Justin Germino Ramblings

Sodium Nitrite and Nitrates are among one of the most carcinogenic chemicals you can ingest into your body.  At high doses they can cause serious harm in children even more than adults and have been thought to increase the risk of numerous types of cancers from stomach, colon to brain cancers.  Nitrites deprive your body of oxygen when you consume them, and lets face it are often found only in processed food which is bad for you anyway.

Deli meats and hot dogs are the number one sources of Sodium Nitrites, but you will find them in almost any prepackaged food item that you can pick up in the refrigerated section of your grocery store.  In my opinion it is imperative to support the company’s and brands that make products that do not contain Nitrates or Nitrites.  Hormel and Oscar Meyer both make some (though very small) Nitrite free Deli Meats, you can find a much wider selection on online stores like Applegate Farms.  I haven’t tried Applegate Farms deli meats yet, but they are one of the only places I have seen that have Nitrite free pepperoni and genoa salami.  Most other companies only have Nitrite free Turkey or Chicken.

As a general rule of thumb you should try to eat as few processed foods as possible, and remember that as parents you are completely responsible for the health and nutrition of your children.  If you can find Nitrite free alternatives to the foods, then you should buy those products instead.

-Justin Germino

With all of the news advertisements and media commercials for treatments of Mesothelioma, I wonder how much Asbestos legislation has really changed over the last several decades. Do we really know how much still exists in old buildings and is exposure still a risk for children and adults in various scenario’s? I remember when my school back in NY had to be modified to remove the Asbestos, this was a long time ago and the school was very very old. The school had it done over a summer, they had to redo the paint, rip open walls and more.

How many years from now are we going to hear about the poisoning and health conditions for PCB poisoning and Phthalates causing health problems decades from now where you will need legal help to compensation claim. What is true is that chemicals and products over the years have never been fully tested properly for health side effects, companies rush products to market without any thought about long term side effects.

-Justin Germino

Yes, that cute face right there comes with a wicked side effect.

This dog has the worst gas you could possibly imagine, we are talking so bad his stomach and noxious expulsions can be heard from across the room sometimes and smelled from a mile away.  It is like a skunk constantly fumigating our home.  Even taking the dog on a car trip to Pet Smart, we had to drive with the windows open as he kept stinking up the car.
For those who don’t know, Boston Terriers are the most “Flatulent” breed of dog on the planet, proclaimed by Animal Planet.  It is because of their constant intake and swallowing of air in their mouths, the air gets trapped in their gut and ferments.  But he is so cute and such a well mannered and friendly loving dog, we just have to wear gas masks when we are around him sometimes.

-Justin Germino

I had to go down with my wife to my son’s Charter School to be fingerprinted today, all of the parents for the school are required to do 12 hours per year of volunteer work for the school and require fingerprinting and background checks before you begin the volunteer work.  While getting my fingers printed, I noticed the volunteer sign in sheet was still very manual, where volunteers had to sign in on a paper their start time and end time.  It made me wonder why the school doesn’t implement a badge and barcode scanner where you just scan your time in and out and it records in a computer for fool proof accuracy. This way you would just hold your badge under the scanner when entering and leaving, it just seems like a more logical and automated choice.

I do think it is a great idea that this Arizona Charter School enforces fingerprinting, this is a safeguard to make sure nobody with a criminal background is working around the children. Perhaps though to conserve funding they didn’t want to have to print up badges for all volunteers and require a computer for handling the in/out process. Maybe they could implement it in the future.

-Justin Germino

I wrote a guest post about Relationships and how people need to respect each other which can be lost or forgotten if you have spent a great deal of time with someone.  My article is hosted on It Might Be Love, and is titled Relationship Advice: The Respect Factor.  It is a recommended read for anyone in a committed relationship and is solid relationship advice or you can take it as marriage advice.

Thanks to Chelle, for letting be a guest blogger on her popular and successful blog.

-Justin Germino

My son recently became enthralled with Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame from 1996, and I watched it again with him after not having seen it since it was first released thirteen years ago.  When I first saw the film I was still a teenager, and I didn’t remember how dark the undertones of the movie were.  From the subtle indications of torture, whipping, genocide the film is actually the darkest Disney film I have ever seen.  I couldn’t believe I didn’t realize how dark it was back then.

However the film to me is just simply superb, it feels like an opera (like Phantom) and really draws your emotions out.  Only serves to remind me that Disney has been making exceptional films for more than fifty years and if they can make this dark of an animated film, it shows that Marvel is in good hands with Disney and I am certain we can expect good things for Marvel films and cartoons in the future.

-Justin Germino

My wife and I were just unhappy with the public school in our area and have decided to pull our child and enroll him in Legacy Charter Schools instead in Casa Grande.  This charter school has an impressive dedication to academics and allowed us to tour the school, see each of the first grade teachers and talk with the principal for almost an hour.  We like that they have uniforms, and they have a much more efficient and safe parent drop off and pick up system.  But most importantly they believe in challenging children academically and set the bar higher than the bare minimum for a first grade curriculum.

In his current public school, the entire school had done away with homework for first graders which is appalling, at least he will have an expected homework regimen and be required to have read 30 books by the end of the year.  It is always scary making such big decisions for your children, and I hope we are making the right one as we just want our child to have the best education and school experience possible.  He is a very smart boy and was just not challenged in his former school and his teachers and the school itself had a “don’t care” attitude seeming to have no interest in whether students succeed or fail.

-Justin Germino

In New York City (no surprise there), a musicians flugelhorn was stolen along with his Bach Stradivarius trumpet when he fell asleep on the train with the instruments by his side.  The Flugelhorn was worth just over five thousand dollars and the trumpet another two thousand.  Musicians who often save up for years to collect their instruments need to take extreme care in making sure nothing happens to them, I sure hope the police find the instruments at a pawn shop and recover them.

While growing up in New York City myself, I was no stranger to subway dangers and have witnessed robberies, assaults and worse on train rides from Queens to the City many times.  Though I think NY has an outstanding metro system with the buses and trains, not enough is done to keep them safe (at least when I was living there 13 years ago).

-Justin Germino

BlogCatalog Site has a contest that one winner will win tickets to Blog World and New Media Expo 2009, the winner of this contest will also have their featured on BlogCatalog and you are given a million page impressions for free from Blog Catalog.  I am entering this contest because Las Vegas (where the contest is held) is only a half a day’s drive from here, and I would like the chance to go and network with other bloggers and be more active and recognized in person in the blogging community.  The page impressions don’t hurt either and only help to further spread your blog recognition online.

Wish me luck,

-Justin Germino

The Dutch National Museum in Amsterdam learned this week that the rock they had on display which was supposed to be a piece of the moon that was given to Prime Minister Willem Drees in 1969 and was acquired by the museum in 1988 is actually nothing but petrified wood. In the early 1970’s NASA had given moon rocks to more than a hundred countries so the claim was never disputed until it was on display in 2006 and a space expert informed the museum that it was most likely a fake.

The Dutch National Museum still intends to keep the Petrified Wood Moon Rock on display as a curiosity piece.