#1287 – The Expat Files: Dementia, Data, Solar Power, and the Climate Debate

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder Hello there all you expat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started Alright good news out there for you guys and gals who know a bit of Spanish or are learning Spanish Just read a little report in a neurocognitive journal. I know you're probably thinking Johnny must have a lot of time on his hands If he's reading that crap or maybe he's in a rubber room with a straight jacket and that's all they gave him the read

[00:51] Well, you know, you probably heard me say this before every time I'm sitting down anywhere I'll pick up whatever's close by and start reading it I even remember as a little kid sitting on the John reading the entire glade air freshener label The Clorox label the liquid plumber label the Nair label the Ajax label That's how I ended up flipping through that cognitive journal that had an article about Alzheimer's and dementia Talking about people who were bilingual who knew a second language So naturally it grabbed my interest the crux of the article was that the number one way? To put the brakes on the progression of dementia and or Alzheimer's was to be bilingual or to learn a second language second best way play a musical instrument with regularity in

[01:36] Other words actually practice once in a while and the third best way to put the brakes on dementia and Alzheimer's No surprise here routine exercise, but not just any exercise They're talking about three to five times a week where you break a little sweat, you know You gotta wonder how many people out there? I mean, there are millions of them who say they exercise regularly, but they never break a sweat There seems to be a real shortage of documented printed data on that, too Yeah, man, I work out every day. Well, do you break a sweat? Well, not really, but I wear sweats You know the latest brand I'm hip with a trip. They're expensive. I'm telling you. I absolutely look fabulous when I'm working out Mmm, I bet but do you break a sweat? Why would I want to do that? I meet my crew at Starbucks after I work out sporting sweat stains at Starbucks

[02:25] That's gross So anyway, according to stats learning a second language or being bilingual Seems to be the best way or one of the best ways to ward off the onset of dementia or Alzheimer's So that is good news for all you bilingual gringos out there or at least gringos who are trying to be bilingual You'll have much less cognitive degeneration than the average slug in Cleveland. My jammy or Milwaukee who happens to be your age That's good news, right? We don't all have to be forgetful dunces at 60 70 or 80 years old Do we that's a good thing and something? I'm sure no one wants to think about There's a lot of things people don't want to think about like for example getting stuck in a nursing home or your funeral That's why so many people procrastinate with their last will and testament for that matter buying a funeral plot

[03:11] But dementia and Alzheimer's man. Those are not the kind of conversations you ever hear at parties or get togethers Hmm. So George, what do you plan on doing when you forget who you are? That said let's not dwell on that here either I can think of no better reason for you potentially lazy ass gonna bees and wannabes who are thinking when you come down here You really don't have to learn Spanish hell You've got Google Translate right and even you gringos and expats who are already down here in Latin America Who just don't want to put in the effort or you've thrown in the towel on the Spanish thing ask yourself Do you want to be that guy or gal whose friends and acquaintances are whispering behind his back things like man? Something's wrong Jackie's memory is not what it used to be. I think maybe he or she's losing it

[03:57] You don't want to be the object of that conversation The other thing is there's so much mentioned in the news and in the media etc about Alzheimer's and dementia and we all know someone who's got it, right? That sometimes when we forget stuff and and everybody does at one time or another We're thinking oh, no, could it be or we're shit? Maybe it's someone else thinking that about you in that case You'll never know but you know when it happens to me I just reflect back when I was 20 or 30 years old I used to forget things back then so for me when I forget stuff, it's nothing new That's why and you might think this is a little crazy I always have a little notebook on me in a pen. Actually, it's a mini pen about half size I'm always writing shit down But for me that's a habit I picked up an engineering school because I remember the first day when our Deccano

[04:44] You know the Dean of the school in Spanish. The Dean is a Deccano anyway Deccano was addressing all this Greenhorn newbies at an assembly He said future engineers of America. He said that sort of cynically and I'll never forget this He said half of you here will not graduate. It's not that you're not all smart enough to do it It's just that you guys and gals that will will have to have two strong habits By the way, there were about a hundred in my class with three girls out of that hundred three percent all three of them Unattractive manly girls who did graduate who I'm sure are millionaires now Anyway, the Dean said all of you do have the brains to graduate you've fulfilled and passed all the entrance requirements But the ones who do will have two things in common. Number one, you'll write things down all the time and not just in class either

[05:32] Number two, you'll be organized both in your brain and in the real world You'll have a filing system Then he said the rest of the world might not understand or figure out your filing system But as long as you have one and you know how to access your data, that's all that matter That's when I learned a long time ago that if you write things down, you don't have to have a good memory Luckily though dementia and Alzheimer's do not run in my family and there is a genetic component But still it's a very good thing to know that bilingual people According to that cognitive research article can routinely delay dementia five even ten years more than the average slug who just knows one language like English so think about that next time you're sitting in your car and you're wondering if you turned off the stove or not Then again, if you learn a little Spanish and play the tuba, you can't help but protect a few brain cells

[06:21] By the way on that same topic I had a conversation with a musician friend of mine He was saying as far as playing an instrument the best of both worlds would be being a drummer Because you'd have the musical instrument thing down and constant exercise lots of movement plenty of blood flow and cardio He said look at ringo star. He's 80 something and he's still touring and playing drums But we nixed that hypothesis when he brought up the name phil collins You know famous drummer from the old group genesis on his last tour and I think he's only 70 Couldn't even sit behind his drums. He sang but from a wheelchair. I saw some pics the guy's like an 80 pound vegetable Oh well So much for that hypothesis Then again, eric clapton still touring and what is he close to 80?

[07:09] He admits himself for 30 years He downed a quart of booze a day and let's not even talk about keith richards even 20 or 30 years ago He was already looking like a cross between beetle juice and the ghost of christmas past All right moving on you know in a show last week. I was talking about going solar either full off the grid or partially off the grid Yeah, I know something about that All right, because i've done it and i've done it down here in latin america without putting a single kink in my first world lifestyle In other words, you could go solar or partial solar without sacrificing any of your first world habits now Diving deep into that solar stuff. Here's something I learned along the way that I don't think very many people understand Did you know that 25 percent of all fossil fuel energy goes into heating water?

[07:59] That's a generalized worldwide figure 25 That includes of course hot water for your shower or bath hot water for washing clothes and dishes heating up hot water on your stove and cooking things And heating and warming up massive quantities of water used in industrial processes So again heating up water uses 25 percent of all fossil fuel energy in the world today Look take latin america the indigenous population in mexico guadamala honduras peru equador bolivia Et cetera, et cetera half of those indigenous people Cook with firewood So if you believe in man-made global warming and there is a component to that, right? that could be reduced by 25 percent if every family every household in every commercial enterprise heated their water with a solar heater

[08:52] Solar power is free and there are super efficient solar hot water readers out there. I've had one on my last three houses You know i'm not talking about solar panels solar electric I know I know a lot of people complain about solar panels because they have a lot of rare metals in them Especially when you talk about lithium storage batteries You've heard the stories slave labor atta china indonesia africa vietnam. I get it What people don't know is that your typical solar hot water heater uses none of those materials There's nothing really high tech about it. Practically every big hardware store sells them and has them on display, too It's just a big old tank with glass tubes that have a special coating on them Your cold water comes through those tubes gets heated by the sun and the hot water rises up those tubes

[09:41] They're set at an angle and that hot water is continuously filling a 60 or 80 gallon tank So you've got continuous hot water all day and at night You've got that reservoir of heated water in that tank ready to use if you need it So if you buy and install one of those you'll have hot water for free Quite probably the rest of your life those things are simple and with no moving parts So they'll last a long long time even when it's cloudy and rainy you got hot water Because the sun still shines and it's putting out some energy Here's the thing as you're flying into any big international airport You're going to go past lots of cities as you get lower and lower And you're going to see about maybe less than one percent of people are using those solar hot water eaters The obvious question is why not I just mentioned if everyone did that we could lower fossil fuel use by 25 percent

[10:32] By the way, it's been calculated that if the entire united kingdom quit using fossil fuels completely for an entire year In other words, they went right back into the dark ages That would only decrease total worldwide fossil fuel use for that year by two percent And we're talking about a 25 drop in use just by simply switching over to solar hot water heaters So then why isn't that idiot greta thornberg talking about this? So then you might ask why is less than one percent of the world using these things? Well, you know people might say because they're expensive about a thousand bucks to put one up on the roof What's that a hundred bucks a year amortized over 10 years? Think of it this way 25 percent of your electric bill is heat and hot water So then just what is your electric bill every year a thousand two thousand bucks? I rest my case

[11:23] Of course a unit like that's a little more expensive up in the states in climates up north where it freezes That means it has an additional heat transfer jacket using a liquid that's not water so it doesn't freeze So anyway, that's my comeback when someone whines about human-caused global warming First thing I ask them is if they're doing their part, you know, you can't win that argument But you can make them look stupid by asking one question Do you have a solar hot water heater on your house? Because if you don't please just shut up Then after about two minutes of explaining it to them their eyes will widen and they'll say yeah I gotta get me one of those why isn't the word out on that? Yeah, well i've been using paper straws for a year now So i'm doing my part for global warming, but I gotta get me one of those solar hot water heaters

[12:09] That is as soon as I could script together a thousand bucks, which by the way never happens So again those thermal solar hot water collectors are just a box with tubes not sexy But they should do the trick and they'll cut down on the average person's electric bill by 25 percent or more Oh and for you cheapskates out there and do it yourselfers There's a way to do that whole process without spending a grand on that tank with those glass tubes The fact is if you want to get rough and ready about it, you don't need those glass tubes at all Do you remember as a kid taking a drink out of a garden hose and it was way too hot for you to drink? Well, that's exactly the same principle as a solar hot water heater In fact many many years ago when I was back in the states I used to get mother earth magazine and they had a little setup in there that long ago 30 plus years ago

[12:57] Showed how to make your own do-it-yourself solar hot water heater out of a black sears garden hose So then why did it have to be a sears rubber garden hose? Well, you'll never guess It's because like sears craftsmen tools sears had a lifetime guarantee on their best black rubber garden hoses And if you were going to use one or two of those hoses for your solar hot water heater You'd really be putting those things through their paces and you'd need that guarantee So then how did it work? Well, you'd link up a couple of until you had about a hundred foot of hose hook it up between your cold and hot water supply Turn off the gas or electric to your standard regular hot water tank Coil that hose up like a spring and lay it flat on your roof You lay it down on the pitched shingle side that most faces the sun

[13:43] And now you've got a cheap and dirty solar hot water heater For way under a hundred bucks and if the hot output water is attached directly to the input of your hot water tank You'll have a storage tank full of hot water to use at night, too Anyway, when i'm saying even 30 plus years ago There were ways you could set up your own solar hot water heater when those prefab units with special glass tubes Just didn't exist yet and you could do it for under a hundred bucks But nobody but diehard mother earth or do-it-yourselfers whatever attempt that Why would they 30 or 40 years ago? No one was talking about global warming. They were talking about global cooling. Remember that? Yeah, there were famous meteorologists and climatologists writing books about the coming ice age Besides that 30 or 40 years ago electricity gas and oil were dirt cheap

[14:33] Funny how the world has flipped upside down on that, huh? By the way, speaking of global warming man-made and otherwise You long-time listeners may have heard me say I lived in england the uk for a couple of years Of course, I made some buddies up there and not so long ago. I was talking to one of those buddies A nerdish engineer friend of mine. He was talking about what an idiot dupe that greta thurnberg is You know she who flies around on all those private jets with bono and leonardo The caprio and leads all those global warming protests The thing is my nerdy Brit buddy says if you go to one of the big london museums I can't remember which one it is He said there's a big section of that museum devoted to the time when the romans came up and conquered all of england Remember hadrian's wall a defense wall built by the romans separating england from scotland built

[15:26] 2000 years ago Anyway, my british buddy told me there are some original paintings from that era in that museum depicting The way london looked when the romans occupied it He said there are original murals and paintings depicting the streets of london with get this every so often a scattered palm tree the palm trees in london Hmm. Have you been to london dismal cold foggy at times snowy and bone chilling You know what kind of climate you need to grow palm trees? Well, that's the kind of climate they had 2000 years ago to be precise 1900 years ago Hmm way back then could it have been man-made global warming caused by horse farts and campfires way back in

[16:12] 100 ad I think some humble pie is in order there greta Yep, humble pie organic vegan hold the gluten. Oh and one more thing about those solar hot water heaters If you're thinking, you know, they just kind of heat up the water a little bit Well for one thing you size it to your family They've got them small medium and large for singles couples and family And you know, some people say they take mighty hot showers They don't want that water to come out in just a trickle and lukewarm Well, i'm here to tell you man, the sun especially here in latin america is so hot that water can be uncomfortably hot If you don't adjust the cold water along with it, it could scald you All right, moving on, you know lots of people say johnny One big reason that's holding me back from getting the hell out of dodge and getting my plan b going

[17:00] I just know i'm gonna have a problem leaving my family and my best friends back home in cleveland As if those you left behind were your only friends you'll never make another one once you're down here in latin america You'll be a lonely hermit and a sea of non-english speakers Well, you know, that's completely opposite to what i've learned by moving here to latin america Sure. I left my friends and family back home in chicago land But along the way once I got down here I met my real compatible soul mates That is guys and gals who were always on the same page as I was I recognized that when I was back on the stage, sometimes i'd have to throttle myself in front of my own friends Does that happen to you sometimes? By the way, the following is a quote I stumbled on along the way That somehow addresses the problem of losing friends and family once you get down here to latin america

[17:50] Here's the quote. Nothing is more common than for us to love our friends and relatives dearly The farther the distance we're apart Meanwhile, we tend to love them much less so in person. You know who said that benjamin franklin You know, he was an envoy to france in england for 10 years. He was the usa's first foreign ambassador Let me give you his quote again He says nothing is more common than for us to love our friends and relatives dearly at a distance Meanwhile, we love them much less so in person Man old poor richard got that right. Oh, and here's something else that's relevant to us that I learned along the way In 1760 when benjamin franklin was an envoy to paris. He said you could not drink any

[18:36] Municipal water in all of europe or even the world without getting sick except one city paris He said paris in the 1760s had some civic improvement schemes that were fantastic The streets were swept daily so they were fit to walk in unlike those of london filled with refuse and manure And the city water was made as pure as that of the best mountain spring water by filtering it Through cisterns filled with sand In fact, he said his latest trip to paris after being in london for the two years previously had done so much To invigorate his health He joked in a news article that paris very nearly enticed him to make love to his friend's wife Hmm. What a letter, huh? Franklin wrote that when he was 70 years old

[19:24] Oh that reminds me. I saw a cool t-shirt the other day It was a clueless obese latino guy wearing it get this the t-shirt said on one side Ode It's ode To out of shape millennials I thought what the hell does that mean then as he walked by me. I saw the back of the shirt. It was a little poem It said you love food and twitter squawking You text and meme when you should be walking All right, let's take an email this one's from kurtis who says he's about halfway to having his plan b in action He says johnny a couple of shows ago. You were talking about microplastics how everybody's infused with him He says johnny when I was in college. I actually used to work at a water treatment plant in boston

[20:12] So I try to keep on top of what's happening in that industry He says 20 years ago. We didn't even test for plastics or heavy metals for that matter Just bacteria and total dissolved solids He says the municipal water supplies in the united states and in fact the world are a lost cause He says anyone who drinks tap water and believes what the government says about the water supply is foolish He says imagine how people would panic if the government told him what was really going on with the nation's water supply That would cause a panic beyond what we could possibly imagine Then he goes on to say 90 of all the plastic in the ocean pollution comes from 10 countries Philippines india, malaysia, china india, india, manimar, vietnam, bangladesh, thailand and brazil

[21:00] He says we can pat ourselves on the back all we want about using paper straws Separating out our garbage waste and bringing our own bags to the grocery store Which I agree on in principle and that does minimize what goes into the landfills But we're not even remotely changing the outcome of the plastic nano pollution problem worldwide He says we really don't need to worry about global warming. We're all going to die from plastic ingestion He says when I was a kid back in the 70s and 80s, there were no small plastic bottles There were the big two or three liter coke and pepsi bottles But they were more expensive than the glass returnable bottle He says back then us kids used to make it our business to go out looking for and to find Discarded glass empties and turn them in for packs of baseball cards gum or soda

[21:48] We were always on the lookout and actively collected glass bottles aluminum cans too and considered it a minor lottery win when we'd find a case of empties in an alley behind someone's garbage cans However, I know these days in the iphone age Going back to glass anything won't make kids search for empties anymore It was a hobby middle-class kids had that will never come back He says I remember that my dad had many cases of empty beer bottles in the basement when his empties pile got really big My brother and I would steal a case of empties haul it down to the grocery store and buy coke and a couple comic books He thought we'd never find out but when we were adults he told us he knew but even if they passed a lot of Maro saying that the world had to switch over to glass bottles kids are way too entitled and would never go after empties like we did for fear of someone filming them and

[22:40] Putting it on tiktok for all their peers to sneer at these days if a kid needs five or ten bucks He just whines to his parents and they gave it to him in my day when I was a kid five or ten bucks Was like two or three bucks and that's what you got at the grocery store for a case of beer or soda pop empties Anyway, johnny being that I worked at a water purification plant. Here are my water purification tips for 2023 Like you mentioned on a previous show reverse osmosis is really good But not practical for the average homeowner. Why because chlorine kills the membrane Degrades and destroys it slowly but surely and the way all municipal systems chlorinate the hell out of their water That means every reverse osmosis water system is being degraded all the time Ro systems manufacturers know this so they put a charcoal filter

[23:28] Ahead of that is before it gets to the reverse osmosis plastic membrane But in time the charcoal filter gets depleted and the chlorine seeps through And by the time you start tasting the chlorine in your water Your arrow system has been leaking for some time who knows how long So if you're religious about changing that front end charcoal filter every six months, you'll be all right But these days it seems people aren't religious about anything. Then he signs off. Thanks for everything you do johnny expat gonna be curtis t minus six months and counting Well, thanks for that curtis and you're right. I gave up on reverse osmosis a long time ago I used to have one in chicago 30 plus years ago I knew about that membrane degradation thing and chicago chlorinated the shit out of their water

[24:15] So I didn't quite trust it then again If you got a water supply that does not chlorinate their water, you could do reverse osmosis and be good to go But like curt said people just don't keep up with changing the filters. They fall down on the maintenance thing Oh and curt speaking of collecting aluminum cans Remember when pop tops came right off the can and they were all over the place in the gutters street sparks and public spaces Then someone figured a better way ingenuity, man All right in the news today. Here's a little story. It'll make you want to get the dodge in a hurry Title of the article two rape suspects arrested at dullis international airport fleeing to el salvador Let me read the gist of it u.s customs and border protection officers arrested two salvadorian men at dullis international airport

[25:01] They say were fleeing to el salvador to avoid separate felony rape charges in maryland Officers arrested 53 year old oscar armando ernet des mata on thursday at the airport's departure gate Mata was wanted in montgomery county for felony rape and sexual abuse of a minor He was living in the country illegally after being ordered to be removed by an immigration judge in two thousand six Officials say the other guy 53 year old carlos ernesta or sega molina was apprehended early friday morning as he attempted to aboard A different flight to el salvador. He was wanted on a prince george county warrant for felony rape Hmm disgusting, right but listen to what the officers the washington airport authority police said When they caught the two fugitives quote the arrests of these two fugitives accused of rather heinous charges

[25:54] Illustrates the customs and border protections continued commitment to assist our law enforcement partners in ensuring that victims have a voice And that fugitives of serious crimes have their day in court said the port director in an official statement today Yep, and all that went down in washington d.c Wow, some of you might be thinking now justice has been served, right? Man the government what a bunch of retarded mental midget pinhead slugs Justice, huh? Let's see now. Let's revisit this. It says in 2006 the first guy was caught and convicted of rape He was ordered to leave in 2006. He's been in the country ever since The system sure seems to be working. Well, doesn't it? I mean 17 Years later and still an illegal felon walking around scot-free in the states. Good job

[26:45] You dickhead a whole american law enforcement idiots Let the guy wander around committing crimes for 17 years Yep, you guys living up in the states. You are being invaded and are being destroyed from within there. You have it reasons 5426 and seven why you just have to get the hell out of dodge while you still can Then again, you get what you deserve you voted for those assholes, didn't you? But wait a minute johnny It's not them. You're the ass johnny. They just came here because they wanted a better life You're not paying attention johnny. You haven't read the memo. You need to get that t-shirt I saw an upscale gringo wearing in the mall It said diversity is our greatest strength Or how about this t-shirt? illegal aliens diversifying america one crime at a time

[27:34] You've been listening to the expat files living in latin america If you need some help with your own plan b we can schedule a one-on-one phone or skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week long expat insider seminar in central america Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan b Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com