CβL

I've started to move the cacti (still in their pots) to sit on the new garden bed, as I haven't really figured out how I'm going to lay it out yet. I'm now thinking I'll arrange them so that each plant is similar to its neighbours (so they change smoothly in appearance) and the slowest and shortest cacti are at the front (so they don't get their sun blocked by the quicker ones). I have selected about 5 seedlings that are going on the accelerated pathway to get big for the garden too - Peruvianus (BK08612.4, BK08612.9, EG Wild-collected), Psycho0 x Pachanoi, Beauty-big-golden-spine pachanoid from bit's open - but it's extremely hard to decide (maybe a second garden would help? ).

Woman sheds 45kg on energy drink diet By Alice Neville 4:00 AM Sunday May 24, 2009 Brooke Robertson once weighed 105kg. She is now slim, but has a weak heart. A young mum has told how she lost 45kg in eight months by drinking nothing but 10 to 14 cans of Red Bull a day. Brooke Robertson shrank from 105kg to 60kg during the drastic diet but said she ended up in hospital after a minor heart attack and has had ongoing health problems. "I know it doesn't sound too good, but I don't regret it because I got to a weight I was happy with," said the 23-year-old Auckland mother of one. Robertson put on weight while carrying son Keir, now four, but said she didn't make a conscious decision to go on a Red Bull diet. "I just started drinking it. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating - I was exhausted. "I just continued to drink it because it's an appetite suppressant and I noticed I was losing weight so stuck with it." A handful of dry Honey Puffs was usually her only solid sustenance during the 2006 diet - alongside 800-1120mg of caffeine and 275-385g of sugar a day from the 250ml cans of energy drinks. Robertson said she shook constantly but managed to keep her addiction secret from family and friends. "They didn't really know the extent of what was going on. They couldn't work out why I wasn't sleeping too well, but they put it down to the stresses of raising my son. I kept it secret but in the end they were quite concerned." Two weeks in hospital cured Robertson of her addiction. "I managed to wean myself off it by being in hospital for that long but I had severe withdrawals - sweating, nausea, shaking. It was an addiction. The doctors stated that." A Red Bull spokesman denied the drink was addictive and said there was "scientific evidence that caffeine is not addictive". He said it was available in 148 countries "because health authorities across the world have concluded that Red Bull is safe to consume". But Red Bull is banned in Norway, Denmark and Uruguay because of health fears. The full-strength drink was allowed into France only last year after the country lifted a 12-year ban, and then only because of pressure from the European Union. Until then a taurine-free version was sold. In 2008, researchers from the Royal Adelaide Hospital found just one can of Red Bull could increase the risk of heart attack or stroke. They found that within one hour of drinking it, people developed symptoms normally associated with cardiovascular disease. Earlier this year, 21-year-old student Chloe Leach died in an English nightclub after drinking about four cans of Red Bull and several vodka-based caffeine drinks. Doctors found the caffeine could have triggered a rare heart condition. Robertson now maintains her 60kg figure in a much healthier way - through exercise and a Weight Watchers diet. Three years after quitting the Red Bull diet, the cafe worker says she still suffers from the effects. She has a heart murmur, gets severe pain and cramping in her stomach and bowel and suffers anxiety attacks. Her doctors told her to stay off Red Bull and other caffeinated beverages, but Robertson admits she still drinks it occasionally. "I can have one and my heart starts and I get the shakes, so I try not to. It's the same with coffee." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10574199

Aesculus Indica! Pretty sure these are them, or another Aesculus. Thanks for your help paradox.

Does look a lot like an Aesculus - but I think a bit more like A. glabra (as the hilum [that's the name for the little white patch where it attaches to the plant?] seems way too huge on A. hippocastanum) A. glabra: Aesculus hippocastanum:

You been there? That place is epic. I'm fairly sure there was a few uncommon Acacias growing there too (I have photos of what are very likely Maidenii, or at least another long-phyllode species). I didn't know he had zebras though haha. I did know that he was so good at wallaby conservation that Australia asked for some them back. ;) If I can find out how to grow this nut, I'll grow it to get a better idea of what it is.

I thought this would be a lot easier than it's proving to be. :| Just to be clear, the wrinkly black outer layer is very hard, and feels comparable in hardness to the shell of a macadamia (I scratched the bottom with a knife to test). It's quite dense and solid (no rattling), and would weigh as much as two Macadamia nuts or so. It's about the size of an eyeball. I can take further photos if necessary. I've checked almost all the plants listed in that .pdf, and no black nuts appeared. Either I'm an egg - or this is a bit of a mystery nut indeed. Would be mint if it was a very rare plant growing, and no-one had IDed it correctly before (entirely possible).

A fair amount of searching looking for nuts, beeches, chestnut types, Macadamias (the tree looks like a Macadamia relative) turned up nothing. There is a superficially similar 'Black walnut', but it doesn't look the same in any way. I found this: http://www.doc.govt.nz/documents/getting-involved/students-and-teachers/field-trips-by-region/kawau-island-flora.pdf And am searching through the listed plants for information. It says Quercus Ilex is here - which looks extremely similar to the plant I took an ID photo of. But it doesn't have funny black nuts - just standard acorns. :/ : Quercus Ilex (Holly Oak)

Syner - you're a good dude (dudette?), and it would be a shame to lose you. Secondly, and most importantly - it's not black and white, if you don't want to be balls-deep in the forum, then you don't have to quit - many members only post once a month or so. Just a thought.

Can You Drink Hand Sanitizer? Drinking and Getting Drunk From Hand SanitizerBy Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., About.com Guide The main problem with drinking hand sanitizer is that, since it isn't meant to be ingested, it may contain highly toxic chemicals. Jeffrey Coolidge, Getty Images See More Abouthand sanitizer intoxicants ethyl alcohol toxic chemicals You may have heard about people drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk or get a buzz. Is it safe? What are the effects? Here are the answers! Drinking Hand SanitizerA typical 240 ml container of hand sanitizer gel contains comparable alcohol to 5 shots of hard liquor. It's hard to say when drinking hand sanitizer came into vogue, but reports of its use as an intoxicant with prison inmates started surfacing around 2009. Recent trends, mainly practiced by teens, include mixing hand sanitizer with Listerine to make a strong minty cocktail, mixing the gel with salt to separate the alcohol from the gel and distilling the alcohol from hand sanitizer. Drinking the resulting cocktail is called hand sanitrippin', getting a hand sanity fix, getting drunk on Mr. Clean's Tears or getting hand sanitized. Baha-fucking-hah!! Stupid kids. http://chemistry.about.com/od/toxicchemicals/a/Can-You-Drink-Hand-Sanitizer.htm

What I'm interested in - is how much sunshine the various Trichocereus groups can handle, or prefer. I'm about to start planting cacti in my painfully dug garden bed. I would prefer to have some form of logic as to where I plant my plants (even if I just have some logic so that I know I'm going against it). The main thing I could think of, was the level of sun that the various Trichocerei can tolerate - I think that knowing a bit more will help me plan the siting and density of the plants I have. The plants I have that are all contenders fall into: Bridgesii Peruvianus Pachanoi Terscheckii Candicans Taquimbalensis Scopulicola Werdermannius (probably others) So I would like to open to the floor for anecdotal evidence or experimental regarding which plants can stand a lot of sun, and which ones can't. And anything else regarding planting plants out, for that matter.

Here's an existing thread with some leads: http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9145&hl=%2Bhabitat+%2Bmap And here's what I was looking for: http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17228&hl=%2Bhabitat+%2Bmap#entry168234 MSS's holy grail of a descriptor of where the Trichocerei live - and I can cross-reference this map with climate data for the continent, to get an idea of tolerances of the species. Lastly, a further anecdotal piece of evidence - I notice in my seedling containers, roughly 1/40 seedlings are very light in color - they have always been a lighter shade, and seem to simply have less chlorophyll. I have a few mature plants that are the same way - just never seem able to darken to the same shade as the others. I wonder if someone better with genetics would know, whether this is just recessive genes, or a mutation - and if there's a likely cause - such as a thinner layer of chlorophyllous tissue, or less chloroplasts per cell, or smaller chloroplasts - or what the heck is going on. Is this the result of a mutation of larger/more numerous of one of the other organelles?

I noticed that my Taqs weren't loving it either - so thanks for that advice. I just assumed I had wrecked the soil where I have them planted next to the house, not in the bed (the other cacti liked the soil a lot more)

Here's a list of vascular plants in .pdf form: http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/publications/NZ%20Vascular%20Plant%20list%202006.pdf

Nemistys first link from nzpcn allows the option to download all native NZ plants as a .csv file (which in-case you didn't know, is fully excel-editable). Just select the 'Native' radio button and then 'Search', and the option to download as a .csv appears at the top of the page. This is probably a good list to start with. What the **** - the csv file seems to only have 1000 plants, while the search query returns 4900 (there are 52~ plants per page, and about 99 pages - so the 4944 results is accurate - they actually seem to give an .xls file, rather than .csv - and I cannot find the missing plants - maybe they messed up conversion of .csv to .xls or something, or maybe I'm a tired egghead)

Alright, regarding #2 1) Go to: http://www1.maf.govt.nz/cgi-bin/bioindex/bioindex.pl 2) Click 'Search' with nothing selected - a gigantic list of plants with their import statuses will be returned The second column will contain data relating to the classification of each plant, with the classifications being described in here: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/files/ihs/155-02-06.pdf Only nursery stock for the plant species listed in the Plants Biosecurity Index will be considered for entry into New Zealand. [http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/regs/imports/plants/nursery] As indicated by the Plants Biosecurity Index, certain genera and species require Special Conditions that are additional to the Basic Conditions. These are outlined in the Schedule of Special Conditions in Section 3.4 of the import health standard. I think this will give some measure of plants that are likely to already be in New Zealand or are allowed to be. Please let me know if this list is useful, and how you would like it processed - if it is. I'm still working on #1

Yeah, they're all in pots. I don't think there's enough time to try them in different arrangements, as I think they'll be happy anywhere in the garden (and won't get burned) - and permutations are a nightmare in practice ;P. But I would like to order them in some way. I'm thinking that the most spineless plants (Pachanoi, Scop) closest to the shade and arrange them from approximately least-spiny most-skinny to most-spiny most-fat, which I think is close to sun tolerance ability. There's no way my garden will test the limits of the plants, but I'd just like to know anyway - just as a start to laying them out. For example, I think that a Terscheckii can handle a lot more sun than a Pachanoi - but I have no evidence. Some evidence would be nice.

The benefits from a diet change on these tissues will take quite a while to be felt significantly, as the tissues are so slow growing. But to get it under control before you age - is a huge deal, as once you're old - even if you change your diet, your healing rate slows down, and it will not be sufficient to heal properly. Once you're past the age of about 40-60 (somewhere past there), your ability to create bone is heavily reduced, and it becomes more a case of stopping the bone you have from leaching away too quickly. I would wager it's similar with tendons and ligaments and cartilage. I know they did a study and found that the Achille's tendon basically cannot even heal from a young age: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130212112019.htm Something I only realized recently. The kind of realization that slaps you in the face for sticking to your assumptions. Basically I'd assumed that meditation was like "levels", and that until you'd finished a level - you couldn't go to the next. While I can't "prove" this is not the case, I can say that for me I realized it was not as helpful as having a few techniques, and practising them in rotation. So I might do breath-counting for a few days, then just plain breathing (imagining the words in and out), and then I might perform completely silent-thought meditation, where I'll focus solely on the tiny sensation of air flowing through my nose. It is like levels in that the order I've listed the techniques here seems to be the logical progression to encounter them - and in order of least to most difficult, but that's all. I pretty much stopped my daily meditation habit because I was doing way too much breath-counting (like for months), and it took away my enthusiasm for meditation. But now I realize I should've then focused more on the other techniques - there is no "you have levelled up to the next most difficult meditation technique" unambiguous sign.

What the heck! What good could an entire garden of Strams do for anyone? (other than nefarious schemes)

The garden bed... it's almost completed! I've never dug so much in my entire life. But I'm at the point where I can plant the plants! :D Just need to plan the layout, and plant!! :D

Your diet sounds quite low in omega-3s and other fatty acids, so things like flaxseed oil, and SallyD's other recommendations - are fairly pertinent. Something my brother alerted me to was that it's not enough by itself to consume enough omega-3 - the ratio of of omega-3 to omega-6 must be protected as well. I think the ratio was about 6:1 in optimal conditions (this is just from memory, could be entirely wrong - worth checking) - but this is certainly less of an issue than being deficient in omega-3. According to this list...: http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000140000000000000000.html Flaxseed oil is indeed the best. So I would start with taking a supplement of that , or even just grinding up your own flaxseeds with a coffee grinder or something and chugging them in water (they're nearly impossible to digest without grinding). Things like avocados and other oily fruit and vegetables are for the most part very desirable too. Increasing eggs (they have a lot of good cholesterol) perhaps too. Secondly, your protein intake sounds on the borderline. Do you feel that you take a while to heal from strenuous exercise? Like say if you went on a hiking trip all day long, or dug holes all day, or lifted weights - would you take longer than 2 days to more-or-less fully heal from those? This is a really wishy-washy question, but ideally it would gauge how well you're healing muscularly. This is basically a direct measure of whether or not your protein intake is sufficient. If your muscles heal relatively quickly, then you're more-or-less fine for protein (as long as the sum total of your vegetable proteins is complete, and not deficient in any aminos). But it's still highly worth experimenting with increased protein and over a week or so - seeing how you feel. Personally I know I feel substantially weaker without protein, and I can feel it (my diet is a bit erratic, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's horrid). I think as long as you eat enough green vegetables, and don't cook them in such a way to make them pale and then throw away the water - then you are fine for magnesium intake. Food triggers can be related to allergy, but there's other causes - one of which is that certain foods, such as grains - contain binding chemicals, such as phytin/phytic acid (from grains). Basically if you eat grains concomitantly (at the same time) as other mineral-rich foods, the phytic acid will bind to minerals in the food. And then your digestive tract may be unable to get those minerals back again. Eating a shitload of grains could very well be putting all those minerals you eat into an unavailable form. Relatedly, some forms of IBS are caused by carbohydrates - it is definitely worth reading up these links (would be an entirely new topic in itself to discuss) Lastly it sounds like your caffeine/nicotine/ethanol levels are perfect. So basically - I think you do indeed have a shot at getting some significant long-term pain relief from your diet. And just to be clear - everything I have written here is more or less intended as starting points for your own research and understanding.

Hi Anodyne, Can I please ask for what your diet is? The route I want to explore is whether or not you're deficient in certain lipids (omega-3 is a common deficiency) or low on complete protein, or have a lack of minerals. Secondly do you consume caffeine, or smoke cigarettes, or drink heavily (the former two are vasoconstrictors, and with prolonged usage will heavily slow healing in areas where the blood-flow is slow as shit - mostly through diffusion, such as joints) - the latter depletes your body of vitamins which can retard growth) ? I know you asked for meditation advice, but it would be nice to get a complete picture too.

Read the whole thread so I could say... Roses do not possess the genes for blue (so-called blue roses are actually purple-ish), so the only roses with blue in them are genetically-modified ones. Which I doubt, are allowed to enter our countries.

Hey Amz - that's absolutely not-nice to hear I have some advice for something you can do to improve this in the medium-long term (I'm just going to assume you don't know already - sorry if you do). It's called diaphragm-breathing, and it will help your body to draw stronger breaths. It's a must for good athletes and vocalists. I'm not very good at describing it, so I will cheat and will just link the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaphragmatic_breathing It will feel absolutely weird, and you won't like it for a long time. But you must trust that it will be good for you, and then it will. Secondly, your diaphragm muscles won't be well developed if you don't practice often, so you won't feel like you can do it for very long. So maybe try for a minute every day, and add on 10 seconds each day (at least), and soon you will have this alternative way of breathing that will give you confidence as well as physically letting you breathe better.

What's wrong with big words?

I don't know about Pine-o-clean (where did you get that idea? ;o ) but I have successfully used a combination of alcohol hand-wash (on the blade) and a dusting of sulfur to treat all my cuttings, and they have responded excellently. But if you're just treating puncture marks, I would apply a bit of sulfur dust if you're feeling anxious, but usually a healthy cacti will be able to take care of a few puncture wounds (as in, it's probably not necessary to treat them, just to let them dry out on their own, with adequate ventilation).