 |
| A still from Trigun (1998), directed by Satoshi Nishimura |
First of all, now that autumn is upon us, it's beginning to rain almost every day again in Vancouver, and I'm beginning to miss the warm and sunny summer weather. The summer of this year and the summer of last year, however, had some surprisingly hot days. There were even a few days when I was losing so much water because of sweating due to the heat that I rarely had to go to the bathroom. I don't remember it being this hot even when I lived in Los Angeles, California. Still, I do miss the sunny summer days. Since there are a few things that I can write about, I'll be making a post at this time, though, yet again, I didn't think that I'd be making a post so soon after my last post. I already mentioned in an earlier post that I've been taking serrapeptase capsules (serratiopeptidase), but this medicine hasn't had the effect that I thought it would. My fatigue and my inability to think well most of the time are some of my most important health problems. I mean, I'm only a few decades old, but I feel like an old man most of the time, and this isn't anything new because I've been feeling like this since I was a teenager. When I began taking serrapeptase capsules every day, it seemed to me that they're the solution to some of my health problems because there was a noticeable beneficial effect right away. Thanks to these supplements, I began to have more energy and I began to think better. This happened in the first several days. But this superior state quickly subsided and hasn't returned, though I continued to take the capsules every day. The inscription on the bottle with the capsules, however, doesn't say anything about the capsules boosting a person's energy. It says that the capsules are for relieving pain and swelling. The bottle that I purchased has capsules with 90,000 SU. There are also capsules with 60,000 SU or 120,000 SU available. I bought empty clear capsules separately and then emptied half of every serrapeptase capsule into an empty capsule so that my daily dose would be about 45,000 SU. I did this because I didn't want the capsules to have a strong effect on me immediately. So, serrapeptase didn't turn out to be the miracle drug that I thought it is, though it still has its benefits. Fortunately, several months ago, I found out about another medicine. It's called ashwagandha (withania somnifera). My mother bought ashwagandha powder and recommended it to me. The inscription on the packet that she gave to me says that a teaspoon of ashwagandha powder should be consumed, but my mother proposed that I take only a fraction of that dose per day. After doing this for a few days, I didn't notice any beneficial changes to my state, but I still purchased a bottle with ashwagandha capsules on the internet for myself soon after that. I don't like to accept medicine or advice from my mother because she's an abusive and controlling (neurotypical) woman who knows almost nothing about my health problems. Still, she does have a large collection of herbs and medicine, and it's thanks to her that I found out about ashwagandha, though what actually helps me isn't the ashwagandha powder that she showed me but the ashwagandha capsules that I bought. Since I didn't think that ashwagandha is anything special, the bottle continued to sit on my table and I instead continued to consume serrapeptase capsules every day in the hope that they'll improve my state. After a few months had passed, and after I realized that the serrapeptase capsules aren't having the effect that I want, I decided to finally begin taking the ashwagandha capsules every day. The inscription on the bottle says that two capsules should be consumed every day, but I decided to take one capsule per day, at dinner time. And I continued to take my probiotics and serrapeptase capsules at breakfast time because they still have their own beneficial effects on me. The ashwagandha capsules improved my state immediately. They provided me with the energy that I thought serrapeptase capsules would continue to provide me with. I was actually kind of struck by how much better they make me feel. Thanks to the ashwagandha, I can think better and I have the energy that I need. Ashwagandha helps me to sleep better too. Since I have ADHD, I can have serious problems with sleeping normally. I already made a post in which I tried to remind myself about the importance of easing off in order to think more clearly so that I'd be able to act better in public. The ashwagandha capsules, however, allow me to do this effortlessly because they provide me with the energy that I sorely lack. The inscription on the bottle says that ashwagandha helps with resistance to stress and increased energy, and this is indeed the case. Moreover, ashwagandha doesn't lose its beneficial effect with prolonged use. So, ashwagandha is the closest thing so far to a miracle drug that I've discovered. I just regret the fact that I didn't begin taking these capsules right away and instead let the bottle sit unopened on my table for at least a few months. In addition, I continue to take my probiotics and serrapeptase because I think that they contribute to making me feel even better. Perhaps in the future I'll try taking serrapeptase capsules with more than 45,000 SU in order to find out of this will have a better effect on me, but ashwagandha supplements seem to be the best thing that I have at this time, though it's worth mentioning that what helps me is not the ashwagandha powder that my mother gave to me but the ashwagandha capsules that I bought myself. These capsules contain black pepper for increased absorption. The powder by itself has a considerably weaker effect. Well, the fact that I need special supplements and other medicine in order to feel better shows how hard it can be for an autistic person to function well in this neurotypical society that we live in. I found out that I have autism at the end of the summer of 2023. Since then, I've found out about some crucial things when it comes to my health. These findings are perhaps the most important findings that I've ever made. But autism isn't my only serious condition. I have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) too. Having just one of these conditions can be very detrimental for some people. But I have both of them. I'm not surprised that autistics are called sufferers because I know first-hand that having autism means having a life of frequent suffering. Neurotypicals just don't have to deal with the things that autistics have to deal with.
My health has been perhaps my top preoccupation in the last year, and I haven't been using the internet for much else. Using the internet has become a somewhat unpleasant activity for me. I already mentioned in an earlier post that a website like YouTube is something that I don't really like using anymore because it's now crammed with propaganda and with dumb, useless, and even offensive content. YouTube is now a website that I visit almost entirely only when I search for specific things. Monetization has made YouTube even worse than American television, in some ways. And the internet as a whole has become an obnoxious money-making establishment. Almost every website that I visit has tons of advertisements now. These ads slow down or even freeze my web browser whenever I visit a website. Good informative websites are disappearing or becoming harder to find. What is easily accessible is only what the establishment wants people to see. I must say that the American authorities have succeeded in putting the internet under tight control in the last decade or so thanks to companies like Google and thanks to restrictions and copyright claims. But using the internet for watching new television shows and films has become a lot more convenient. That's obvious. Cobra Kai (2018) and The Boys (2019) are the few new shows that I've been watching in the last several years, but I must admit that I haven't done a good job of keeping up with these television series. I still haven't seen season 5 of Cobra Kai and season 4 of The Boys. I've done a better job of keeping up with the shows that Marvel Studios has been releasing. I've taken a break from watching Dallas (1978) in the last year, though I've already reached season 9 of the show. I've been spending a lot more time recently on continuing to watch the Japanese tokusatsu shows that I have in my collection. I've already seen a good chunk of B-Fighter Kabuto, Juukou B-Fighter, Mobile Cop Jiban, Special Rescue Police Winspector, Seijuu Sentai Gingaman, Denji Sentai Megaranger, Kousoku Sentai Turboranger, Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan, Kamen Rider W, and Kagaku Sentai Dynaman. I'm so glad that there are people out there that create subtitles for these and other Japanese shows. These television series simply make me feel good when I watch them. I'm not surprised that there were many "otaku" in Japan in the 1980s and the 1990s because the excellent and original television series, anime, manga, and video games that were being made at that time are definitely worth collecting. In addition, I recently got hooked on watching Trigun (1998) and A Different World (1987). Trigun is an anime series that I've known about for a very long time, though I began watching it for the first time only recently. I found out about A Different World a few years ago thanks to an internet article. Having finished to read 'Mysteries of the Past' (1977) by Joseph J. Thorndike Jr. several months ago, I think that it's worth complimenting this book now. The book claims to probe enigmas in the company of the best experts who have ever examined the evidence, with the benefit of the soundest scientific thinking. There are many, many things in this book that I found to be interesting, and it features excellent photographs on almost every page. The following quotation is from the chapter 'What caused the collapse of the Maya?'. "The Maya, or at least the priestly and educated classes, were as profoundly intellectual in their approach to life as any people who ever lived. Their great genius was astronomy, their obsession was time. They devised a concept of universal time, and a method of keeping track of it, that is (so far as we understand it) as grandiose as any achievement in Western philosophy. They believed, as we do, that time had an infinite span: their calendar reached millions of years into the past, encompassing more than one creation. As astronomers they accurately calculated the length of the solar year (365.2420 days was their figure, as compared with our slightly more precise count of 365.2422), and in the sixth century A.D., at Copan, they recorded their correction for the 365-day year - a thousand years before Europe caught up to its calendrical inaccuracies and adopted the present Gregorian calendar with leap year. The Maya understood the movements of the moon, the sun, Venus, and possibly the other planets. Their mathematics included the concept of zero - a notion not adopted in Europe until the fifteenth century." And the following quotation is from the chapter 'How has climate affected history?'. "Shortly after 7 A.M. on June 30, 1908, early rising farmers, herdsmen, and trappers in the sparsely settled vastness of the central Siberia Plateau watched in awe as a cylindrical object, glowing with an intense bluish-white light and trailing a fiery tail, raced across a clear blue sky toward the northern horizon. At 7:17, over a desolate region of bogs and low, pine-covered hills traversed by the Stony Tunguska River, it disappeared; instantly, a "pillar of fire" leaped skyward, so high it was seen hundreds of miles away; the earth shuddered under the impact of a titanic explosion; the air was wracked by thunderous claps; and a superheated wind rushed outward, setting parts of the taiga on fire. At a trading post forty miles from the blast, a man sitting on the steps of his house saw the blinding flash and covered his eyes; he felt scorched, as if the shirt on his back were burning, and the next moment he was hurled from the steps by a shock wave and knocked unconscious. Four hundred miles to the south the ground heaved under the tracks of the recently completed Trans-Siberian Railway, threatening to derail an express. And above the Tunguska region a mass of black clouds, piling up to a height of twelve miles, dumped a shower of "black rain" on the countryside - dirt and debris sucked up by the explosion - while rumblings like heavy artillery fire reverberated throughout central Russia. Since seismographs and barographs everywhere had recorded the event, the entire world knew that something extraordinary had occurred in the Siberian wilderness. But what? Scientists conjectured that a giant meteorite must have fallen, exploding from the intense heat its impact generated. On hitting the ground, such a body would, theoretically, have blown out a huge crater like the one in Arizona, three-quarters of a mile square, left by a meteorite that fell fifty thousand years ago, but the Siberian "impact site" turned out to be a dismal swamp, with no trace of a meteorite to be seen. Nevertheless, for want of a better explanation, scientists continued to ascribe the cataclysm to a meteorite, and Leonid Kulik, a mineralogist who headed government-sponsored expeditions to the Tunguska in the early 1920s and again in 1938-39, searched for evidence to support this view. Although this search proved fruitless, Kulik uncovered a wealth of information about the blast. Near the swamp into which the meteorite had supposedly plummeted, scorched trees, stripped of branches, still stood, but around this weird "telegraph-pole" forest, except where intervening hills had shielded them, every tree within fifty miles had been blown flat, its trunk pointing away from the swamp. From this - and from his failure to find even a small impact crater - Kulik concluded that the meteorite had never reached the ground but had exploded two or three miles up in the air. During World War II Kulik was captured by the Germans and died a prisoner. The riddle he had worked to solve was forgotten. In August 1945, however, certain Russian scientists were abruptly reminded of it by the atom-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events which seemed uncannily familiar in both their manifestations (the fireball, the searing thermal current, the towering "mushroom" cloud) and their effects (the instantaneous and near-total destruction, the radiation burns on living flesh, the accelerated growth of new plant life, even the "telegraph-pole" appearance of scorched and branchless trees standing below the point at which an atom bomb was detonated). Could the Siberian blast have been atomic? In 1958 a Russian engineer-turned-writer, Aleksander Kazantsev, published a story-article pinning that disaster on Martians killed on their way to Earth by cosmic rays or meteorite bombardment; their ship, with no one at the controls, hurtles into our atmosphere at reduced speed and burns up from friction, triggering a chain reaction in its atomic fuel that sets off the explosion. Few informed readers by then still accepted the meteorite theory, and some, particularly younger men and women, found Kazantsev's hypothesis persuasive, but others rejected it in favor of an earlier alternate explanation, according to which the head of a comet had penetrated the atmosphere at such high velocity that the heat thus generated had caused the comet to blow up. (Skeptics pointed out, however, that a comet could hardly have approached Earth without being seen). In the end, we do not know what caused the cataclysm in Siberia. We may never know."
No comments:
Post a Comment