Military March

Written By:  Andrew & Becx Eide

Today’s topic is from my husband Andy. Since our main subject topic for March 2012 is Things That Go Marching Andy wanted to relate his experience from his United States Navy Boot Camp days from 1972.

Andy joined the United States Navy on March 6, 1972, and shipped off from Oakland to San Diego, where he was literally locked up on a secure facility called Naval Recruit Depot, San Diego. I say locked up because, although Military installations are designed with fences and barbed wire to keep people out of the facility, the Recruit side (the Boot Camp), had fences and barbed wire designed to keep the Recruits in the facility.

He relates the indignities suffered at the hands of Drill Instructors. They include sleep deprivation, slapping, punching, a kick in the butt, verbal insults, and having to use the restroom in the Barracks while the toilet stalls had no doors for privacy. Andy says the worst indignity he had to endure was being required to march for no reason at all.

Boot Camp serves one primary purpose which is to take men and women, from various walks of life, from different parts of the country, from different ethnic groups, and different economic status, from different education levels, and get them to work as a team. You are not going to get 30 to 50 people to get along and work as a team unless you get them all on common ground first and then build them up from there. Once that is accomplished the Drill Instructor can build them up as a team. When they are brought down to that common level there are no longer rich and poor, old and young, college graduates and high school graduates, everyone is the same at that point.

The perceived marching for no reason really does have a purpose. Although marching periods are sometimes used by Drill Instructors to punish a Boot Camp Company for making mistakes the main purpose is to keep the Recruits working on team building during times when other activities may not be scheduled.

Of course I agree with my husband on one issue he brought up concerning these Boot Camp marches. He still questions, even 40 years after attending Boot Camp, why they placed a backpack on him which weighed 30 to 40 pounds and had him carry a rifle which had the barrel stuffed with lead to make it heavy. The reason is simply to get all the Recruits on the same level and to teach them teamwork and endurance!

So did all this Boot Camp training work on my husband? Of course it did! He is a team player, he has the endurance to get the job done, and he learned to not to give up when the going gets tough.

Ides of March

Written By:  Andrew Eide

You are probably asking yourself why I chose the topic Ides of March right? We are in the month of March and the main topic is Things That Go Marching so I felt it would be an appropriate topic. Additionally, since my last name is Eide and it is pronounced the same as Ide I figured it would make for an amusing topic.

The term is Ides of March which in Latin is:  Idus Martiae. It is the name of the 15^th day of March in the Roman calendar, most likely referring to a day of a full moon. The Latin word Idus means half division or in this case the middle of the month. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was held during the celebration.

In modern times, the term Ides of March is known as the date on which Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.

The story goes that a seer had foreseen that Caesar would be harmed not later than the Ides of March on his way to the Theater of Pompey. Caesar met with that seer and joked about it saying, “The Ides of March have come” meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled. The seer replied, “Ay, Caesar, but not gone.”  This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March.”

Well there you go. That is the basic explanation I can give you of the Ides of March and where it came from.

Although we are in the month of March 2012, and my last name is pronounced the same way that Ide is pronounced, please rest assured that you do not have to “beware the Eide’s of March.” lol

Creatures of Habit

Written By:  Andrew Eide

Today’s topic isn’t really about something that goes marching. It is, though, about something which travels along in the same path or trail, in the same place, in the same manner, time after time, so it is somewhat related to the topic of marching.

What I wish to discuss is the topic called creatures of habit. Although this applies to animals and humans I will leave humans out of it and discuss only rodents. I use the term rodents in this blog to mean gophers, rats, and mice. These creatures are, without a doubt, creatures of habit.

Have you ever asked yourself why gophers, rats, and mice always get caught in a trap you set for them? Haven’t you ever wondered why the rodent didn’t see the trap and simply walk around it? There is a simple reason why gophers, rats, and mice get caught in traps which are placed in plain sight. The reason is not that rodents have poor eyesight. The reason is not that they cannot resist the food item you placed on the trap. The reason is not curiosity on the part of the rodent.

Gophers, rats, and mice have a common habit of following the same path, trail, or tunnel when traveling from one place to another. They will not deviate from this path unless they absolutely have to and even then they return to the commonly used path, trail, or tunnel as soon as they can.

This is why, when you place a trap along the trail you found, you will catch a mouse or rat in that trap. The mouse or rat will come upon the trap, which is placed on their commonly used trail, and they will not go around the trap even when there is enough room to do so. They are creatures of habit and they will continue into and over the trap, which is on their commonly used trail, and get killed in the trap in the process.

Gophers will follow the same tunnel they use all the time even when a trap is placed inside their tunnel. Just as with the rats and mice on their trails the gopher will travel through his commonly used tunnel. When the gopher comes upon the trap he could very easily back up or dig a tunnel to go around the trap. However, being a creature of habit, he will walk directly into the trap, as the trap is in his commonly used tunnel, and he will get killed in the trap in the process.

Remember what I told you the next time you have problems with mice, rats, or gophers. Remember to look for the obvious signs of their commonly used trails or tunnels and place your trap on the trail or tunnel they are using. I guarantee you will capture or kill a mouse, rat, or gopher in this manner.

Army Ants

Written By:  Andrew Eide

Since the previous blog was on marching when I was in the Navy I felt it would be amusing to talk about army ants today. My information on army ants will be basic. If you desire additional information you will have to do some research on your own.

Army ants are a specific variety of ants. They possess long and pointed mandibles (jaws), long legs, and an elongated body. Army ants vary in color from deep golden to dull brown.

The typical army ant colony contains about one million ants, including a queen, her eggs, soldiers and workers. Every ant in the colony follows a hierarchy. The queen lays eggs all day. Soldiers focus on defending the colony. Workers do the foraging while smaller worker ants take care of the queen’s eggs.

Army ants are carnivorous and feed on other insects. However they are capable of capturing larger animals such as lizards, birds and pigs by organizing group raids. Army ants have a voracious appetite and can kill and eat 50,000 to 100,000 insects per day. Due to this food requirement army ants have to migrate after some time. They form temporary nests and migrate to a new place after raiding a colony of rival ants. Any ants left in the raided colony become the slaves of the new ant society.

Instead of traditional nests as used by other ants the army ant nests are made up of the ants themselves. They form walls in the nest in a structured way so that the queen and her eggs are protected and that there are enough chambers and corridors for transportation of food.

While normal ants have compound eyes the army ants have single eyes. They communicate by chemical signals, vibrations and touch. The chemicals act as a device to communicate a need for food, assistance and in changing behavior patterns.

I have watched programs on television discussing the march of army ants. Due to the sheer number of army ants in the march people can hear them coming. They know if they remain in their homes, and the army ants come marching through, they are likely to be devoured by the ants. If you think that several piranha are voracious and can clean an animal or human down to bones in a short period of time, multiply that by several times and you will understand how quickly millions of marching army ants can devour an animal or human down to bones in a very short period of time.

Cancer

Written By:  Andrew Eide

Note:  I lost my father, sister in-law, and nephew from cancer. It is a non-discriminating thing and it is cruel and vicious. However I want to enlighten you about cancer...what it is and what it isn't...because our medical community is not telling you the truth.

I hear so many people, including people in the Medical profession, call cancer one of the following:  an illness, a disease, or an infection. Today I am going to show you that cancer is none of those. The reason for me telling you this it to prove to you that there can be no vaccination or drug you can take that will take care of the illness, disease, or infection people claim cancer to be. At the end of the article I will explain to you how you can control cancer.

Cancer is nothing more than abnormally reproducing cells. Yes you heard me correctly. Our body’s immune system is totally awesome when it comes to preventing illnesses and diseases or taking care of them once they arrive in the body.

When a cell divides, and cells in our bodies divide constantly, the body’s immune system does a quality assurance check on that dividing cell. It checks the cell and asks IS THIS CELL DIVIDING CORRECTLY? and if the answer is YES the immune system allows it to continue to reproduce. However when that check on the diving cell comes up with the response that NO THIS CELL IS NOT DIVIDING CORRECTLY then the body’s immune system destroys the improperly dividing cell and that’s one way we remain healthy.

The reason we get cancer cells continuing to reproduce and develop into a tumor is simple. With a degraded immune system when the body does a check on the cell it might accidentally allow an improperly reproducing cell, a cancer cell, to continue reproducing when, in fact, it should have destroyed the incorrectly reproducing cell. Eventually the cancer cells continue to improperly reproduce and you get a tumor.

There is another interesting feature of a cancer tumor. The way they get nourishment is to send tentacles out which drill into the bloodstream to suck nourishment from the blood. At the same time the cancer tumor sucks off the bloodstream it also released grown “inhibitors” into the bloodstream. This is an attempt by the cancer tumor to get the other cancer tumors to suck off the bloodstream, ingest the growth inhibitors, and then most of the other cancer tumors stop growing while the dominant one continues to grow.

In every case of someone I know who had a cancer tumor removed had the cancer spread quickly throughout their bodies. This is because when the dominant tumor was removed so was the large amount of grown inhibitors it put into the bloodstream to keep the other tumors from growing. Without the grown inhibitors in the bloodstream the other cancer tumors thrive and grow.

When I hear Doctors and Scientists claim they can “cure” cancer by claiming it is a virus, infection, or a disease, they are scamming you. Cancer is not like the flu, measles, chicken pox, etc., which is either caused by a virus or infection.

However if the Doctors and Scientists can tap into the growth inhibitors cancer tumors place into the bloodstream they can make something similar to give to cancer patients which will cause the cancer to go into a dormant state.

The best prevention and cure for cancer is a healthy immune system. There is no magic pill, magic bullet, or magic injection that will make cancer just get up and go away. Keeping your immune system healthy is the only way to prevent or reverse cancer.