps a little back-whipping self-flagellation (not the metaphorical kind) then do a cross on a subsequent trip.
What do you think? Maybe next year we can organized a “Passion Pilgrimage.”
Too real?
Well, now you know why God created the Easter Bunny.
-
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the everything else category.
Subscribe
