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Health and exercise fight this to a large degree. Both physical and mental exercise. This is much like people saying their bodies get weaker as they age. Not me. I am 46 years old and I am as strong or stronger than I have ever been. Every day I push both my body and my mind to work hard. Then I rest both of them. I also eat right and all of that good stuff. It really does make a difference. If you want strong muscles you work out. If you want a strong brain, work it. This is part of why I chose what I do. I farm. It is very mentally and physically invigorating. I'm outdoors much of the day. There are always new challenges. I also program, write, draw, take photos and do other interesting things. Don't get in a rut.
Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/
http://hollygraphicart.com/
http://nonais.org/

I am extremely good at math and sciences. People are a bit more of a mystery. I used my skills to develop a number of inventions (some of which you may well use). I also farm, raising pastured pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and geese. It's a great life and my skills at math & science come in very handy giving me a deep understanding of things on the farm including mechanical, biological, chemistry, physics, statistics, etc. I love it. Our kids got my math and science skills plus my wife's people skills. What a deal. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

When we bought our farm in the early '90s there was no phone. We face wrong for satellite and there are mountains in the way. Cellular connections aren't an option either. The first winter here I laid a mile and a half of twelve pair UG cable inside 1" diameter black plastic water line on the surface of the ground from the last pole (POTS NID) to my house. That has worked fine for sixteen years. I laid twelve pairs because when DSL or ISDN became available I wanted to have the capacity. We now have DSL (aDSL for those who care) although we are far beyond the official range of the circuit. The reality is it works much further than they say and we get excellent speed. So, if you can lay your own cable over the necessary distance you may well be able to get broadband.

Another alternative is to install your own WiFi system with a long distance extender from the nearest NID where DSL is available. A pair of devices like http://cellamericas.com/ASU24005g-802.11g-wifi-access-point-wifi-repeater-wifi-bridge-outdoor-wifi-pr-16309.html may do the trick for you. This is probably what I'm going to replace my cable with because we get a lot of lightning here due to the copper vein in the mountains and over the decades the EMPs have blasted many of our wire pairs. I've found the EMPs don't harm the WiFi.

You're confusing two different programs. COOL is the Country of Origin Labeling and that is a good program. It would be good to know that food is coming in to our country from other countries. Remember all the recent fiascos with toxic Chinese toothpaste, fish and other items. NAIS is the National Animal Identification System which would make it so that if you do not register your home, tag your individual animals and report to the government all their movements and interactions then you would be fined and could lose your right to own and raise livestock. NAIS is an infringement of our basic rights to raise our own food and an infringement on our rights to traditional farming. More over NAIS is heavily biased towards the big factory farms that get to use one Group ID and don't have to do tagging. NAIS is designed to first and formost help the meat exporters using your and my tax dollars. NAIS benefits big business and hurts small farmers and homesteaders raising their own meat. NAIS represents no benefit to the small farmers or homesteaders. NAIS also does not benefit consumers. COOL is good. NAIS is bad. Don't confuse the two. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

I already did move to the woods. No TV. No cable. No radio. No billboards. Few people. The internet's fine - surf with plugins and Java turned off and use an ad killer on the browser. Email program kills the spam. Life is good. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

I love the idea of a handheld Mac, ideally one that will run not just iPhone apps but also all of my MacOSX, MacClassic and Palm applications - there are emulations for Palm on Mac. I want something that has enough storage that it can be kept synced with my PowerBook and act as a backup for my family's home folders so I need at least 8GB of storage for the five of us in addition to application space, music, etc. A 20GB device would be good to start with. Hopefully the iPhone, in one of its soon to be released generations, will be that iPal... Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

An interesting comparison for this and other explanations would be are the bees being killed off in pockets like our valley. We have no cell phone reception, no radio, no TV due to the shielding of the mountains. There is no pesticide or herbicide spraying. I kept bees for 25 years but am not doing so right now so I can't provide data but it would be interesting to know if isolated areas have the colony collapse problem or not. Different types of isolations would add up to good info. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/