Ian's Posterous

If there can be a show about nothing then why not a blog about nothing?

One Man's Trash...

Every year the Township of Woodbridge has garage sale weekends in April.  Residents are allowed, in fact encouraged, to have garage sales and no permits or anything else municipality related are required.  Garage sale weekend is followed by 'We Pick Up Any Crap You Couldn't Sell Garbage Day' a day or two after (I think the real name is Bulk Waste Pickup, but I like mine better).  For this particular week's trash collection they will pick up anything left out front. 

This past weekend was garage sale weekend where we live.  We didn't have anything to sell, but plenty of people around us did.  And there was quite a bit of foot traffic.  I guess people really do love a bargain.  To me, the most interesting part of this weekend is Sunday night.  After the sales are over, people can choose to leave their unsold 'goods' at the curb for the WPUACYCSGD later that week.  Sunday night is when the real bargain hunters come out - for most of the evening, people drive vans all over and stop and go through the leftovers.  And it's not uncommon for a lot of what is left to be taken. 

It even continues to Monday night.  Earlier today I brought out a rusty old metal file cabinet the previous owners of this house had left behind.  Around 9:00 I heard some noise outside and I just went out to walk the dog and sure enough, our cabinet was gone. 

 

Study finds beer is good for your bones: Light-colored ales most effective against osteoporosis

Study finds beer is good for your bones: Light-colored ales most effective against osteoporosis

BY Rosemary Black
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, February 9th 2010, 12:58 PM

Pale-colored malts may help strengthen your bones thanks to the silicon they contain, a new study found.
Paggy/Getty
Pale-colored malts may help strengthen your bones thanks to the silicon they contain, a new study found.

Could a brewsky a day keep osteoporosis away? Drinking beer may actually benefit your bones, according to a new analysis of 100 commercial varieties of suds.

Turns out beer’s not only a good source of dietary silicon, which is key for bone health, but the silicon levels vary depending on the type of beer and the malting process used to produce it. Researchers at the University of California, Davis performed their chemical analyses on beer’s ingredients and measured the silicon content of various brands.

Pale-colored malts may be the better choice if you want to strengthen your bones, since these had more silicon than the darker beers, like the chocolate, roasted barley and black malt. Non-alcoholic beers had the lowest silicon levels of any of the brews tested.

“Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon,” lead researcher Charles Bamforth told LiveScience.com. “Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element.”

A beer drinker could get 30 mg. of the nutrient from just two beers. There’s no official recommendation for daily silicon intake but, researchers say, most individuals in the U.S. get between 20 and 50 mgs. daily.

Bamforth and his colleague, Troy Casey, who are in the university’s Department of Food Science and Technology, wrote about their analysis in the February issue of the “Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.”

Some studies have reported that consuming more than a couple of alcoholic beverages a day could be detrimental to one’s health. So, as with everything else, moderation is key.

“Choose the beer you enjoy. Drink it in moderation,” Bamforth told LiveScience.com. “It is contributing silicon (and more) to your good health.”

via nydailynews.com