Lovely Cassandra Black has come home today. :)

from The Times-Picayune

Cruelty to animals can be a red flag that something is seriously wrong in a child's life; mistreatment of animals can also be a precursor of violence toward people.

Such behavior demands intervention, and fortunately, that's exactly what happened when some students at Colton Middle School in New Orleans were seen throwing rocks at neighborhood dogs and cheering when one was hit.

The school and the Louisiana SPCA formed a partnership to educate the entire Colton student body about the proper way to treat animals, an effort that included taking seventh- and eighth-graders to the animal shelter where they got a firsthand look at what's involved in caring for animals. The students also watched a video about animal abuse.

The students are sharing what they learned in a schoolwide assembly today that will feature student-led skits.

Reaching out to all of the students at Colton instead of simply focusing on those involved in throwing rocks was a good idea. Teaching and encouraging humane behavior will have a greater impact.

Laura Maloney, executive director of the Louisiana SPCA, notes that there is a link between violence toward animals and violence toward people. "If we can build respect for life through animals, perhaps it will make a difference," she said.

Encouraging empathy is a worthy goal. Children who understand that it's wrong to hurt a dog or cat are far more likely to grow into adults who understand that it's wrong to hurt each other.

Fake acupuncture 'aids migraines'

In a study of more than 300 patients, both genuine and sham acupuncture reduced the intensity of headache compared with no treatment at all.

But real acupuncture was no better than needles placed at non-acupuncture points on the body, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports.

While winding down last night after extensive blogging, all 5 cats came into the bedroom to hang with me. Even Kaku came in, looking at me intently as I looked at her and she said mrrow. It was the cutest thing!

Tuxie was most verbose earlier, mrrowing twice when I sneezed while he was napping on Boy's couch in the study. Now he leapt onto the bed came up to my face and touched noses. I believe he said mrrow again.

Kaku sat by the bed and did her fall/rollover thing to her side and I petted her. She swatted at my hand and lay on her back a little till she turned to lie in a crouch.

Tuxie came over to groom her and Sam swiftly came by too to groom her and Tuxie. It was the sweetest thing watching them groom each other. A tri-groom session, if you will. I caught it on video with my phone. :D

Some scientists predict that today's children will be able to live for more than 1,000 years. Is immortality just around the corner? Bryan Appleyard peers into a hair-raising future without death.

Here are the highlights:

Aubrey De Grey (described by Appleyard as "a brilliant, self-taught gerontologist at Cambridge. He is a 41-year-old cyclist with a 2ft beard, enormous whiskers and a rapid, high-pitched voice that on first contact is frankly terrifying") has seven strategies of Engineered Negligible Senescence — replacing cells that are lost, for example, through Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, stopping cells that multiply as in cancer, preventing mutations in chromosomes and mitochondria, the cells’ power plants, removing junk from inside cells and from outside and, finally, getting rid of “extracellular protein crosslinks” which cause hardening of the arteries. Find ways of doing all seven and nobody need ever die again.

“We have a pretty good idea of how to fix all of them,” says de Grey, “and some of the fixes are already in clinical trials. The beauty of it is that we don’t have to fix all of them completely. For example, we don’t have to clear all the junk out of the cells, just enough to stop its ageing effects.”

HOW TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO LIVE FOREVER: THE 13-STEP APPLEYARD PROGRAMME

1 Don’t even think about smoking and, preferably, don’t hang glide.

2 Eliminate sugar to lower blood insulin levels. Use stevia as a sweetener. It is a South American plant that is both very sweet and good for you.

3 Don’t eat any animal fats. Government guidelies tend to say cut these down, but they probably only say this because they think it’s the best people can manage. No saturated fat at all is probably best.

4 Eat lots of vegetables that grow above ground. Those below ground are heavy in carbohydrates that turn into sugar and raise insulin levels.

5 Don’t overdo the fruit. Contrary to popular wisdom it’s not unconditionally good as it contains sugar. Non-drinking Arabs and Indians who sit around sipping orange juice all day end up with diabetes.

6 Eat nuts. For incompletely understood reasons, people who eat nuts live longer. Not salted peanuts, however (see 7).

7 Don’t salt things. Salt raises blood pressure and will kill you through a stroke or heart attack. For this reason, don’t touch processed food.

8 Don’t have heart bypass surgery or have a stent installed to hold a blocked artery open. Latest figures suggest neither works. People who live longer after them probably do so because the shock made them eat better and exercise more.

9 Have a massive medical assessment, preferably at Kronos in Phoenix, Arizona, to establish what you are doing wrong and, if possible, what genetic weaknesses you have. Continue these assessments throughout your life and adjust supplements accordingly. Read all the latest medical journals to keep up.

10 Exercise vigorously and daily but don’t run. Running is bad for your skeleton.

11 Take a child’s aspirin once a day to thin your blood and a much larger dose before you get on a plane. Ideally, don’t get on a plane.

12 Eat very little. Rats on restricted diets live longer but it is not known if this would damage humans — particularly their brains. So if you forget what 2+2 equals, eat more.

13 Ignore all of the above. They may be wrong and, if a piano falls on you, pointless.

Reached home at about 2130, unpacked the groceries, had a shower, and found Boy on my computer chair. He was so cute lying on it I had to take some pics.

Of course by this time he realised I was there to usurp his chair and looked rather miffed when I took some photos of him.





It was almost as if the paparazzi had found him.



He glared and jumped off the chair and went sulking in the corner for a while.



Buffy came to see what the fuss was about.



He did later settle down beside my chair to have a nap. :)



And looked slightly less miffed when I wanted to record the moment for posterity. :D

Got home after a lovely evening with my Dad. Already when he picked me up from work, he seemed cheerier than before. I think he was looking forward to a restful evening, hopefully without me nagging about his diet. :)

We went for our regular chinese tui na and then had a Subway dinner. Tina noticed my lower back was rather buggered. It has been my lousy posture while squinting angrily at the computer screen. She spread some nasty cool lotion on my back that numbed it some and rubbed the knots out. I did feel rather human after that.

Then it was off to NTUC to stock up on groceries. Dad said he felt a lot better recently, but couldn't quite attribute it to either the diet, Western medicine, or the Chinese medicine (for clearing the blockage but was apparently a general non-interactive sort of medicine although needing to be boiled for 4 hours). He was going to check it out more with his chinese sinseh before proceeding with the third installment after the family's naggy and frantic warnings about possible negative interactions.

Anyhow, he said walked from one end of the hospital to the other without being breathless and that is a stark improvement from before! That is fantastic news and could probably explain the non-induced cheery. :D No matter, as long as he's positive and happy. As for the cause, I'd go with the diet, first and foremost. It's amazing what one week of proper eating can do. Having meals with Dad also makes me eat healthier. It is pretty symbiotic. :)