Promised Land - the Anti-Fracking Film: Financed by Oil Rich Foreign Investors

Films can have political views -- fine. Films are often anti-business and especially anti-chemical industry & anti-oil industry. I am used to that.

What is so bad about the Matt Damon movie, Promised Land is that it is a blatant advocacy movie backed by OIL RICH FOREIGN INVESTORS. Foreign oil investors don't like America becoming energy independent, and are financing movies to fight it.

Check this out: Link

Outrageous.

How long does it take the moon to go around the earth?

In August there were two full moons. In September there was a full moon today, Sept 29. Since the moon goes around the earth in 28 days, why weren't there two full moons in September. The answer is that the number of days between full moons is 30, even though the moon orbits in 28 days. To understand this detail, takes some time.

Astrologers have known this for 6000 years, but I never understood how long it takes the moon to go around the sun.

I remembered from school that the moon goes around the sun in 28 days. It is actually 27.3 days, but close enough. On the other hand, the new moons are 30 (29.5) days apart. What is going on?

The time for the moon to go around the earth is called a sidereal month, and the time between new moons (or full moons) is called a synodic month.

Here is a good illustration from AstroGirlWest on YouTube. Notice that the earth's movement around the sun causes the relative position of the sun to change.

Paleo Diet

Got a look at a diet based on pre-civilization human diets. The big difference is no grain, no legumes, and no dairy, so it is an unusual diet. The study was published in 2009, and it was done by five guys at UC-San Francisco School of Medicine with Frassetto as first author.

Generally I am skeptical of "the past is better than today" diets. My knowledge of hunter gather culture is that people at a narrow variety that varied with the seasons. Frassetto's point was that some foods we have not evolved to eat. (This contradicted by the widely accepted notion that the ability to metabolize lactose post adolescence was a genetic adaptation to dairy farming.)

From Frassetto (1992) Euro J Clinical Nutrit. 1-9

As you might expect the people on the diet got healthier. Lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose.