According to an article published by CNN, John Mackey (the CEO of Whole Foods) feels singled out by the FTC's attempt to block the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger.

Whole Foods is the largest seller of organic and natural food, and it had planned to acquire Wild Oats, until the planned merger was blocked by the FTC (for anti-competitive reasons). Mackey says:

Look at the track record of the FTC in the last six years. They have approved 96 oil and gas mergers. They approved Smithfield buying the No. 2 pork producer, giving them around 30% market share in the U.S. [In 1999], they approved Exxon and Mobil merging. It's ludicrous to single [Whole Foods] out for anticompetitive reasons. [The rules] are obviously being selectively enforced.

Mackey has a good point. It seems odd that the FTC would block the merger of two natural foods companies, when they have approved the merger of large oil and gas companies, and other special interests. In the CNN article, Mackey goes on to say that Whole Foods will focus on opening new stores in the future, instead of acquiring them. This will prevent entanglements with the FTC. He is quoted as saying:

You can open as many stores as you want without permission form the FTC, but if you try to buy stores, that requires permission. The solution is obvious: We won't be buying stores, we'll be opening them. You don't see Wal-Mart acquiring anyone in the U.S. anymore. It's easier for them and us to just open stores.

Other interesting points from the article:

• If the merger succeeds, Wild Oats prices will be lowered.
• Whole Foods adapts certain stores to fit the culture. For example, in London, Whole Foods has an organic pub where customers can buy organic draft beer and wines.
• When considering where to open new stores, Whole Foods looks at the density of college grads. Mackey says Whole Foods "caters to the well-educated [because] for people to change their dietary habits requires that they be well-informed."
• Whole Foods has tripled its supply of local food in the past year, and is loaning up to $10 million a year to local producers. 13 loans to local producers have already been made this year.
• Whole Foods has a positive effect on real estate property values. When Whole Foods opened in Chelsea [in New York City], condos above the store went up 10% in price on opening day. This has caused some real estate investors to buy up property in neighborhoods where a Whole Foods store is slated to open.
• Whole Foods is seen as a highly-desirable tenant by property developers because of its effect on real estate prices.

I hope the merger succeeds. It's sad to see the FTC apply rules selectively. I think it comes down to lobbying, and unfortunately, Whole Foods doesn't have the same lobbying power that the oil and gas industries have.

In my earlier post, I mentioned how I was growing some organic vegetables. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble keeping the deer away. They are eating the young plants. The zucchini is doing well, though. For some reason, the deer don't find zucchini too appealing. :-)

I am really starting to sympathize with farmers who deal with pests on an everyday basis.

A friend of mine told me that placing human hair around the plants should keep the deer away. So, it looks like I will be buying deer netting or putting uncolored (non-chemically treated) hair around the plants. I'm going to try the hair trick first. If that doesn't work, then I guess I won't have home-grown vegetables this year.

In other news - I've been dealing with some spammers (RSS/Feedburner, and of course the usual blog comment spam, most of which Akismet catches). So, if you see anything odd coming from this blog, now you know why. It seems spam is becoming more of a problem online.

Local Produce - I've been eating some great produce from the CSA that I belong to. Last week, I received some excellent (but very small!) watermelons. I've included a photo below. These are the some of the smallest watermelons I have seen (they tasted great, though).

A couple of weeks ago, I was given an avocado plant at a local Meetup group. The woman who gave me the avocado plant had 10 avocado plants sitting on her windowsill, seeped in water with 4 toothpicks on each of the 4 sides of the avocado. She had grown each avocado plant from seed.

I'm curious to see whether my avocado plant will actually produce an avocado, since I don't live in sunny California or Florida. I've read that avocados need an enormous amount of sunlight. The first avocado plant she gave me looked like this:

Unfortunately, this particular plant was eaten by a squirrel 2 days after I got it!

I found the pot overturned, the avocado bulb gone, and the leaves shredded into pieces on the ground. My aloe vera plant escaped the fate of being eaten, although it had squirrel toothmarks on the side of it. Apparently, the squirrel didn't like the taste of aloe vera because - other than the tooth marks - he left the aloe vera plant intact.

My friend generously gave me another avocado plant—and I've put chicken wire around the new avocado plant to protect it from hungry squirrels. It's pretty sad that I have to put my plants inside cages (to keep them from being eaten/destroyed), but what else can I do? Any suggestions for preventing squirrels from eating plants?

Here is the poor little avocado plant inside its cage:

I've also put the aloe vera plant and another small plant inside the chicken wire (both had tooth marks from the squirrel, but were left intact).

Vegetable Gardening
I was inspired by the Dervaes family garden, and so I started a small vegetable garden. So far, I've planted green beans, sugar snap peas, cucumber, zucchini, and Chinese red noodle long bean. The Chinese red noodle long bean is similar to a green bean, except it's bright red, sweet tasting, and can grow up to 22 inches long. The Red Noodle Long Bean was an heirloom seed, given to me by a friend. I've never seen (or eaten) a red noodle long bean, so it should be interesting to see how it turns out. Eventually I want to grow tomatoes and sweet red peppers, but I'll save that for next year.

I'm hoping all my plants grow, and I'll keep everyone posted. Assuming I get a decent harvest, I'll take photos and post them to the blog.

A friend of mine just recently gave birth to her first child, and she has been dealing with the issue of vaccination. Based on what I've read, I am against vaccinating infants. An infant's immune system is not yet fully developed and I think it's absolutely foolish to inject live viruses into a tiny body that is only 2 months old.

In the U.S., infants are supposed to be given vaccinations at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, and 12 months. If it was my child, I would refuse. The effectiveness of vaccines is questionable (at best), and in my mind, vaccines should NOT be given to infants (children under 2 years). There is even good evidence against vaccinating adults.

Here is a very sarcastic video that decribes the dangerous ingredients found in most vaccines (including the flu shot).

I came across something new and interesting—especially if you like movies (and who doesn't like movies?).

The first-ever Raw Food Film Festival will be held March 16-18th at MOA in West Hollywood, CA. Movies screenings will include:

• Breakthrough (about the Talifero family)
• Raw for 30 Days
• Not the Cooking Show
• Supercharge Me: 30 Days Raw
• Vegan 2 Raw Vegan
• Interview with Sergei Boutenko
• Living Foods
• Raising Children Raises Us
• Lelek
• Go Further

Other films will cover health topics such as natural birth, the dangers of factory farming, the pharmaceutical sales industry, and the effects of pharmaceutical drugs.

Looks like there will be speakers from various raw food restaurants, and raw vegan food for everyone. This is a unique idea.

I've come across an amazing story — a family in Pasadena, CA has created a self-sufficient urban homestead where they grow over 350 varieties of edible and useful plants on 1/10 acre. They are in the middle of Pasadena, surrounded by neighbors—and yet they produce more crops than most small family farms!

The Dervaes family chronicles their journey online (their website is nicely designed with beautiful graphics) with articles, newsletters, outreach campaigns and information for people interested in organic gardening and eco-living.

According to the website, their organic garden produces over 6,000 pounds (3 tons) of produce annually. This provides fresh vegetables and fruit for the family’s vegetarian diet and a source of income.

This is really quite amazing, and very impressive.

The Power of Thought: A Consciousness Experiment

I've discovered an amazing experiment that proves the power of thought.

This experiment will give you visual proof that your thoughts affect the physical world. In this experiment, you will control and affect the motion (and speed) of an object.

The Experiment

Take a white sheet of paper about 24 inches square (unlined paper is preferable. Grab a sheet of paper from your printer). Draw a circle as large as this paper will permit and then draw a horizontal line through the center of the circle. Mark the left end of the line "A," and the right end of the line "B." Now draw a vertical line through the circle. Mark the top of the line "C," and the bottom of the line "D." Your drawing should look similar to this:

Take a lead pencil and attach a string about 8 inches long. At the end of the string, tie a small weight, about the size of a quarter. Now then, for the proof.

Place the paper on a table, and hold the pencil above the paper, so that the pendulum will be just above the center of the paper, where the lines intersect. Now think of the line AB, but do not move; in a few minutes the pendulum will swing back and forth along the line AB. Now think of the line CD; the pendulum will stop swinging back and forth and will begin to swing up and down along line CD.

Now take your thought off the lines entirely and fix it upon the circle. As you think about the circle, move your eyes around the circle. The pendulum will begin moving in a circular motion!

Now then, begin thinking that the pendulum is swinging faster and faster, that you can hardly stop it. The motion will become so fast that you can hardly see it go. Then, begin thinking that the pendulum will not move at all—that something is the matter with it. It will stop! Once you begin thinking that the pendulum will not move, it will slow down, and stop moving entirely.

It's uncanny.

This experiment was first used in the 1920's by Charles Baudouin of the Jean Jacques Rosseau Institute in France to demonstrate the power of thought to his students. I discovered it by reading a book written by Charles Haanel. Haanel writes:

You may think this is will power. It is nothing of the kind. In fact, if you *will* the pendulum to move, it will not budge; you must think of the result, not upon how it is accomplished.

In his experiments, M. Baudouin found that the higher the intelligence the student possessed, the more rapidly did he secure results. Those students who were more or less deficient in mentality were very slow, and in some cases results were almost negligible.

A Couple of Tips/Comments:

• The hardest part about this experiment is finding a small weight to attach to the pencil (using string). I ended up using a tin container (about the size of a quarter) that held dental floss from a hotel.
• Make sure the string is long enough (about 8 inches). I measured 8 inches before I tied the weight to the string and the string to the pencil.

• Do not focus on making/forcing the pendulum to move. Focus on the lines. Think about line AB. Move your eyes from point A to point B. Continue doing this until the pendulum moves. You can speed up the movement by moving your eyes faster (and your thoughts), back and forth between points A and B.

• When switching your thoughts from line AB to line CD, the change in the pendulum's movement is not instantaneous. It takes a small amount of time for the motion to switch. Same when switching from circling motion to no motion at all. This is mirrored in everyday life. Usually, our thoughts do not *instantly* manifest. However, as we continue thinking the same thought over and over, the results appear.
• Repetition and emotion seem to make things appear faster in the physical world. The more a thought is repeated (and the more emotion is placed behind a particular thought), the faster the results appear. At least, this has been my experience.

Your Turn

Go conduct the experiment. It's fun, and it takes less than 10 minutes. Have fun, and let me know your results. Post a comment if you complete the experiment.

According to the Pew Initiative on Food & Biotechnology, most Americans don't realize they're eating genetically engineered foods.

89% of soybeans and 61% of corn acreage in the U.S. is currently genetically engineered (and soy lecithin and corn syrup are found in many mainstream food products). Depite this, 75% of people surveyed don't think they've ever eaten food with genetically engineered ingredients.

• The survey—currently in its fifth year—also found that 51% of those polled are opposed to animal cloning.
• Only 29% said they trust the FDA, which is a strong drop from 41% in 2001.

Just like past years, the survey results show that most Americans have very little knowledge about how widespread genetically engineered ingredients are in foods.

Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarian as adults, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal.

According to ScienceDaily…

The study found that higher IQ at the age of 10 years was associated with an increased likelihood of being vegetarian at the age of 30. This relation was partly accounted for by better education and higher occupational social class, but it remained statistically significant after adjusting for these factors.

The study also found that vegetarians were more likely to be female, to be of higher occupational social class and to have higher academic or vocational qualifications than non-vegetarians.

Vegetarianism is linked to lower cholesterol levels and a reduced risk of obesity and heart disease. Researchers concluded that this connection might help to explain why children who score higher on intelligence tests tend to have a lower risk of coronary heart disease in later life.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Nneka Kelly, over at Balanced Life Center, is running a 30-day Season of Gratitude Project. Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" allows you to focus on what's positive in your life and enjoy the abundance that you already have.

My Personal Gratitude List

• I am thankful for my holistic dentist, who refuses to use almalgam dental fillings in his practice. Thank you Dr. M.
• I am grateful for my family, for my partner, and for my friends who are always great sources of love and support.
• I am grateful for the organic CSA that I belong to, and for the organic fruits and vegetables that I have access to. I appreciate the hard work and manual labor that goes into producing fresh food, grown naturally from the earth.
• I am thankful for inventors, entrepreneurs, and people who pursue "impossible" ideas. You move the world forward, and I am grateful.
• I am thankful for healers, for naturopaths, for compassionate people, and for all who genuinely seek to help others.
• I am grateful for everyone who has helped me along the way, and especially for E.D., F.K, and G.H.
• I am grateful for the internet and for the massive amount of information, knowledge and opportunity we have available at our fingertips.
• Perhaps most importantly, I am grateful for good health and a strong mind.

I hope this post has inspired you to give thanks for what you have. Think about what you're grateful for, and if you have a blog, please consider participating in Nneka's "Season of Gratitude" Group Writing Project.