Finally! Repeated results on the weight loss experiments!

I'm trying not to be too excited here, for I have been working on this weight loss project for over four years now. But I just got three days of repeated results (down 1 pound each day, punctuated by two days of not doing the most recent change and not seeing the weight go down on those days, while drinking the celery leaf-roasted banana leaf water for breakfast; eating a low carb lunch of broccoli/egg/my weight maintenance beverage; eating a carb-rich/fruit/vegetable/white rice/peanut/my weight maintenance beverage dinner, and doing gentle cardo exercise for 40-60 minutes twice a day) by changing up the juniper berry experiment that I make and consume between breakfast and lunch.

Here is how I prepared the juniper berries and used them:

1) Microwave 60 seconds in a plastic-covered mug a mix of a small amount of raw juniper berries/cream of tartar/ground clean white eggshell with a little onion powder to prevent clumping during storage/"beer salt" (for the silicon dioxide)/roasted banana leaf ash. 

2) As soon as the 60 seconds is over, remove from microwave, uncover, and stir with the silver handle of an old silver fork.

3) Press the juniper berries while still a little warmish into plain salted butter. When that is cooled, blend with distilled water to make a puree. 

Then I proceed with the steps outlined back on March 19, 2024 on my blog:

4) Use a mug to microwave for 60 seconds layered cocoa powder topped by dried onion power, some more powdered toasted banana/plantain leaf, and lastly red raspberry seed powder. Mix some of the juniper berry puree into it afterwards. Stir with a plastic stirrer.

5) Use another mug to microwave cocoa powder topped by dill weed for 60 seconds in a glass jar then stir in some freshly sliced Roma tomato with a plastic stirrer.

\6) Pour the contents of the first mug mug into the second mug, stir with plastic stirrer, and consume about half of it. Then put in some freshly sliced green cabbage and some soaking water from a cup with dry soybeans and distilled water left for a while (not sure yet how long to soak it for best results), and then consume the rest along with the cabbage and tomato pieces.

Can I tell you how much I am looking forward to reducing the complexity of the above process?!?! But it works. At last based on the past week. I'll keep you updated!

[Update 9/7/2024: I haven't been able to replicate whatever I did that worked. Very frustrating. As always, I'll keep plugging away at it....]

[Update: 9/14/2024: I might have replicated the weight loss experiment successfully now. The key seems to be to microwave the juniper berries in two different mugs (for one minute each) and then press the juniper berries afterward into the salted butter. Apparently the butter acts as a solvent that allows whatever is on/in the juniper berries to mix when I puree that all up with some distilled water.

For the first mug, I microwave one mug of around 10-20 raw juniper berries together with some dried parsley (putting cocoa powder on the bottom of the mug doesn't seem to interfere, but using magnesium sulfate or cream of tartar in the mug does eliminate effectiveness for weight loss) for 60 seconds. I cover it with a plastic lid during microwaving, and I don't stir it with anything metallic. 

For the second mug, I microwave uncovered for 60 seconds raw juniper berries (10-20), "beer salt" (it's a source of silicon dioxide), powdered eggshell mixed with powdered onion, and cream of tartar for 60 seconds in an uncovered mug. After the 60 seconds, I put two pieces of pieces of grayish-white granite into the mix and stir it all up in the mug for 2-3 minutes with a silver fork handle. (The granite pieces are small ones that I hammered off granite samples given to my by a granite counter business.) Then I take out the granite pieces and swirl in some roasted banana leaf ash (roasted with my toaster, which quickly reaches a higher heat than my oven) and microwave the mug for another 60 seconds. Then I stir the results in the mug with the silver fork handle again.(no granite pieces used this time). 

I press some of the juniper berries from each mug into a little salted butter placed on the blender blades (I use a small, inexpensive bullet-type blender). After a few minutes, I pour some distilled water into the cup part, assemble the blender, and make a puree in about 15 seconds.

Since I started doing this bifurcated procedure to prepare the juniper berries, I've moved down off a weight plateau. Yesterday was the first day I included cocoa powder in the first mug, and last night I noticed that my biceps seem more prominent and larger. I don't know what to think of that, but I like it!]

Cyberhygiene...an idea for which the time came when we were watching cat videos....

To be fair, cats can be very amusing to watch. :)

[Update 8/26/24: If you're wondering how your cellphone will "hear" you, read up on what is possible with the accelerometer, a sensor in nearly everyone's phones. See https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/42303 and https://www.directdefense.com/is-this-thing-on-privacy-and-your-smartphone-microphone/.]

Down to two homeschool students

Three of my children have now moved on from being homeschoolers. Two are in a charter school that offers dual enrollment college classes, and one is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That leaves just two sleeping in and learning at their leisure. We will pick up the pace next week when their part-time program begins, but for now, we're mostly learning about the 1600s in Europe.

The story of the King James Version of the Bible was covered yesterday. Did you know that there were many other competing non-Latin Bibles at the time? The King James Version won out.

As I look at the harm that can be done by mistranslating even one word* in a book of scripture, I'm amazed that Christianity has survived translation and recopying by scribes and scholars making errors and pushing their own agendas for 1500+ years now. (* Unfortunately, the Spanish-language Book of Mormon translates "wilderness" as "desierto" in many places. This is a questionable choice, for wildernesses can be quite green and full of plants and trees; a wilderness just has to be "wild" and uncultivated land. There are LDS people who debate where in the Americas the events of the Book of Mormon take place, and this mistranslation adds to the confusion.) 

And then there are the shifts in meanings that have occurred in the past 400 years. Many words can now mean the opposite of what they used to mean. "Literally" is a good example of that. I see one of my jobs as a home-educating mother is to teach my children that language changes and they need to know where our words came from. 

Besides history, religion, language arts, and foreign languages (Greek for one, Welsh for the other this year....sorry, Latin), we'll be learning some chemistry (I plan to focus the experiments on kitchen chemistry and cooking) and doing music lessons, exercising (video game dancing is a favorite), and art. I don't have a planned art curriculum for them. For art, I provide supplies and let them go to it. Sketching is a huge favorite. I love that so many of their peers sketch for fun these days and that they share their drawings with each other online and in person.

Decoding the "copybook headings"

The author Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about the "gods of the copybook headings." That clue led me to work on decoding the chapter headings/photo captions/FYI side paragraphs/etc. in scriptures (yes, the 1980s version of the Book of Mormon has encoded messages in its chapter headings...sigh...no wonder publishing has a reputation as a "cut throat" industry...they're full of unpleasantries) and science textbooks.

Here's the algorithm that I've been using with a lot of success on copybook headings to find references to nutritional (and other types of) secrets that have become less secret since the books were written:

1) Count the numbers of digits in each word.

2) Pair the digits to get a larger number (not addition...just stick them next to each other.

Example: "The slow, pink elephant" is "34, 48."

3) Divide the results by 12. Add the result and its remainder.

Example: "34, 48" becomes "2 remainder 10" and "4 remainder 0." That then becomes "12, 4."

4) Further add digits together for results that were larger than 12.

Example: No change needed to "12, 4."  ("13, 4" would have become "4, 4.")

5) Use the Hawaiian 12-letter alphabet (A,E,I,O,U,H,K,L,M,N,P,W) on the numbers.

Example: "12, 4" becomes "W O." (You might have to shift the decoding by +/- 1, 2, 3, 4, or even 5.

6) Use a "clock" cipher (A-N, B-O, C-P, D-Q, E-R, F-S, G-T, H-U, I-V, J-W, K-X, L-Y, M-Z) to change doubled letters. 

For example: "4, 4" becomes "O O," which then becomes "B."

Have fun looking for significant words and hidden references to people who the author knows! If using the Hawaiian alphabet doesn't work, feel free to try Greek, Tongan, etc. alphabets. Just be sure to change the number you divide by in step 3 to fit the alphabet. Also remember that frequently H=A, W=O, and V=U (I guess it's hard to have enough vowels otherwise).

Possible nutrition "Easter egg" in the musical Wicked...and it's not funny

I had the opportunity to see the musical Wicked recently. It has catchy music and a good moral about not being unkind to people over having different skin colors. The protagonist, Elphaba, has green skin; she is also kind, smart, and brave, but she ends up being labeled as "wicked" for standing up for the rights of talking animals. 

A few visuals and lines stood out to me in the musical. I'm going to share them together with some of my nutrition research/experiments and invite you to draw your own conclusions about what other message Wicked might have been used to convey under its cape:

* [Elphaba:] What? What are you all looking at? Oh—do I have something in my teeth? Alright, fine—we might as well get this over with: No, I’m not seasick; yes, I’ve always been green; no, I didn’t eat grass as a child…

(Act 1, Scene 2; emphasis added)

* [Fiyero:] What?

[Elphaba:] I wish I could be beautiful for you. [She is referring to her green skin, thinking that is makes her unattractive.]

[Fiyero:] Elphaba—

[Elphaba:] Don’t tell me that I am. You don’t have to lie to me.

[Fiyero:] It’s not lying, it’s looking at things another way. 

(Act 2, Scene 4)

* (The Scarecrow (Fiyero) walks on stage. He bends down and knocks on a trap door in the floor.)

[Fiyero:] It worked!

(He opens the door and Elphaba climbs out.)

[Elphaba:] Fiyero! I thought you'd never get here.

(She touches his straw face.)

[Fiyero:] Go ahead, touch, I don't mind. Ah, you did the best you could. You saved my life.

[Elphaba:] You're still beautiful.

[Fiyero:] You don't have to lie to me.

[Elphaba:] It's not lying... Its’ looking at things another way.

(Act 2, Scene 9; emphasis added)

* (GLINDA, resplendent and beautiful in her gown and tiara, descends from the sky on a mechanical device that spews soap bubbles as the CELEBRANTS point and cheer.)

(Act 1, Scene 1; emphasis added)

* [Galinda, singing the song "Popular":] DON’T BE OFFENDED BY MY FRANK ANALYSIS

THINK OF IT AS PERSONALITY DIALYSIS

(Act 1, Scene 7; emphasis added)

* [Dillamond (A professor who is a talking goat):] Class! Class! Miss Elphaba has a point. Doubtless you’ve noticed I am the sole Animal on the faculty. The Token Goat as it were. But it wasn’t always this way. My dear students, how I wish you could have known this place as it once was. When one could walk these halls and hear an Antelope explicating a sonnet, a Snow Leopard solving a equation, a Wildebeest waxing philosophic! Can you see, dear students, what is being lost? How our dear Oz is becoming less and less… well, colorful. Now, who can tell me what set this into motion?....Well, perhaps these question that I’ve prepared—

(As he turns his chalkboard around to pose the question, he sees that, across the board, someone has painted: “Animals should be seen and not heard.” DILLAMOND is shocked.)

[Dillamond:] Who is responsible for this? I’m waiting for an answer. Very well, that will be all for today. You heard me, class dismissed!

(Act 1, Scene 4; emphasis added)

What in the world could I have seen in those scenes that made me think of nutrition issues?! Something quite important, actually. In August of 2017, I posted this blog post--https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2017/08/oxidative-stress-pancreas-diabetes.html--about the catalase enzyme, which turns hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen with lots of visible bubbles, and how catalase in fresh produce and dried organ meat looks like it could be very important to helping protect against developing diabetes. Diabetes often leads to kidney issues and eventually dialysis, a problem that affects Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics disproportionately hard (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7935471/) .

After the blog post in 2017, I did a lot of experiments in my kitchen to see what was necessary to restore catalase enzyme activity after inactivating it with a highly-acidic environment like stomach acid. I found that adding baking soda and barley grass powder (a vivid green powder) were sufficient to restore catalase activity quite effectively. Baking soda (i.e., sodium bicarbonate) is an alkalizing molecule, similar to lye (i.e., sodium hydroxide) but not as strong. Barley grass powder contains many molecules; my current hypothesis is that the heme in the barley leaves is responsible for its part in reactivating catalase, for heme is an essential cofactor of catalase (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20506125/).

The desired combination of greenness and straw together, life-saving, eating green grass, ly-ing, bubbles, dialysis, persecution of minorities, silencing of those who have knowledge and are wild (i.e., untamed) animals...do you see where I'm going here? 

This very popular musical that people think is about standing up for minorities could be taunting everyone with an Easter egg about how to protect against diabetes and kidney issues. Could anyone be that sneaky? If so, why? If not, if I'm just overly suspicious, please, prove me wrong about catalase, hydrogen peroxide, and diabetes-caused kidney failure. Because I don't think the word "dialysis," with all the discomfort, vulnerability, and expense it involves, fits in a perky blond's song about helping a new friend become popular.

Rotavirus mutations that affect transcriptase activity (and a lesson on why you should carefully read an entire paper if you are going to rely on it)

Today I was looking at an article on the structure of the rotavirus. It has a roughly spherical structure like this:

Angel J, Franco MA, Greenberg HB. Rotavirus vaccines: recent developments and future considerations. Nat Rev Microbiol 2007;5(7):531; online at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17571094/

Rotavirus is most known for causing gastroenteritis in young children, but it can affect areas other than the gastrointestinal tract. A 2011 article from Japan reported the death of 2.5 year old girl who had rotavirus-caused gastroenteritis and also had rotavirus particles in her heart, brain, and liver. Her brain tissue showed evidence of the presence of the rotavirus VP6 protein. See Nakano ITaniguchi K, Ishibashi-Ueda H, Maeno Y, Yamamoto N, Yui A, Komoto S, Wakata Y, Matsubara T, Ozaki N. 2011. Sudden Death from Systemic Rotavirus Infection and Detection of Nonstructural Rotavirus Proteins . J Clin Microbiol 49; online at https://doi.org/10.1128/jcm.01303-11

VP6 forms part of the protein shell of rotavirus, as you can see in the interior of the rotavirus shell in the illustration above.

Researchers reported in a 2002 article that they created 13 different VP6 mutations to see what effects those mutations would have on the ability of VP6 to assemble correctly with the rotavirus VP2 protein, as well as on the ability of VP6 to restore the RNA transcriptase (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase) activity of the rotavirus VP1 protein. See Charpilienne A, Lepault J, Rey F, Cohen J. Identification of rotavirus VP6 residues located at the interface with VP2 that are essential for capsid assembly and transcriptase activity. Journal of Virology. 2002 Aug;76(15):7822-7831. DOI: 10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002; online at https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/136406.

In the discussion section, the authors stated, "An oversimplified summary of our data could indeed be stated as follows: VP6 single mutants assemble with VP2 but double mutants do not." They immediately afterwards note that one of their VP6 double mutants, one labeled "QAAL," does actually assemble like a VP6 single mutant:

"However, comparison of the QLAA, QALA, and QAAL mutants suggests that the last of these [i.e., QAAL] has the highest affinity for VP2, given that it was the only one of the three to give rise to a single band in CsCl density gradients (Table 1). This double mutant behaved effectively like the QLNL single mutant." https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002). 

But they neglected to name another VP6 double mutant that behaves like the QAAL mutant. Earlier in the paper, before the discussion section, they wrote: 

"Three VP6 single mutants (ELLL, QLNL, and QLLN), two VP6 double mutants (QANL and QAAL), and the D29A control mutant were able to assemble into particulate structures that could easily be visualized as a single band in CsCl density gradients at the same density as that of native VLP....Mutants in the first class, QLNL, QANL, QAAL, and the D29A control mutant, allowed a complete recovery of transcriptase activity when added in at least stoichiometric amounts....Most of the single (ELLL, QLNL, and QLLN) and two of the double (QAAL and QANL) mutants that have slightly more hydrophilic* residues than does the wild type at positions L65, L70, and/or L71 assembled well with VP2." https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002

* "The VP6 and VP2 layers interact through predominantly hydrophobic surfaces." https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.76.15.7822-7831.2002

Their own results clearly show that the VP6 double mutant labeled "QANL" assembled with VP2, but they omitted saying so in the discussion section of their article. This seems like a small error...after all, they looked at 13 VP6 mutants. However, the purpose of the paper is to correctly identify VP6 variations that affect rotavirus assembly and transcriptase activity.

I have learned that reading the short abstract or even the longer discussion part of a paper is not enough. There are important errors that even the authors miss and which you can only catch by looking at the data results.

Jeffrey R. Holland 1966 masters thesis title deserves scrutiny and appears to indicate a lack of faith in the religion he now has a high position in

On July 30, 2024, I posted about how some academics appear to have been declaring their innermost thoughts on some controversial subjects via relatively simple alphabet-based codes in their academic publication titles. See https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/07/some-ways-literate-people-covertly.html.

Because of some suspicion-raising interactions (including a handshake that was out of place, if you know what I mean) I personally have had with relatives of Jeffrey R. Holland, who is currently the President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I looked at Holland's academic publications. Holland's 1966 masters thesis at Brigham Young University was on the numerous (but almost all tiny) changes made in the Book of Mormon since it was first published in 1830. It was entitled "An Analysis of Selected Changes in Major Editions of the Book of Mormon - 1830-1920." (https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4800/)

Doing the doubles-cancel algorithm on the letters of that thesis title, I ended up with:

y g a j s t B k f m o 

To me, this looks like  "Y GA JST Bk f Mo." Perhaps I have been primed to see it by my culture, but to me that looks like "Why Gaea (i.e., the world)? Joseph Smith Translation Book of Mormon." 

A scholarly criticism of the Book of Mormon is that Joseph Smith included Isaiah and Malachi passages in the Book of Mormon without changes from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, but that later, when studying the Bible and making inspired changes/clarifications/additions to it (we call this effort of Smith's the "JST"), he changed passages in the JST that he had earlier included without change in the Book of Mormon. (For an example of this criticism, which is easy to find on the internet, see https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/joseph-smiths-interpretation-of-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon/).

While I personally do not struggle with this issue--the Book of Mormon teaches that God gives people revelations in their own languages, and the KJV version of the Bible was the only scriptural language that the young and relatively uneducated Joseph Smith knew before 1830--the issue is often presented in a faith-destroying way. 

Also, as I have become aware of the importance of many of the details in the Isaiah passages that are included in the Book of Mormon and the watering down and even destruction of God's revelations to his prophets carried out by unbelieving scribes (something that I think Jesus repeatedly tried to warn of, per his many critical mentions of scribes in the Four Gospels), I have come to appreciate God's wisdom in not initially giving Joseph Smith changed versions of those texts. We are meant to study and dig into those Isaiah and Malachi prophecies. The King James Version of the Bible contains many older words that have had their meanings shift over the last four centuries. The Book of Mormon tells us that the prophecies of Isaiah are great, we should study them, and that we will understand them as they are being fulfilled.

But back to Elder Holland's thesis title. The "1830-1920" tacked on to the end of the thesis title also appears to have significance. Using alphabetical order, 1 = A, 8 = H, 30 = D, 1 = A, 9 = I, 20 = T, which turns "1830-1920" into "AHD -AIT," which to me looks like "Add negative eight." When I do that, "ygajstbkfmo" becomes "q y s b k l t c x e g." I think that looks like it has the words "keys," "be," "Celtics" and "eg" in it. Keys are very important symbols in Masonry (https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/encyclopedia/key), and much has been made of Joseph Smith's real and alleged ties to Masonic groups. Much has also been made of Joseph Smith's supposed practice of folk magic (https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/cunning-and-disorderly-early-nineteenth-century-witch-trials-of-joseph-smith/), and his mother was of Scottish (i.e., Celtic) heritage (https://eom.byu.edu/index.php?title=Smith,_Joseph). Finally, "eg" can be a reference to quartersawing a log, which results in an "X" shape:

"X." as we know from the Jolly Roger pirate flag and treasure maps, refers to pirates (i.e., thieves) and their treasures. In fact, "yegg" is a little-known word for "robber."

Apparent references to Masons, Celts, and pirates/robbers in a possible decoded message in Holland's thesis certainly raise my eyebrows. Are they unintentional and coincidental? Perhaps. My interactions with his relatives cause me to lean to the "intentional" side, though. I think at the least they deserve investigation, especially if the "y g a j s t b k f m o" is a quiet declaration of his choice of "the world" over the issue of scholarly criticisms of the Book of Mormon. Holland has been in high church leadership positions for several decades now.

The Book of Mormon warns that throughout society (and it doesn't exempt the churches that have the Book of Mormon), there will be people who are in high ecclesiastical places who don't do the Lord's will, even as they point to the beautiful buildings and works they have done in the Lord's name. We are under no scriptural obligation to "look no further" when we stumble across suspicion-raising things. To the contrary, the Book of Mormon clearly says that we are supposed to learn how to judge righteously between that which is of God and that which isn't.

[Update 8/13/2024: I've been thinking about what technology would help people hide messages in article titles, and I think they're most likely passing around macros that show them various possibilities using the key words they need to include in the article title. However, passing around macros from unknown sources is an unwise thing to do. A macro might have deeper functionality that also encodes other messages at "higher levels." An academic using such a macro might easily look like they are involved in things they are not involved in.]

1828 dictionary entry for "Europe" given as "white face" in Aramaic

I was just visiting a sister who has a reprint of an 1828 American dictionary (https://www.amazon.com/American-Dictionary-English-Language-Facsimile/dp/091249803X, partially-available at https://archive.org/details/noah-websters-1828-dictionary-ellen-g-white-estate). I love looking through old dictionaries, so of course I thumbed through hers...repeatedly. 

To my surprise, this was the entry for "Europe":

The current dictionaries don't show a Hebrew/Aramaic etymology for Europe. Here's the entry from my enormous 1971 dictionary:

When I "Google" the etymology of Europe, I get a lot of supposition, references to Greek myths, etc. But the Aramaic word for face is "appa," and the Aramaic word for white is "howwar"--"howwar-appa" spoken quickly sounds pretty much like the same pronunciation for when most Europeans say the name of their landmass, i.e., Europa (English drops the vowel at the end of Europa). (See https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/15-640-215 ("white" = " and "χewwār") and https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/4-204-215 ("face" = "appa").)

Aramaic and Hebrew have been in use by Jewish scholars continuously throughout the last two millennia and more (see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1051040/jewish/Aramaic-the-Yiddish-of-the-Middle-East.htm). An Aramaic etymology for "Europa" makes sense, for the Aramaic languages is nearly three thousand years old and is thought to have originated in northern Mesopotamia.

Why did the writers of dictionaries and etymologies discard a logical, supported-by-the-evidence etymology for Europe from Aramaic words? And without any mention of why the elimination was made?