The primary purpose of this blog is to advise readers of significant updates to our Wisdom Tidbits website (temporarily mothballed, not available), as well as any important new postings on our other three related blogs, FluBits, DumBits, and AutBits.

So, this blog will mainly feature alerts regarding website updates as well as alerts to postings on our other blogs as they occur, so that you can check out this central blog at your leisure to more easily determine whats new within the vast realm of the WisBits website and our other blogs.

However, a secondary purpose of this blog, our main focal point for all of our resources, is to also provide a medium to present short news items here of important relevance that do not necessarily fit well within the scope of the main WisBits website or the other three blogs. Now, "fetch me my axe...".

Thursday, September 24, 2009

"New" Sun Crystals Sweetener

Since we touched on the subject of sweeteners on the WisBits website, we thought we should post about the "new" sweetener in town. Although we were unable to find the exact percentages of the ingredients in "Sun Crystals", the best we could manage to determine is that it consists largely of Stevia but also contains an indeterminate amount of "sugar cane" that we suspect to be a very low amount. Note that the sugar cane plant is what sugar comes from and that we did find references to sugar from the cane plant. Also, there are many references to replacing stevia with "erythritol", which is a sugar alcohol, which on the main product site it states that Sun Crystals does not contain sugar alcohols. This is all a little perplexing, but our guess at this early stage is that they are simply adding a very small amount of sugar to stevia to make it sweeter. Long story short, whereas regular stevia or Sun Crystals are safe as opposed to the artificial sweeteners (e.g. aspartame), we still feel that if you absolutely must sweeten something, go with raw uncooked honey.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Wicked-pedia Warning

Once upon time, back in the golden age of the Wikipedia website, we heralded this one time jewel as a middle of the road source of accurate information. However, over the course of the last year or so, we have observed a gradual change, almost like a "take-over" by what appeared to be becoming biased maintainers of the information. As in biased in favoring mainstream, conventional, conformist, big business, establishment misinformation. So much so, that we developed a tendency to ignore the site when it came up in search results, like it just was not reliable or even credible anymore. And today we listened to a report on National Public Radio regarding the Wicked-pedia downward spiral into disinformation. People were calling in to NPR that were actual Wikipedia contributors and complaining that their updates were being deleted if it did not conform and in some cases radically altered to reflect the aforementioned biases of big biz, big med, big pharma, like that, and to not reflect the original intent. We have to assert that the aforementioned "biggees" seem to be pouring their money into biased ghostwriters (the AMA recently admitted to doing just that for studies and reports and we feel they are doing the same thing across the world wide web). So, beware wicked-pedia, and as we have cautioned before, be wary of any other info you find on the web -- try to check out the authors and funding behind it, altho that can be impossible, in which case you just have to be skeptical and think about what it says and maybe the "why" of it all.

If you are stuck with using Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser

If for some reason you are stuck with using the Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer browser click on this link to an article which explains a new and better way of coping with the situation.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Back to the Deja Vous Future Once Again

We have gone back to migrating the original "Google Sites" version of Wisbits to an actual hosted website. Consequently, that intensely laborious effort is eating up most of our computer time and not much updating is going on in the interim... This is an incredibly slow process, as it takes HOURS to cleanup the horrendously over-obfuscated code that Google Sites auto-gen's for just ONE web page. In a couple of days at this we have managed to knock out only four pages, so it is going to be a few more days before we are ready to switch to the new website. This would be the opposite of Yogi Berra's quote "We're lost but were makin good time", or instead "We know where we're goin, but we're NOT makin good time".

When we complete the migration, we will notify of releasing the new site here on the blog and then will change the link accordingly. Meanwhile, check out the links to the websites that we listed a little further down the page on the right side. Or, click on this link to a trailer for the movie "The Age of Stupid".

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Noting an Important Update...

Some time ago, we added the topic "Dangers in the Shower", which reflected common sense knowledge acquired over time regarding precautions of showering your body with contaminated water. We have recently observed that scientific studies are now backing us up on this and even the media has been picking up on it lately. We have updated our topic accordingly regarding the new specifics and provide here a direct link to it. However, in case you do not take the time to go there and peruse it, we will concisely repeat here that the National Academy of Sciences cautions that you should let the shower water run for about thirty seconds before entering the shower to avoid the initial expulsion of the build up of mycobacteria from the showerhead. We also feel compelled to get your attention by noting here that the bacterium has the potential to cause a number of lung abnormalities such as hypersensitive pneumonitis, hot tub lung, lifeguards lung, and Lady Windermeres syndrome -- this of course is just one aspect of showering your skin, the largest body organ, with the abundant toxic impurities hiding in "treated" water.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Added new topic "Weight Control"

Although we have added the topic of "Weight Control" under the "Tips on Health" subject under the "Health" category, we confess that it is at this point very concisely stated and populated with only a few (but very significant) tips. We do intend to flesh this topic out as time allows, breaking it out into it's own subject... Here is a link to the "Tips on Health" page, the weight control topic should be at the very top unless some other team member adds something where they should not (just who is in control here?).

Breaking News on Monitoring the "News"

We noticed that Google has announced it's "Fast Flip" website news service, which is a new way of presenting a comprehensive pictorial-like overview of what is going on with just about everything. Here is a link to their new gig, enjoy... In retrospect, we should point out that what you see when you first land there is not the way it has to be, and that the format is quite flexible. Note that there are four main categories that cross the page horizontally, which can be moved left or right using the arrows at the left or right. Or, there are minimize buttons at the left of each of the four horizontal categories, and if you minimize all main categories and then click on a subcategory, that more of the articles for that subcategory will fill the page (note that if you do this, you have to use the browser's back button to return to the main page). And so on, play around with it and you will see that it is fairly flexible in what you can do with it. Some like it, some don't. For alternatives, see the subject "The best way to get news that you want only when you want it" under the Technical category on the Wisbits site (the second topic from the top).

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Shifting Sands and Little Sand Castles

Just an extraneous note to point out that altho we have not added anything of major importance lately, that we have been performing a lot of little additions across all categories which of course are too numerous to list here. However, we have added a new category titled "Illness and Disease" under which we have so far just migrated into it a lot of pre-existing related topics out of the "Health" category -- makes more sense than overloading the health category. Update: it has been indicated that we did manage a few updates (altho it is still actually in progress and nowhere near complete) to the CAM subject (Complementary and Alternative Medicine).

Friday, September 11, 2009

Added Antioxidant Category

Just to note the addition of the crucially important category of antioxidants. This new subject is still in it's initial stage, but since we have started off the "Master Antioxidant", also known (more pleasantly) as the "Mother of Antioxidants", likely it should be of interest to many, since most of us are in trouble and don't yet know it or know why... Here is a link if you want to go directly there...

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Added Thyroid Dysfunction

Just a note that we have added the subject of thyroid dysfunction (under the Health category), as in hypothyroidism or the converse, hyperthyroidism. Both of these conditions need to be understood, and must be avoided in the interest of health.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Added pH Balance Topic

Just a quick note to announce that we have added some information on the crucial subject of pH balance under the Health category. Get some pH test paper to check your pH to determine if you are in a dangerous state of health and don't even know it, or to discover that your health is not what it should be due to a pH imbalance...

Friday, September 4, 2009

Update to Metabolic Syndrome Info

Just a note that we have updated the Metabolic Syndrome topic with some important information if you might suspect problems with hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, or "syndrome x" (potential precursors to type 2 diabetes)...

Mad Fish Disease

It has been strongly suggested by one of our volunteer "critiquers" that we briefly note that we have updated the information on the topic of "Farmed Fish" in the Warnings section of the Nutrition category. So noted, FWIW...

Thursday, September 3, 2009

New Info on Unfiltered Coffees

We added a new tip to Nutrition Warnings on health issues with unfiltered coffee and feel that it is important enough to note it here on the blog, and thought that rather than link to it that we would just duplicate it all right here, as follows...

Since we have heard several times that there are "health issues" with unfiltered coffee, and since a friend recently stopped by with some home made French pressed coffee to impress us, we decided to finally check it out. The issues do appear to be widely recognized and even officially "documented" on some sites such as Intelihealth (altho we do not give a lot of credence to Intelihealth). Anyway, what we found is that French pressed coffee, or any pressed coffee such as expresso, or more specifically any coffee made without a paper filter (such as "boiled coffee", as in Turkish or Scandinavian with the grounds in the water) is purported to raise bad cholesterol levels. This is because without a filter the supposedly nefarious "diterpene" oils of cafestol and kahweol are not filtered out and go directly into the coffee, resulting in the stated negatives. Update: the contention that cafestrol and kahweol increase cholesterol is documented officially as correct by the National Institute of Health, which also noted that these oils are carcinogenic to some extent, as well as effective as a sunscreen! However, we are not yet verifying that coffee filters actually filter out these oils, but it appears that filtering does reduce them to "negligible amounts", and we assume that would depend upon the quality, thickness (we now use two filters at at time), and effectiveness of the filter(s). So, it might be OK to have an expresso once in a while, but it might be advisable to avoid making it a (bad) habit...

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The topic of tea, a work in progress, but...

We have managed to flesh out some information on the topic of tea (under the "botanicals" subject under the "nutrition" category, link below), and altho we had intended to wait for a while before noting it here on the blog, a friend that critiques WisBits for us has urged that the information is important enough that we should go ahead and "announce" that it is ready for human consumption even in a raw unfinished state (we get that a lot from our team of reviewers). So, we hereby do just that, and "pardon our dust", with the disclaimer that we feel that considerable refinement remains to make it less confusing and much more informative. To your health... Here is a direct link to the info on tea.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Under Cover of Daylight

Based on the lack of posts on this blog it might seem to you that we have not been doing much on WisBits, and we thought that we should point out that we have actually been pretty busy working on just about everything site-wide, mostly refining but also adding a few little things here and there that we did not feel were significant enough to merit noting them here. So, we have made minor updates just about everywhere and thought that we should point out that once in awhile it might be advisable to go back over everything in subjects of interest to you to see what might be new and also for the sake of "review" (a volunteer "critique-er" mentioned this, in the context that there is a lot of valuable information on WisBits to assimilate and remember). Also, as a further "excuse" for our seeming inactivity, we should note that we have been delving into considerable research to keep up to date on many "moving target" issues like H1N1 and flu vaccinations, as tons of conflicting information can roll in on any one subject daily. Footnote: actually, there was one new tip that we added entitled "Butter, margarine, and esterified oil conglomerations" at the bottom of the "Warnings" section in the "Foods" category that might be of interest if you think that those new age "healthy" margarines are going to magically fix any cholesterol problems.

Footnote: if you made a mental note that the title for this post would be a great title for a book, we confess that it is already the title of a book by James Hall.