Pepper and herbs?

Everyone knows that mr. Salt can be bad for you. But what about it's table partner, mrs. Pepper? I thought i'd find out, as recently I've started putting it on everything from my sandwiches to my cereal.

Because of the absurdity of the range of views out there on the benefits of pepper, I thought I'd share some of them with you.


Website number 1 womenrepublic.co.uk
Ok, it's a 'womens republic' website, so it's bound to be a bit silly..
Its idea: Pepper in no way can be bad for you. Instead, it helps you absorb nutrients from all the lovely salads we eat.

Website number 2 uk.answers.yahoo.com
Yahoo answers - probably even less reliable than a womans republic website.
Its idea: We don't actually digest pepper. However it gives stomach bleeding and carries viruses and bacteria. Woo.

Website number 3 shirleys-wellness-cafe.com
Oh my.
Its idea: If you give pepper to someone that's dead, they come back to life, and want to be taken back from the hospital so they can mow their lawn. Of course.

Website number 4 ezinearticles.com
'Expert Authors Sharing..' supposedly.
Its idea:

Good points

• Helps people suffering from piles
• Makes you need to wee
• Breaks down the flab
• Sniffing it helps you stop smoking
• It's an anti-carcinogenic
  

Bad points

• It's a carcinogenic
• It makes you bleed
• It kills sperm and inteferes with the sex proces.

No contradictions at all there then.

So i guess the conclusion from all of that must be that really noone knows much about pepper. Although everyone needs to remember to carry some pepper on them, incase they see a dead person. Remember, pepper is always better than a defibrillator.

By the way, I don't really put pepper on my cereal.

Blogs, my analysis of the past, and Qubox

In some respects I've always avoided the blog scene, I've never understood it. I guess the big realisation is that you don't really have to.

Blogs to me in the past always appeared a waste of time, for the self-loving or perhaps 'mentally unstable' among us. Droves and droves of people trying to tell the world through play of words that they're bored. Insatiably so. Well... I didn't really want to know.

Turns out not all blogs are the same.

I've had an odd summer, spreading my time between my home town (Darlington) and my alma mater (Manchester), amalgamated with other destinations so that I could spend time with friends, family, and the love of my life, Rachel.













It's during this time, when my main income has had to come from agency work, that I've had a rediculous amount of free time.

And that, has led me to some interesting web content.

lifehack.org started me off really, with this post i swiftly found after coming to the decision that my free time could be put into better practice.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/20-productive-ways-to-use-your-free-time.html

That has in turn introduced me to zenhabits.net, with articles such as this post which immediately link elsewhere....
http://zenhabits.net/2007/08/strategies-for-time-wasters-and-information-overload/

And the number of people that 'tune in' to these blogs, to use a primitive radio term, and are actually at the same 'wavelength' with the authors, really astonishes me.

It's then that it hits you, just how powerful blogs can be. The only problem is, how do you filter through all of these blogs, and make use of this power? There doesn't seem to be an easy solution... How do you find what's best for you without hours of trawling the blogosphere?

Qubox.com is one solution to this problem which is currently in it's infancy. The idea behind it is to sort the architects of the blogosphere themselves, the writers of the blogs, to give you matches to them based on similar thought patterns.

Why not give it a go? At the moment it needs a push to get going, a user community to help it off its feet.
http://www.qubox.com/

And if you like the idea, why don't you see if you think like me?
http://www.qubox.com/doyouthinklike/JamieThompson/about/ChangingBritain
http://www.qubox.com/doyouthinklike/JamieThompson/about/Music
http://www.qubox.com/doyouthinklike/JamieThompson/about/Love

Epiphany

It's only just...

this moment just passed...

that I realise the power of blogs.