Author Archives: Mark Schauss

About Mark Schauss

History was always a passion for me since I was a little kid. Even majored in it in college. Loved my Russian history professor, the late Dr. Paul Avrich who inspired this podcast. Also to my mother Alla who kept the Russian side of me going. Wish I had listened to her to learn Russian when I was younger.

Beer Can Chicken

Since one of my pastimes is cooking, I’m going to post a few of my favorite recipes on my blog from time to time. One of the simplest and best ways to cook chicken is known as beer-can chicken. Since discovering this versatile method of either grilling or baking chicken, it is the method my friends and family most look forward to.

Steven Raichlen has a great book on the subject with tons of different ways of using this method of cooking. It’s aptly called “Beer-Can Chicken” and to get a copy, just click on the link below and buy one for yourself from Amazon and while you’re at it, pick up a few extras as gifts (and hope you get invited to your friends house when they try out a recipe or two).

My favorite version doesn’t use regular beer but the other variety, Root Beer. Since my oldest one is sensitive to citrus, I stuff the chicken with apples and onions before hoisting it on top of the can of root beer.

There are other “beer can stands” that lets you set the chicken on a stainless steel contraption that serves the same purpose as the can with better stability for around $20 or so.

Try this method and you’ll never cook chicken (or any other bird) the same way again.

Beer-Can Chicken: And 74 Other Offbeat Recipes for the Grill

More to Thimerasol than Neurotoxicity?

In a study published in the July 2006 issue of the prestigious Environmental Health Perspectives, Goth et al, linked thimerasol found in vaccines to alterations is the was dendric cells respond to biochemical signals. Dendric cells are the bodies signal men telling T cells to attack infectious invaders.  Unfortunately, thimerasol may interfere with these cells ability to read the invaders signals correctly. They go on to claim that concentrations of 200 ppb (parts per billion) of thimerasol can kill immature dendric cells which can set a child off into the world with an impaired immune system.

Let’s end the controversy today and have a worldwide ban on the continued use of thimerasol.

Quick news

Most physicians typically give people with pneumonia a seven to 10 day regime of antibiotics.  Recent research published in the British Medical Journal (June 10th) suggests that a three day treatment regimen may be just as effective.

One of the greatest mysteries in earth’s history was the mass extinction known as the Permian-Triassic extinction 251 million years ago. There has been a lot of speculation but it seems that a 300-mile crater found under the Antarctic ice may be the evidence scientists have been looking for. Five times larger than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, this meteor was the granddaddy of them all.

According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 13th, 2006, mammalian hearts may contain stem cells.  This may lead to a new generation of treatment for victims of coronary heart disease if we can get rid of the present administration in the White House whose misguided veto of federally funding stem cell research will set back research by 5-10 years.

Thyroid Issues and Iodine – Too much of a good thing?

In the June 29th, 2006 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from China followed three groups of people with differing intakes and excretion levels of iodine. What they found was startling.  People with excessive and more than adequate intakes of iodine had a higher incidence of subclinical hypothyroidism than did those with low intakes. The upper groups also had a higher incidence of auto-immune thyroiditis as well. The group with mildly deficient iodine intake seemed to do best.

A couple of comments here.  First off, as is typical with medical research, only one item was looked at and that was the relationship between iodine and thyroid function which is myopic and counter to the complexity of human biochemistry.  Did they look at the interactions with protein intake, especially tyrosine competency?  Did they look into the availability of selenium in the diet?  Of course not. Instead they made a sweeping statement that excessive iodine can cause hypothyroidism and even hinted that too much iodine can cause thyroid cancer. This then is taken by the media to be gospel and public health officials will make decisions based on incomplete science.

If the concept of metabonomics is utilized as it should be, then personalized judgements of the need for iodine would be on a biochemically individualized basis instead of population based guesswork. Medicine needs to catch up to science before more damage to the public’s health is done.

What is important about this study is that blanket statements that everyone needs iodine is potentially dangerous as you may induce hypothyroidism instead of preventing it.  Back to biochemical individuality if you ask me.

Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers – More bad news

PDBE’s are commonly used flame-retardants found in everything from electronics, automobiles and furniture. There are 3 main forms in use today, deca-, penta-, and octa-BDE’s each with drawbacks and potential toxic side-effects. Research has suggested that the deca-BDE was the least toxic as the other two have been implicated in fetal development disruption although the EPA considers deca-BDE a possible human carcinogen.

In a study that will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers have found that certain forms of bacteria like Sulfurospirillum multivoranscan convert deca-BDE into a seven- or eight-bromine form which then imparts a greater toxicity to the chemical. Also, other bacteria can convert the newly formed chemical down even further which can make them even more toxic. Considering that PDE’s are ubiquitous in the environment, this is very disturbing news.

Transgender Fish?

Trenbolone acetate, a synthetic anabolic steroid used in the cattle industry to “beef-up” livestock is being found in numerous streams.  The chemical when broken down is a testosterone like substance that is making female fish develop masculine-like traits.

What disturbs me is how these fish might be getting on to the dinner table of our children and into the blood stream of unborn fetuses. Folks, if you eat beef, eat organic and force the meat producers to give us real food not adulterated with fake hormones.

Diabetes – Two New Studies

One of the arguments against the use of glucosamine was that it caused, or at least contributed towards the development of type 2 diabetes.  While many of us in the supplement field thought this was a bogus claim, it wasn’t until the recent American Diabetes Association meeting in Washington, D.C. (June 9-13, 2003) that researchers put that to bed. Rajaram J. Karne led a team that showed that taking high dose glucosamine “…doesn’t make any measurable difference on insulin’s action.”  So the next time your physician warns you about taking glucosamine, thell him to take 2 sugar pills and call you in the morning.

An unexpected finding also presented at the meeting was that people taking antidepressants are at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.  People on antidepressant medications had 3 times the risk of developing diabetes than others.  Another reason to try other means of relieving depression than taking drugs.  Your body will thank you.

The Reason We Celebrate Independence Day (It isn’t for the fireworks)

Declaration of Independence
(Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776)

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INTRODUCTION

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

PREAMBLE

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

INDICTMENT

–Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totaly unworth the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

DENUNCIATION

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

CONCLUSION

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Asbestos – Lupus and Arthritis Link Found

In an upcoming issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers from the University of Montana will publish an article looking into the residents of Libby, Montana and how miners there who helped bring up vermiculate which was contaminated with asbestos have twice the risk of developing lupus and three times the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis if they were over the age of 65. This suggests that it is long term exposure which increases the risk of developing these diseases as miners under 65 had no difference than the general population did.

In a related research investigation done by the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. there was evidence that asbestos causes an increased risk of developing laryngeal cancer. All in all, more bad news about this dangerous and toxic mineral.

Allergies and Cleanliness – Too much of a good thing?

In a paper published online in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology researchers have shown that the concept of excessive cleanliness may hurt a child’s immune system and set them up for a lifetime of allergies. The study was on 58 wild rats and 10 wild mice versus 45 lab rats and 20 lab mice. They determined that the animals that lived in the wild had much higher levels of immunoglobulin-E than did the animals bred in captivity in clean conditions.

While this study alone does not prove that cleanliness is the cause, it is just another in a series of confirmatory research papers that suggest that trying to disinfect everything may not be beneficial for kids health. But then again ask any kid what they’d rather do, clean their room or play in the mud?