by ken winston caine

You may have seen the headlines.

JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, is promoting its publication of a meta analysis that concludes that use of antioxidant vitamins A, beta carotene and E, may send you to the grave sooner than otherwise..

It was a big analysis — comparing studies involving more than 232,000 people — and it makes big, troubling assumptions that should be challenged. But the media isn’t challenging it. Rather it’s gobbling up the suggestion that “Vitamins can kill you” just as enthusiastically as Linus Pauling gobbled Vitamin C. (He kept a handful in his jacket pocket and popped a couple every few minutes.)

A “meta analysis” is a study that mathematically cross-compares the results of multiple studies conducted by various researchers on various populations and under varying conditions. By its very nature, its conclusions can be suspect.

This one is no exception.

Some questions to ask in this case:

- Were the (more…)

by Ken Winston Caine

New Mexico is on track to enact the second simplest and shortest health-freedom, right-to-practice act for non-licensed providers in the United States.

Oklahoma has the shortest. It is contained in two sentences in that state’s medical practices act:

1. “It is the intent that this act shall apply only to allopathic and surgical practices and to exclude any other healing practices.” and

2. “Nothing in the Oklahoma Allopathic Medical and Surgical Licensure and Supervision Act shall prohibit services rendered by any person not licensed by the Board and practicing any nonallopathic healing practice.”

New Mexico’s proposed act is being shepherded by a small group calling themselves the New Mexico Complementary and Alternative Medicine Project and has been bankrolled primarily by The Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque.

Its bill proposing an amendment to the state’s Uniform Licensing Code cleared its last committee hurdle in the New Mexico Senate last night, being passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 5-2 vote to the full Senate for debate.

The language moving forward says simply:

“C. Nothing in the Uniform Licensing Act (more…)

By swapping one file at a time and testing, I discovered that my ’single.php’ file was corrupted.

It no longer is.

Other problems may exist that you can tell me about or that I will discover, but for now it seems like the site is working again, just like it is supposed to. And that is good.

I am going to go over the “corrupted” and the “new” versions of the single.php file, line by line, and see if I can figure out what went wrong where and why and when. If I am able to discover that, then I am less likely to create the same problem again. And if I do, I will know how to fix it right away.

– kwc

This site will be up and down beginning at about 5 p.m. (Mountain Time) Sunday, February 4.

Not sure how long I’ll be working on it.

Still (after almost a month) have not figured out what coding is fouled and causing the “comments” to disappear and the function not to work any more when you try to leave a comment. Am going to try some radical rebuilding.

While doing that (live) the site will look very weird at times, will be broken at times, will not come up at all at times.

If I can’t get the comments function working properly within about another 30 hours of troubleshooting and reworking, I am going to scrap the current site design altogether and go with a simple, out-of-the-box WordPress theme, lightly customized.

If you’re considering using WordPress for your site, stick with the simple, out of the box version.

Customize your header graphic so it looks nice. Customize your background colors.

Pick the options you want to display from the basic menu offered.

Don’t do a ton of extracurricular customizing…unless you are extremely wonky and will enjoy pretty much completely troubleshooting and reworking the coding in various files in your installation every few months. I speak from first-hand experience.

Here are reasons why it pays to stick with plain-jane vanilla: (more…)