Yes, after 2 years, they’re still lay there.
Had lunch sat in our Tommy Bahamas chairs watching the gators and Herons fish. I’m sure they’re the same gators from two years ago, maybe they’re even Disney animatronics.
Tree walk at Myaka.
Back home for chowder, crab and fish tea from Captain Curts. Not cheap but pretty good and plenty of it. Time for wine and a rubbish Netflix film on Heaven.
Mrs Osprey waiting for dinner.
Lagoon at Oscar Shearer.
After lunch we’re off to Oscar Shearer State Park. Have a pleasant stroll around and just about manage to get a mile in. Sit on the lagoon beach to enjoy the sun. Note our backs to the water, let’s hope no gators decide to creep up on us.
Then it’s back home for afternoon tea and sat around the deck drinking and talking to a couple of very friendly retired nurses until sunset. Very interesting. Americans are so friendly, this would never happen in the UK.
Waiting at traffic lights in the USA.
It’s bad enough spending your whole waking life in America sat at traffic lights, people need to bring their nail cutters with them. But here they have something even more sole destroying, a draw bridge that then causes a 30 minute traffic delay. No doubt, for health and safety reasons, it’s raised every time a kayaker goes under to ensure he has at least 100 foot of clearance to avoid banging his head. All the delay because no one has ever sat down and thought about how to time the subsequent traffic lights to alleviate the delay. Not a skerrit of common sense, shear lunacy, someone should be shot for such blatant stupidity.
Off kayaking from our condo.
Go to Der Dutchman an Amish restaurant, serving traditional Amish food. A unique experience. Have a pleasant lunch with Nancy and Dennis discussing old times and putting this crazy, senseless world to rights. What always amazes me is how many things we and our friends agree upon yet the world is dominated by the crazies, the wokes, the libtards and the snowflakes. Perhaps it’s time for us oldies to stop being the silent majority and restore some common sense.
These free kayaks are a tad skittish.
Oh no, not yet another religion. That’s all the World needs. At least this one doesn’t seem to involve an Angel, mysterious revelations or death threats.
The Amish (/ˈɑːmɪʃ/; Pennsylvania German: Amisch; German: Amische) are a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian Anabaptist origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, Christian pacifism, and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor replace face-to-face conversations whenever possible, and a view to maintain self-sufficiency. The Amish value rural life, manual labor, humility, and Gelassenheit, all under the auspices of living what they interpret to be God’s word.
Amish church membership begins with adult baptism, usually between the ages of 16 and 23. Church districts have between 20 and 40 families, and worship services are held every other Sunday in a member’s home or barn. The rules of the church, the Ordnung, which differs to some extent between different districts, is reviewed twice a year by all members of the church. The Ordnung must be observed by every member and covers many aspects of day-to-day living, including prohibitions or limitations on the use of power-line electricity, telephones, and automobiles, as well as regulations on clothing. Generally, a heavy emphasis is placed on church and family relationships. The Amish typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education after grade eight. Most Amish do not buy commercial insurance or participate in Social Security. As present-day Anabaptists, Amish church members practice nonresistance and will not perform any type of military service.
Whilst the Amish may eschew power line electricity (AC) they don’t seem to have any issues with a (DC) battery on their electric tricycles. I wonder how they charge them? Perhaps they have to buy a new one when it goes flat!
Whole foods where they show the calories in their products but not the prices.
Turtle beach.
Then we take a drive down to Siesta village for a stroll around. Not really that much there to see.
Followed by a stroll along Turtle Beach. Get Wendy to sit in a kayak, on land, but I think thats as far as she’ll go.
Mind you don’t drown. Then along came a tsunami.
Decide to watch Question Time on BBC for the first time in ages. Interesting to see anti-vaxers try and argue with a professor of virology, frantically shuffling through their notes to regurgitate some obscure and ridiculous arguments against vaccination.
Start to watch the new series “The Responder” on BBC. What idiot decided to do what could be a good drama with broad Liverpool accents and no sub-titles. It’s just such a terriable, senseless waste.
John Hopkins hospital has done a major analysis on Covid Lockdowns. It comes to a surprising, counter intuitive conclusion, but we need to learn from this ready for future pandemics.
“Overall, our meta-analysis fails to confirm that lockdowns have had a large, significant effect on mortality rates. Studies examining the relationship between lockdown strictness find that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% compared to a COVID-19 policy based solely on recommendations. Shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs) were also ineffective. They only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.
While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.
They also find that – on average – voluntary behavioral changes are 10 times as important as mandatory behavioral changes in combating COVID-19.”
Lake Manatee, but despite the name no Manatees.
It’s a grey, overcast day but not cold. The Iguanas are safe in their trees.
We decide to drive over to Lake Manatee state paark for picnic lunch and womble around, given the stae of our backs. There’s not really much there, and not any wildlife, but at least it’s free and making good use of our state park pass.
Then it’s time for my punishment as I’m dragged into a Publix supermarket.
What is it with these aggressive, arrogant and impatient American drivers. Usually in white vans (they’re the same the World over), big trucks or SUV’s with giant tyres. Just a phallic symbol to make up for their shriveled dick and pea-sized brain. If they’re not an exhaust bandit trying to drive up your exhaust pipe they’re lane swap hogs. Try swapping lanes and what does the car behind in the lane you’ve signalled to go into do? They speed up, can’t bear the thought of someone being in front of them. And then they have the brass nerves to pip you. Perhaps the best solution is not to signal so that they have less time to speed up. Total dicks. So aggresive and yet when a pedestrian is around they’re like timid little mice freightened to death of that invisible 200 foot force field around the pedestrian.
Well for all you shrivelled dick, aggresive and impatient American drivers here’s two questions you might try answering:
1 What is safe stopping distance.
Answer:
Safe stopping distance is the time that it takes to bring a moving car to a complete stop. This includes
The time it takes you to react to the hazard (thinking distance), and
The time it takes for the brakes to stop the car (braking distance)
You can calculate it with this stopping distance formula:
Stopping distance = thinking distance + braking distance
2 What is the safe stoping distance at 70 MPH?
Yes, as you can see from the above chart it’s 315 FEET not 31.5 inches.
Thankfully I’m not allowed a gun or else I’d be helping stop pollution of the gene pool with these zounderkites and cockwombles.
Siesta Key beach along with all the private beach areas – disgusting – tripping up on trespassers will be prosecuted signs and rope barriers everywhere.
It’s overcast but at least it’s not cold. Decide on a walk up to the centre of Siesta Key, it’s about 1.7 miles. Have a stroll onto the beach as the sun comes out. Then go to have an afternoon drink and listen to some music, but Wendy can’t find anything she fancies to drink, so we don’t bother. Wendy catches the free shuttle back whilst I walk it. Need to try and get some exercise in to fix this back.
Afternoon tea on the deck but alas the suns hiding.
Another article for my scrap book of favourable coffee or wine studies.
Is coffee good for your gut? A new study shows the beneficial impact on gut bacteria.
Coffee is associated with brain and heart benefits, but new research shows it’s also great for your gut.
If you’re a coffee lover, you’ll be no stranger to the fact that a cup of Joe can get everything moving. But other than keeping things regular, there wasn’t a hugely well-known link between coffee and gut health.
That’s why a study by researchers at the nutrition app Zoe, headed up by Tim Spector from Kings College, decided to look at how coffee impacts digestion – and they found some interesting outcomes. Namely, coffee drinkers tended to have higher microbiome diversity than non-coffee drinkers. It was also dose-dependent, meaning the more coffee your drink, the more diverse your microbiome.
Why is coffee good for the gut?
According to Spector, who spoke about the research on his Instagram account, coffee drinkers were very likely to have a certain bacteria dubbed ‘Freddy’ in their gut. “[It is] one of the key 15 ‘good’ bugs that we’ve linked to healthier blood sugar and fat responses after eating,” he wrote. It’s also linked to improved insulin levels in the body.
The benefits also come from coffee’s polyphenols – micronutrients known for their antioxidant benefits – which “can help reduce the presence of harmful microbes, making room for ‘good’ bacteria and helping them flourish – rocket fuel for your microbes,” Spector adds.
Surprisingly, the benefits could also come from the fact that coffee contains fibre. The fibre in the coffee beans has been shown to pass into the drink, with 100ml of the drink containing between 0.46 and 0.75g of fibre.
It may sound like a small dose, but Spector writes that “if you’re drinking the US average of 3.2 cups a day this could add up to as much as 5g of fibre per day”. Given that most adults only eat 18g of the recommended 30g of fibre a day, according to the NHS, an extra 5g in your coffee could make a huge difference.
Another study also found that the fibre from coffee ferments to produce beneficial short-chain fatty acids and increases the quantity of some bacteria by up to 60% within 24 hours of drinking.
Spector points out that the research has found that some types of coffee have different health benefits, including:
Roast coffee is shown to have higher levels of polyphenols
Adding milk could make polyphenols in coffee less bio-available
All types of coffee have been shown to contain some fibre, but freeze-dried contains the most
The health benefits are also associated with decaf
Large scale studies into over 50,000 people found that drinking coffee of any kind – white, black, decaf or instant – decreases the risk of death, especially gut disease death
Ever wonder how biased news media are? Then consider this:
The Johns Hopkins study on Covid lockdown received no mention on any of the five liberal networks this week. According to Grabien transcripts, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC all ignored the anti-lockdown findings after having spent much of the pandemic shaming republican states with minimal restrictions and events deemed by critics as “superspreaders.”
It wasn’t just the networks avoiding the study. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, Axios, Politico among other outlets also turned a blind eye to the findings, according to search results.
How disgusting and biased is that, but what can you expect from a media that thrives on political bias and sensationalist reporting.
Venice beach.
Then we have a stroll around the usual grot and clothes shops in the nice downtown Venice. I think overall we prefer Venice to Siesta Key.
Back home for tea and start watching the new “Jack Reacher” series. It’s pretty good.
