Never Underestimate Radical Vision

as you may know, i have strange (or rather, more developed) tastes than most people in southwest missouri. i like my coffees from africa or central america, not good ole’ folders, and i like my tea from africa, china or japan, not lipton. i like my beer imported, etc. call me strange but i just don’t believe in drinking crap. anyway, i am very tempted to try japanese matcha. it is the green tea that is the ceremonial tea that you see used in movies (insert Karate Kid II flashback here). it looks very inviting and extremely GREEN (which is my favorite color). I would recommend anyone to drink green tea for the health benefits alone. if you drink green tea, you might start with chinese green tea as it is prepared a little different and might be easier on the palette on first try, yet japanese green tea is prepared in such a way to preserve most of the health benefits of the tea. these benefits include:

The health benefits of green tea have been confirmed in numerous scientific studies.

There are four primary polyphenols in green tea and they are often collectively referred to as catechins.

Powerful antioxidants, catechins have been shown in numerous studies to fight viruses, slow aging, and have a beneficial effect on health. Clinical tests have shown that catechins destroy free radicals and have far-reaching positive effects on the entire body.

Free radicals are highly reactive molecules and fragments of molecules that can damage the body at the cellular level leaving the body susceptible to cancer, heart disease, and many other degenerative diseases.

EGCG, potent antioxidant.

Recent studies have shown that epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) an antioxidant found in green tea, is at least 100 more times more effective than vitamin C and 25 times more effective than vitamin E at protecting cells and DNA from damage believed to be linked to cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses. The antioxidant has twice the antioxidant benefit of resveratrol, found in red wine.

green tea can even help you lose weight:

Numerous scientific tests have shown that green tea catechins can lower cholesterol and increase energy expenditure.

Green Tea, Weight Loss, and Cholesterol Levels

One recent double-blind study analyzed 3 groups- one with green tea, one with a placebo, and one with just caffeine. The green tea group showed a small but statistically significant 4 percent increase in energy expenditure, compared with no change for those taking either a placebo or caffeine alone.

The scientists surmised that green tea catechins may alter the body’s use of norepinephrine, a chemical transmitter in the nervous system, to increase the rate of calorie burning.

Green tea also causes carbohydrates to be released slowly, preventing sharp increases in blood-insulin levels. This promotes the burning of fat.

In a study of more than 2000 Japanese men aged 49 to 55, green tea consumption was found to significantly lower serum levels of total cholesterol.

The men in the study group drank 10 Japanese-size green tea cups a day (about 4 to 5 western-sized cups).

Scientists monitoring this group found that drinking green tea improves the ratio of LDL (’bad”) cholesterol to HDL (”good”) cholesterol. LDL cholesterol was reduced and HDL cholesterol was increased slightly in the Japanese study.

so drink up, you know I will. to purchase fine quality green tea go to http://www.japanesegreenteaonline.com. i am tempted to even buy the traditional chasen and matcha-chawan for my matcha experience.

anyways, later

by far one of the better bands i have been listening to recently. this band is really amazing musically and they have great lyrics. they have an advanced melodic emo sound (whatever the heck that is). ya know, i think people that have too much time on there hands in the music industry just pick genre labels randomly to fit some new band coming out like, “band so-and-so are an incredible blend of monkey-bottom-crunch and drunken indian spew, really good stuff!” or “so-and-so rocked my face off with their hardcore-melodic-pop-punk inspired midget punching rock” anyway cool hand luke’s new album, wake up o’ sleeper, is awesome. (dave, pick it up i think you will really like it).

other bands in the rotation recently that you guys should check out:

stavsacre – any album
further seems forever – the moon is down
further seems forever – how to start a fire
the juliana theory – love
mae – destination beautiful
good charlotte – the yound and hopeless

bands you should not listen to:

anything country – none of this unoriginal, depressed induced crap should be allowed on the air waves.

the franchise – scott silleta’s new band just does not have the same spark as plankeye, regretfully i bought this album on a hope, which consequently was dashed during the first song. no matter how hard i tried my brain kept yelling “this stuff really sucks, turn it off or i will make your finger turn to a country station.”

holland – the band is simple pop that just is not too inspiring. to bad though they have a fat guy in the band that would be a cross between me and adam taylor.

anyways,

i am really pumped about dashboard confessional’s new album coming out august 15th. he has a full band on this one and while they may turn off some fans, i am keen to the progress and/or change in directions a bit. keeps the stuff fresh.

as always, later

i swear internet explorer is the crappiest browser in the face of the planet, really! i am so fed up with this browser. i seriously want to shoot it in the face with a bazooka. when it killed netscape at version 4 i was a complete ie lover. it was a great platform for the developer. it pushed what you could do with a browser on the client-side. now it just plain sucks. oh sure it is full of features, yet 80% of them are non-standard. it is also extremely slow to boot. i was recently developing a web application for the company i work for and ie was just ticking me off. it only supports something like 40% of the CSS2 standard. come on, really! (note: if you need help microsoft, i hear mozilla is open source ) it is time for microsoft to start supporting standards all over. as you know i am the middle of the road guy and like a lot of stuff that microsoft does and stuff that other vendors do, like sun. i am a big .net and java (j2ee) fan. but just because microsoft has the market share on the web browser market they just decide not to support standards. news to microsoft, mozilla and safari are catching on. mobile devices will need to operate on standards. it is funny to me how microsoft fully supports and pushes the xml standard (a w3c standard like css and html) but not the other web standands like css and html. come on, most of the applications built today have some type of web component. it just irritates me so because i was such an ie fan. ie 4 and ie 5 supported what existed of the standard then pretty well. they have been surpassed by mozilla, which is my browser of choice. they are really trying to push some new stuff out there like their whole xml gui language. come on ie, get with it. i want to write my app once and it looks the same in any browser that supports standards, not just your standard. on my app, i was reduced to handle layouts with tables instead of divs and css positioning because ie either does not support it or gets it wrong. that just plain sucks!

anyway, i am done ranting. back to drinking by dragonwell green tea from mount hangzhou in china. this stuff is really good, although i have heard the sri lanka tea is the best.

hey mike, see if you can get that ie problem coded up today

later

so i am completely lazy. i should be expelled from the blogging space, but hey i have my own domain and server so, nah nah.

so today is the go live date for phase 1 of our transportation project and like all large projects something is wrong today that was working friday. for some reason emailing from the third-party application is not working, go figure. got to love these third-party vendors. the sad thing is, they barely know their own product so it should be interesting. lets just hope i do not have to be here really late tonight.

i am contemplating getting a motorcycle. the logical side of me says, “wow, thing of the money you will save on gas”. the fun side of me says, “you could really feel the wind in your hair, being that if you had any.” the impulse buyer in me says, “go ahead you wussy, do it, do it, DO IT YOU PANZY!”

so needless to say, i am really thinking about it. my brother just got one and they are just really cool. our youth minister got the bug and just bought one as well. my wife just gives me that look, yet she has not said no. i think she thinks i will be really sexy on bike. you know that whole bad boy image. and to think that would be the first time i have ever had sexy and my face in the same thought, hehe

anyway, back to the crisis, well for them at least. i have been in too many of these things by now to get worried.

later

ps. i’m back, so back off, hehe

i must say, i had a great 4th of july holiday. we partied, we went to the lake, we partied some more and then we crashed. it was an awesome time. read david’s blog on his perspective on the holiday. i believe i would have to agree with him. it was a great family time. i also realized that my son is a bit of a dare-devil. he is only 20 months old and already he will jump off the diving board to me in the water and slide down and 8 foot slide face first into the water. he is amazing. it is just amazing how much he grows in a months time. he really is transitioning from a baby into a little boy. there is nothing better on this earth than fatherhood. i would not trade it for anything. it truly gives my life purpose.

i will also try to blog more consistently. i need to definitely conquer my laziness.