Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

One can suspect that to survive and prosper in a rapidly changing world it might be useful to understand the way complexity, conflict and change are manifest in one’s (personal) environment: Complex changes in (external) conditions may require a reconsideration of one’s current organisational and belief systems in order to discover which rules are still valid and which procedures need changing. In turn, it is perhaps important for us to understand the affect, on ourselves and our environment, of the modifications that we make to compensate for the changes made by others -or by the system itself.

“Cybernetics” has been defined as the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. However, there are many different ways of controlling something and a broader approach might be more advantageous: “The notion of a system may be seen as simply a more self-conscious and generic term for the dynamic interrelatedness of components” -Von Bertalanffy. This wider range of approaches and techniques might then offer a greater individual choice regarding the aesthetics of control -which can vary from externally imposed coersion to internally organised self-control. Presumably, the way the system is organised also affects the way (both internal and external) communication and control systems might operate. So understanding the system is probably an effective part of the process of gaining control - although perhaps, when we understand the system well enough, we may be able to work within the (existing) bounds of the system and have less desire (or need) to control it externally. Or maybe the way the system is defined would determine what is “internal” and what is “external”.

However, it is surely not easy to understand a complex and diverse system with many components operating on different and perhaps even conflicting principles.

In this context, a “General Theory of Everything” might be useful: Provided this was designed not to impose a preconceived structure upon the world -but to function as an “interface” which, without imposing hidden and unwarranted assumptions, could act as a language allowing us to compare and evaluate the diversity of organisation and process which surrounds us on both physical and mental levels.

Perhaps an important first step in constructing such a unifying system involves an understanding of the relationship between fundamental concepts such as Space, Time, Process and Language:

-If the computer is perceived in terms of Turing’s “universal simulation machine”, in the form of a self-modifying memory system, which in turn can be interpreted as a one-dimensional Einsteinian Time/Space machine -then this would seem to integrate the concepts of Time, Space and Process quite effectively. See “What is Space?” , “Some personal Remarks on Conceptual Space” and “Developing the Einstein/Turing Machine”.

-So how might “Language” then link both descriptive and computational processes? Could the concept of Model (implicit in the universal simulation machine) be the missing link which connects language to the processing of time and space? What is the a distinction between “interface” and “language”? Is the computer fundamentally a “linguistic” machine after all? Might “technology and “language” be linked -and not opposed, as so often appears to be assumed?

Presumably, understanding of the fundamentals of both the aesthetic and practical problems involved in the description, comprehension and control of systems generally would have many useful and creative implications for a wide range of culturally important subjects -including politics, economics, ethics, science and art.

What a disaster all my cooking attempts since yesterday. Lunch today I couldn’t even fry a chicken properly!

Maybe it’s time to stop for a while. Just to recover, besides the cause of all the trouble is not really my cooking skills but rather lack of proper cooking equipment (ever tried steaming with a rack on a wok half covered by a slow cooker lid supported by two wooden spoons?) and scrimping on cooking oil. Crazy!

Whatever, I do hope that I will find some time to actually do some work - some reading and writing … I need a break from all the domestic chores that never seem to end … We did manage to have the meeting today for the Websining CDROM but it is taking me ages to read a single book on programming or anything without interruption…

Our lecture at UP last Saturday turned out very well. It was very difficult getting up in the morning to be there before 9AM - in fact, Trevor and I practiced starting Monday by setting the alarm at 12, then 11, 10, 9, 8, and finally 7 AM.

Of course, Edward has written about the lecture and posted it on his blog already (with a photo of himself too!) Since I advertised his website at the end of my lecture, he was hoping that the students would be visiting his website and chatting him up about computer programming.

Which reminds me of my crochet. I am not quite sure whether or not my frilly skirt is finished. It’s already wearable but something still seems to be missing - in particular I am still deciding whether or not I should push on with the bead works. I have decided to make a lining for the skirt which makes putting beads and sequins over the openwork unnecessary … but for decorative purposes … Hmmm.

Anyway, at the mall last night we bumped into Coke and his handler again but this time at The Block. I learned that Coke is only 4 years old (but he looked so much older, poor old dog!) and used to work at a five-star hotel. I also learned that Coke had a horrible experience with his previous handler, apparently someone who resembled Trevor. Thus Coke often barks when he sees Trevor, but settles down quickly afterwards (so maybe someday Coke will get used to Trevor).

Lately, I’ve been doing a bit more cooking experiments. I succeeded in making puto using rice flour and muscovado sugar (instead of normal baking flour and white sugar). I wasn’t 100% satisfied with it but didn’t know what the problem really was. So I gave Noemi one and asked her opinion. She said that I need to put a bit more water in and steam it for only about 15 minutes. Ah, true, since the first batch I made was too fluffy (steamed too long) and the second batch was too tough (not enough water).

I have also been making some desserts/merienda with saba. Quite nice really. First was turon where I placed some muscovado sugar inside the turon with the banana, and the second was banana cooked in syrup where I also added some tiny sago. I like saba a great deal, a very versatile fruit. I also slice it and fry it as a side dish with rice fried with the beef-tomato sauce stew that Trevor makes (so it was a bit like that Arroz ala Cubana).

Last night I made some corn-peanut maja (a variation of the maja blanca) and some pinipig kalamay. Not bad but not perfect either, so I should do better next time and give my mom some. I also intend to make something called Squash Puto, a recipe I saw in a book called “Standardized Recipes using indigenous foods for School Nutrition Program.” It’s a book published by the Health and Nutrition Center of the Department of Education. The book came from my auntie who apparently has a friend serve as one of the consultants for the book. Quite a funny book though because it was just a compilation of recipes developed by the Center, accompanied by nutrition information and a photo of the dish. The photos were horribly unappetizing! And I can imagine how difficult it is to do food photography, and how much more difficult it is to photograph something called “Sopas de Buko con Dilis“!

Unfortunately, the book didn’t have any introduction at all as to why the research was conducted, what was meant by “indigenous foods” or what the relevant findings of the research were.

Anyway, back to the lecture, I’m so glad it all went well, particularly sharing the work with Trevor. Quite exhausting though - yes, how easily we get exhausted, perhaps because of very poor management of internal energy, getting too excited all the time … I personally still can’t work full-time, and easily have problems when traveling in Metro Manila (perhaps more like a psychic debilitation because of the traffic, pollution, noise and the general disorder)…

I intend to write to the cardiologist I consulted last year about my chest and left arm pains. I may have solved the problems. Since I stopped putting milk in my coffee I have not been experiencing the horrible pains. I have also stopped eating cheese and butter, and this has almost completely stopped the mild pains that I experience right in the middle of my chest. It is most probably that the pains were all due to lactose intolerance and/or allergy to dairy products.

So I don’t put milk in any of my cooking either. I use coconut milk instead.

Most Asians are lactose intolerant, and Trevor, who is British, has been drinking milk all his life. Funny, because in fact, lactose intolerance is normal (i.e. it is normal that mammals stop the ability to digest lactose after weaning since they don’t need milk anymore).

I remember in fifth grade a company producing liquid and powder soya milk came to the school to promote soya milk drinking. They gave everybody free soya milk drinks in tetra pak. I really loved it. So I felt rather sad when I saw the trash bins full of soya milk drinks. Most kids hated it … But plenty of kids like taho, which has caramelized sugar syrup. Now soya milk is so bloody expensive compared to cow’s milk which is really insane because soya beans are much more high-yielding than cows. Quite a pity we didn’t become more a soya milk drinking country … I gather the cow milk is from the American colonial period diet, and the US grows the most soya is the world but not for human consumption but rather as fodder for cows!

Saturday, my caregiver and her partner delivered a short lecture about ‘creative thinking’ for computer science students at university. Quite a fascinating day, a very nice conversation with one of the senior students there who, my caregiver’s partner said, was the very first time he had a good discussion with a “computologist” who understood what he was saying, and who, my caregiver said, was one of few people who could discuss complex ideas (with other people) with clarity and precision. I suppose that is what computer programming is about, too - abstraction, the naming of things and procedures so that relationships can be described and manipulated.

I personally had a nice time sitting in class, what my caregiver calls “saling-pusa.” Hmmm …

Anyway, because of my caregiver’s lecture about the dynamic relationships between organism, environment and language, I became interested in the use of rules in transcending the limits of seeing. I became interested in the idea of rules and the idea of creativity as often being seen as oppositional.

In fact, my caregiver showed some of Alwin’s drawings, and described how his drawings (or conceptual maps) of an automobile and of his travels to Batangas and Quezon were infinitely more creative than the drawings that he was being taught in school to make. My caregiver also showed one of Alwin’s drawings using “Context-Free” and described how Alwin preferred to play with “Context-Free” rather than with Adobe PhotoShop or MS Paint.

I was just wondering whether the use of such rule-based systems limited creativity more than the use of non-rule-based systems.

My caregiver brought this up when she talked about how their new young programmer friend talked about the difference between programming and painting using pastel and spirit (solvent) mediums. He described how programming was more limiting and pastel was more free.

But maybe this is only so not so much because one system is more rule-based than the other, but only because the mind is more “trained” in one medium than the other. And the more training one has, the more one tends to embed rules of limitation in a given problem. So it is not the rule that is the limiting condition but rather whether or not one has grasp of the language that establishes, removes and changes such rules.

My caregiver also talked about 3 ways of encouraging the growth of creative thinking: Identify and isolate the source and nature of the perceptual, socio-cultural and emotional conditions that shape and limit creativity; Create or simulate an experimental design environment where these conditions do not exist or intervene; and Establish a formal system (language) through which these conditions may be efficiently controlled.

Here, I noticed that my caregiver put quite a premium on language, which relates to the earlier idea of rules. In programming, a powerful language is one that is not only capable of instructing a computer to perform tasks (algorithms do that), but a language that is flexible enough in handling complexity and expansive enough to serve as a framework within which we can organize our ideas about processes.

Language has mechanisms for these. First is primitive expression for representing the simplest data and processes; second is means of combination for building compound data and processes from the simple ones; and third is means of abstraction for naming and manipulating data and processes as units.

Somehow, such mechanisms relate to mental acts, of which there are also three: combining simple ideas to form complex ones; organizing a series of simple and/or complex ideas to study the relationships (spaces) between them; and the formation of general ideas through the process of abstraction.

Simple. Complex. General.

Ah, some banana, sago and syrup (muscovado) for merienda. Perhaps will continue this later.

BURNS

Among the many accidents that occur in children, burns are the most frequent and frightening.

Among the common causes of burns are:

- Scalds from liquids which may be due to spillage from hot teas, coffee, soup or hot liquid on the stove.
- Burns from fire or heat which result from playing with matches which are irresistible attractions to children or when fire breaks out due to an adult’s carelessness or a child’s mischief.
- Electrical burns

Burns could be prevented through the following measures:

- Do not allow children to play near any source of fire. Teach children the danger of playing with fire.
- Keep matches away from children.
- Keep children away from the cooking area to make sure that pots and pans are beyond their reach.
- Take the necessary precautions when dealing with occupations that involve the use of fire.

Treatment:

First aid care of burns is meant to prevent shock and to control pain.

A quick estimate of the body surface is a guide for action:

– all of one leg - 18%
– all of one arm and head - 18%
– front of the truck - 18%
– back of the trucnk - 18%

A person with 25% of the body surface burned can develop “burn shock” and may die unless he receives immediate first aid. In “burn shock”, the liquid part of the blood goes to the burned area. There may not be enough blood volume to keep the brain, heart, and other organs functioning normally.

- Superficial burns

With superficial burns, the upper layer of the skin is burned with redness, swelling and pain but without formation of blisters. The skin is not broken. Place affected area immeidately in cold water or apply cold compress to relieve the pain. Do not apply pomade, cooking oil or coconut oil.

- Burns with blister formation

If a blister forms, do nto drain. If the blister bursts, take off adjoining skin and clean with soap and water. A suggested medicinal plant may then be applied.

It would be better to leave the burned area exposed to the air. Avoid contamination by insects and flies. Never smear or grease.

If the wound cannot be kept clean, cover the burned area with a clean pad or cloth with Vaseline. If there are signs of infection such as pus formation, foul smell, fever and swollen lymph nodes, consult a physician.

- Deep or extensive burns

If the burn is severe with gaping flesh or bones, or a big body surface is burned, call a physician immeidately or bring to the nearest hospital or clinic. While awaiting medical attention, follow the tips listed above. Wrap the burned area with a clean cloth or towel.

Comfort and reassure the patient because those suffering from severe burn can experience shock. Give aspirin to reduce pain and plenty of liquid to drink.

MEDICINAL PLANT FOR SUPERFICIAL BURNS

GUMAMELA flower buds, OREGANO leaves

Preparation:

Use only one of the plant materials listed. Express the juice from enough fresh plant material.

Direction for use:

Apply the juice on the affected parts. Do this 2 times a day. Maintain cleanliness during the entire procedure.

Plant material:

SABILA leaves

Preparation:

Cut off a fresh savila eaf. Extract or collect sufficient juice to cover the affected part. The remaining juice can be extracted when needed.

Direction for use:

Apply the juice on the affected parts. Wash of the sabila juice after 15 minutes.

Do this 2 times a day. Maintain cleanliness during the entire procedure.

SPRAINS

Sprains, particularly of the wrists and ankles, rank among the most common injuries that affect man. A sudden movement or fall will stretch or over-stretch a ligament so that it tears. Fluid or blood then gets into a joint and the area swells. Frequently it is difficult to determine if a particular joint is just sprained or fractured, so that an X-ray becomes a helpful diagnostic aid.

The primary mode of therapy of sprains and fractures are almost the same. Immobilize the affected area with a strap. Application of massage will have no beneficial effect but may only worsen the sprained ligament or fractured bone.

Treatment:

If one is sure that there is a fracture:

- Apply bandage to the affected area.
- To reduce the pain and swelling, elevate the affected limb.
- Cpply cold compress or an ice bag over the affected area on the first day or injury for some 15 minutes 3 times a day to relieve the swelling. Use one of the suggested medicinal plants on the succeeding days.
- Refrain from moving the affected limb too often.

MEDICINAL PLANTS FOR SPRAINS:

Leaves of TUBANG BAKOD, IKMO, MAYANA, LANTANA, KAKAWATI

Preparation:

Use only one of the plant materials listed. Heat enough fresh plant material over a small fire. Pound.

Direction for use:

Apply the pounded plant material while warm on the sprained joint. Change the plant material 2 times a day.

ARTHRITIS

Arthritis is a disease involving the joints that often affects the elderly. To date no effective cure is at hand but the following suggestions may alleviate the pain.

- Avoid heavy work and exercise. Rest painful joints.
- Place warm compress on the affected joints.
- Use the suggested medicinal plants. If the patient does not improve with herbal therapy, administer 2 aspirin tablets 4 to 6 times a day after meals or with milk. Aspirin should not be taken when a patient has peptic ulcer. If the patient complains of ringing in the ears or abdominal pains, reduce the dose of aspirin or consult a physician. Discontinue aspirin if stool becomes tarry (black).
- To keep the function of a joint or maintain its range of motion, light or simple exercise is necessary.

Seek medical advise for any of the following complaints associated with the joint pain:
- Fever
- Sore throat or difficulty in swallowing
- Sandy urine or urine with precipitates
- Red, warm and tender joints

MEDICINAL PLANTS FOR ARTHRITIS

Plant material:
LUYA rhizome, SILING LABUYO fruit, leaves of YERBA BUENA, SULASI, BALANOY, KABLING, LANTANA

Preparation:

Use only one of the plant materials listed. Heat enough fresh plant material over a small fire. Pound.

Direction for use:

Apply the pounded plant material while warm on the affected joint.