So, riddle me this, Batman…
(Wait a minute. That’s the wrong
superhero reference.
Let me start over again…)
Hi there. I’ve been trying
to wrap my head around this one,
maybe you can help me out.
Now, I don’t know a ton
about superhero mythology,
but Superman — he’s from
the planet Krypton, right?
And from what I’d infer,
Krypton would have a lot
of Kryptonite — Kryptonite comes from Krypton, right?
So if Superman is from Krypton,
why would Kryptonite
be his weakness?
I mean, that’s like saying
the planet Earth has Oxygen,
but humans have an adverse
reaction to it. I don’t get it.
Okay, okay, i’m sure Kryptonite
is the ore form of a radioactive
element from Superman’s home,
but really, if they’ll name
this bad-for-residents thing
a version of the panet’s name,
it really makes you wonder
why.
And when it comes to this planet,
Krypton is colorless, odorless, tasteless…
and our own air, the stuff we breathe,
even contains fractional amounts of Krypton.
And if on Superman’s home planet
it was the radioactive ore of an element,
I guess it makes sense that here on earth
Krypton is used for fluorescent lamps,
or even in high-powered gas lasers.
But the one thing I thought was cool
was that Krypton is also used
in small photograph flashes,
and in high-speed photography
(you know, for a brilliant white light
source – good for the photo minor
who even had the license place
“J PHOTO 1” for her first car)…
And if I so got into the brilliant
white light Krypton creates in flashes,
I also then thought it was excellent-cool
that the different colors in neon signs
are often all Krypton, too…
So whether or not Krypton
is where Superman came from,
all I can say is that
Krypton has a certain brilliance
right here on earth too.
My dad ran a construction company,
and after he built our house, he used concrete
from an extra job to build a swimming pool
in our back yard. My brother even got a diving
college scholarship, so I guess the pool
came in handy.
Every summer, after cleaning the pool,
filling it with water and adding the right amount
of Chlorine, my neighbor and best friend
would come ove and pay in the chemically clean
pool with me daily. We’d even play
“Bottom Bump”, where we’d hold our breaths
to save us from the Chlorine, and we’d hold hands
and start doing flips underwater together
until we’d end up injuring ourselves
and have to come up for air. Even as a toddler,
because I was just a child and I had this mortal fear
of falling backwards into the deep end,
my sister would have to re-teach me every year
how to back dive into the Chlorine pool.
But now that my dad lives in the retirement
community he started in Florida years ago,
I visit him when I have the time during
the cold Chicago winters, and sit by the pool
they built right across the street from his house.
The Chlorine in that pool actually smells good
when you want relief from the hundred degree heat,
even if the pool is almost eighty degrees itself.
But of course the Chlorine would smell good,
when Chlorine is even used in drinking water.
And it’s funny that we use Chlorine in pools
while Chlorine is mostly found a a Chloride ion
in salt, that it’s found in the earth as well as
in oceans, like the Dead Sea.
Chlorine ions are in the Dead Sea,
and Chlorinated pools can save us from the heat.
But too much Chlorine in the water
is a bad thing, and if you don’t know that
from sniffing the bottle of Chlorine
before it’s poured into a swimming pool,
then know that as a gas, this element
was even used as a weapon in World War Two.
The Germans even used these “Bertholite” bombs
(which smelled like pepper and pineapple, actually),
and Chlorine bombs were even used in the Iraq War
(though the physical force of the bomb
may have been more devastating than the gas).
Because yeah, Chlorine is bad for the
respiratory system, but that’s how we learned
that in the right amounts, Chlorine can kill
the bad-for-you bacteria and gross germs
living in your drinking water, and Chlorine can kill
what can grow into something much worse for you
while stewing in a stagnant swimming pool.
The media shoves it down your throat now:
how important it is to have Calcium,
especially women.
Make sure you don’t get osteoporosis
and take Calcium.
Drink an extra glass of milk each day.
It’s healthy.
And you know, I take my supplements
and have to take two Calcium pills daily
just so I can say I’ve ingested what
the USRDA says I should consume,
but I’m sure those pills barely get absorbed,
so I should at least eat more cheese
(since as an infant at six months I rejected milk,
and I can’t understand why it’s smart to drink
milk from another species as an adult,
when no other species would ever do the same).
But really, the more I think bout it,
the more I wonder:
adults didn’t suffer with osteoporosis
before the seventeen hundreds.
Was osteoporosis not discovered because
they didn’t know how to discover it,
or was it not discovered because no one had it?
And if it didn’t exist before,
what has changed in our society to make
osteoporosis (porous bones) a real concern
for so many people as they get older?
#
Just watched a documentary recently
that advocated a plant-based diet.
They even had a segment showing
the global promotion of meat consumption
so you could have enough protein in your diet.
And this documentary showed how China
had lived for millennia without excess
red meat or processed food in their lives.
And now with dietary modern “luxuries” in China,
alone with new record highs for heart attacks,
youth were interviewed on the streets of China
and asked why they needed to eat more meat.
They all said… for protein.
So it makes me wonder how vegetarians can do it,
or how vegans with a plant-based diet
can get enough Calcium into their bodies
to save them from bone decay and osteoporosis.
So as I looked into how to get Calcium,
I found that on earth it’s seldom alone,
but is chiefly found in sedimentary rocks,
and over the years us humans
have even used Calcium in construction
(makes sense, if we need Calcium so
we can have stronger bones).
Calcium carbonate is used in concrete
and mortar, lime and limestone,
and can even take part in glass manufacturing.
I mean, when researching, I found Calcium
is even used as a refracting agent
in the extracting of other elements,
like uranium, zirconium and thorium…
It’s a deoxidizer sometimes, it’s even
used as an alloy agent in the production of
aluminum, beryllium, copper, lead and magnesium.
Then again, Calcium arsenate is an insecticide.
Calcium carbonate can be used for acrylic torches.
Calcium chloride, in addition to it’s other uses,
can even provide body to car tires.
Calcium hydrochloride disinfects swimming pools.
Calcium phosphate is used in animal feed,
and Calcium is a food additive in vitamin pills.
Which brings me to Calcium in the body,
because ninety percent of all of our Calcium is in
our bones and teeth (which we wanna keep strong).
And some wonder if there’s a link between
too much Calcium (like twice the USRDA)
and testicular cancer, but hey, I’m just
worrying about getting enough Calcium
in my diet in the first place, you know,
to ensure I won’t get osteoporosis (much less
rickets, or difficulty with blood clotting).
And while researching this, I found
an additional place for getting Calcium:
egg shells. Yes, literally grinding them up
to add to your diet can give you lots of Calcium.
But when looking for ways Calcium is used,
here’s where the learning jackpot
paid off for me with food and health:
when making cheese, Calcium ions
influence the activity of rennin,
to actually make the milk coagulate.
So seeing this bonus application for Calcium
in this pizzatarian’s favorite food (cheese),
it then made me wonder if this “plant-based” diet
can actually provide enough Calcium…
And it really made me feel good to know
that although cow milk (i.e., drinking the
lactations from another species as an adult)
is an excellent source of Calcium,
soy milk and other vegetable milks
are fortified with enough Calcium
to make then a just-as-rich in Calcium
alternative to milk from an animal.
I know, I know, Calcium and it’s ions
are used in a ton of different things,
but I’m stuck on obsessing over my bones
right now.
And granted, Calcium carbonate (that stuff
that also aids in the creation of acrylic torches)
is the same form of Calcium in diet supplements,
and I do make a point to take them twice daily
with food, but… It made me smile to learn
that a doctor in a study found that as women
got older, if they took Calcium supplements,
they tended on average to gain
five pounds less than other women.
(Granted, that doctor even said he’d really be
“going out on a limb” to link weight loss
with Calcium supplements, but I’ll take whatever
I can get, or at least laugh at the coincidence.)
And hey, even though this relatively non-toxic
Calcium can be hazardous as Calcium metal
(found in cleaners), and taking too much
Calcium carbonate in antacids (like Tums)
can lead to serious health problem,
doctors have still found that enough Calcium
may seem to prevent some cancerous pollups…
So yeah, even though we’ve found a ton
of other uses for this element, I’m sticking with
possibly dairy (you know, for this pizzatarian) —
and definitely vegetable sources —
for getting this vital element into
my extended bones.
Just got a postcard from my dentist
telling me it’s time to schedule
another dental appointment.
I thought about the fluoride toothpaste
I just changed to, and then
I wondered about water fluoridation,
the government adds fluoride
to public water supplies, you know,
to reduce tooth decay and hopefully
prevent cavities. Hmmm,
how much water would I have to drink
so I wouldn’t have to go to the dentist
so regularly?
Wait a minute, I just read that
for the fluoride to work, it has to remain
in contact with the teeth, so fluoride ions
that are swallowed won’t help.
Maybe I should just gargle with water more.
But fluoride is just one of the ionic compounds
of Fluorine, and I thought it was funny
when I found out that the name
for the mineral fluorite is derived
from the Latin word “flow”,
because it was added to metals
to make them flow.
Kind of like water, I suppose,
which we now add flourine to.
But you know, it’s not just teeth
that Fluorine can help…
I mean check this out,
Because of the stability
of the carbon-fluorine bond,
many drugs are fluoridated
to stop their metabolism
and prolong their half-lives
(I always wondered how they made
time-release drugs work..)
And now over twenty percent
of commercial drugs use Fluorine.
I mean, scientists have even used
the radioactive isotope fluorine-18
when performing PET scans —
and it’s amazing that liquid fluorocarbons
can hold gas in solution,
and can even hold
more oxygen and carbon
that our own blood…
Wow, I didn’t realize
how useful Fluorine was
for helping humans out.
But the thing is,
Fluorine’s actually really toxic,
some isotopes are used for insecticides,
and Fluorine attacks the eyes,
lungs, liver and kidneys,
and Hydrofluoric acid
is a pretty nasty contact poison.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
have even been strictly regulated
through international agreements
for fear of our environment
and the depletion of the Ozone…
I mean, the U.S. Government
even has a slew of signs
for the dangers of this element:
It’s a toxic gas.
It’s corrosive.
It’s an inhalation hazard.
(wait a minute,
I thought it was so good for me,
how can it also be so bad?)
So too much of Flourine
in the right way
can be devastating for you,
and in other ways
it can help your bones
or help your medication.
Fascinating. I guess this is another way
we have learned to take
the bad with the good
(or is it that we have learned
to take the good out of the bad?).
Maybe I won’t start to gargle with water
because of the Fluorine,
and maybe I should just deal
with everyone’s inherent fear
of the dentist, and just go,
and come out of it
with cleaner teeth
for the next six months…
Went into Austria,
to the Gastein Curative Tunnel
where the ambient temperature
was close to one hundred degrees,
the humidity was almost eighty percent,
and the natural tunnel also contained
a shocking amount of radon in the air.
Now, I know the EPA reports
that radon exposure in the home
can lead to up to twenty thousand
lung cancer deaths per year.
And you know, I kind of
don’t want to get lung cancer.
But in the Gastein Curative Tunnel
in the “Hohe Tauern” mountains,
first explored to mine for gold,
they noticed the extreme heat and humidity.
But then they noticed that mine workers
with rheumatic problems
were getting better when there,
and they all had more energy.
After discoverig the Radon in the air,
they found that staying in the tunnel
for certain lengths of time
helped their ailments.
The Radon in the air helped
make their body heal itself faster.
I mean, people today still use this tunnel
for curing assorted ailments,
so I thought,
one visit won’t give me lung cancer,
maybe this is something I should try.
So I went to the Radhousberg tunnels,
wore a swimsuit and rested in the tunnel
for 45 minutes in silence with other attendants.
From breathing training,
I tried to take deep long breaths
as I lay in the tunnel
to get all the air I could
and soak in as much Radon as possible.
I saw someone opening and closing their hands
while they were laying in the Gastein Curative Tunnel;
it made me wonder if it would help my hands
from typing so much on the computer.
Yes, I was dripping wet
from the heat and the humidity,
and drank a ton of water,
but it was probably novel
to travel four thousand seven hundred miles,
to defy the EPA
and overload myself just once
with a radioactive element.
So I was at the Gem and Jewelry Show
with my girlfriend, and a man
I thought would ask me to marry him one day,
and my girlfriend stopped at a booth
amongst the rows and rows of vendors
and told me to look at a huge engagement ring.
Well, I didn’t want to look, I didn’t want
to get my hopes up, but seeing the brillance
of the awe-inspiring stones made me ask
for the price of one particular ring.
They told us it was three hundred seventy-five
dollars. And we were confused, this ring
should be at least two grand, but then we saw
that this was a booth of cubic zirconia jewelry.
How disappointing, we thought, we want
the real thing. But looking back, I had to admit
that the Zirconium was unmistakably breath-taking.
I don’t know if Zirconium is as short-lived
as that relationship with the man that went with me
to the Gem and Jewelry Show in Chicago
that I thought would ask me to marry him one day,
but if nothing else, at least some Zirconium
would have been a nice gesture…
Although the element Zirconium’s
most common oxide is zirconium dioxide
(also known as zirconia), used
as a common diamond substitute,
the metallic element Zirconium is a lustrous,
grayish-white, soft, ductile and malleable element.
Different from a diamond, I suppose,
but also different from the cubic zirconia isotope.
I just have to keep remembering
that cubic zirconium is not all Zirconium is used for:
it is used for not only in nuclear applications,
but also in Space and aeronautic industries.
Zirconium is used for cladding nuclear reactor fuels,
and materials from Zirconium metal and its oxide
is even used in space vehicle parts
for their resistance to heat.
A Zirconium isotope has been recently used
in positron emission tomography (PET) cameras…
So ductile or not, maybe Zirconium is pretty strong, and exactly at times
what I need.
