Changing my site around, getting a new look. The blog is just the beginning. I’ll be moving it to the front page, so this is what you’ll see when you get to my site, and embedding my gallery, and more.
Keep on coming, and excuse the sawdust.
Category Archives: General
Renaissance Thinking
I like this from Robert Genn:
The way I look at it, the idea of renaissance has eight great principles that just might be worth thinking about:
Curiosity as a way of thinking
Suspicion of authority and conventional wisdom
Respect for intelligently filtered history
Aspiration to higher levels of achievement
Vision for renewed potential in all things
Tendency to invent private systems
Reinvention and perfection of former skills
Accepting the challenge of the difficult
For my Wife
People are in the dark, they don’t know what to do
Had a little lantern oh but it got blown out too
I’m reachin out my hands. I know you are too
Cuz I just want to be in the dark with you
Every day every night all over my whole life through
Just let me be in the dark with you
Every day every night all over my whole life through
Every year what you hear goes from worse to worse
Some say the whole world suffers beneath a curse
I know less all the time. Kiss me ‘fore I prove that’s true
Just let me be in the dark with you
Every day every night all over my whole life through
I just want to be in the dark with you
Every day every night all over my whole life through
Ah the people are in the dark, they don’t know what to do
Had a little lantern oh but it got blown out too
I’m reachin out my hands. I know you are too
Cuz I just want to be in the dark with you
Every day every night all over my whole life through
Just let me be in the dark with you
Every day every night all over my whole life through
Healthy-Frugal-Eating and rising costs
Healthy, frugal eating | Wise Bread
This post on wisebread reminded me of Michael Pollan’s maxims (by quoting it, actually).
Eat food:
Start with vegetables. Get what’s cheap. If what’s cheap is locally grown and in season, so much the better. Eat more than one thing. Eat a lot.
Get some grains. Prefer whole grains, but generally buy whatever’s cheap. Get a few different things–rice, flour, cornmeal, oats. Here, too, get a lot, but as much as you can, get raw stuff and cook it yourself. Still, some amount of things prepared for you (like bread, pasta, and cereal) is okay.
Add some fruit. Fruit can expensive, but you don’t need a lot for a healthy diet–one glass of orange juice and a small apple is enough for one day. If you can afford more–berries, raisons, melons, exotic tropical fruits–that’s even better.
Add some legumes. Beans, lentils, split peas–whatever you like is fine. You don’t need a lot, but these are reasonably cheap, so if you like them, get a lot.
That’s really all you need. If you’re rich, you can get some meat, fish, milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, nuts, oil, sugar, etc.–but you don’t need any of those things. A diet with a variety of vegetables and grains plus a modest amount of fruit and legumes will give you everything you need. (Billions of people only wish they ate so well.)
As long as you eat a variety of things, it’s going to be hard to screw up too badly on a diet like that. If your only vegetable is potatoes and your only grain is white rice–well, you won’t be getting all the nutrition you should. Expand your vegetables to include a leafy one and another non-white one. Make sure at least half your grains are whole grains.
Nobody needs to starve, just remember what’s necessary.
Wow!
High fructose corn syrup, and corn oil are really bad for you. Check out this article–Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup – HFCS on femhealth.com
Andy Gilmore
Normal-Weight Obesity Linked to Heart Risk Factors
Is Your Weight In Check? Check Again
You may be in the “normal” weight range for your height but still at risk for heart disease.
Compared with their normal-weight counterparts that didn’t have excessive fat, those with normal-weight obesity had higher cholesterol and triglyceride levels, higher blood sugar levels, and higher rates of metabolic syndrome. All these factors raise one’s susceptibility to heart disease.
It’s not necessarily your BMI, but where the fat is stored that is the problem. So keep that fat off your waist, and get some exercise.
Is Water Really that good for you?
Health Benefits of Drinking Water Oversold?
Do we really need to drink 8 glasses of water a day? According to Stanley Goldfarb, MD, it ain’t necessarily so. There seems to be no clear scientific evidence for either benefits, or lack of benefits, from drinking 8 glasses of water daily, for healthy people, whose kidneys function well. Dr. Goldfarb points out that people who live in hot dry climates, or engage in vigorous exercise, need to drink more water to prevent dehydration.
The article goes on to expand on 5 different claims for drinking water that have no scientific base, or inconclusive studies, including this one:
Claim No. 3: Drinking Water Reduces Food Intake and Helps You Lose Weight
Drinking more water is widely encouraged to help weight loss, the theory being that the more water you drink, the fuller you will feel and the less you will eat. “The [medical] literature on this is quite conflicted,” Goldfarb says.
“Drinking before a meal might decrease intake [according to one study], but another study found [it did] not.”
Even so, Goldfarb calls this claim one of the most promising for further study.
So, go ahead, drink water (you do need it), but don’t expect super health, and beauty, benefits from it, the jury’s still out on that.
John Scalzi on Nuclear Fusion
Whatever » Reader Request Week 2008 #2: Technological Gifts
Asked this question:
You are the the Great God Scalzi, but sadly you are not quite omnipotent. In fact you only have the ability to create five new technologies. Which 5 technologies will you bestow upon humanity in 2008?
Scalzi replies with only one thing,fusion as a stopgap energy source, because we need a cheap supply of energy now. Good choice.
The comments on it are pretty decent also.
What–you don’t know who Scalzi
today
I spent most of my day replacing the heater/vent/light in the bathroom. What a pain in the butt. this one seems to be slightly better made than the previous two, so I’m hoping that the heater lasts longer (which is why I had to replace it). Last time I just replaced the heater, but this time, the insides are totally different, and actually the dimensions are slightly different also, so I had to do some cutting in the ceiling. Two things that suck about the unit:
- 1. The wiring box needs to be bigger, so that you can actually close it when you get all the wires in.
- 2. The way the light reflector is held in is engineered stupidly–you screw a cap nut onto a bolt until it’s tight and then keep going until the bolt unscrews itself out of the cross bar it’s in until the cap nut pulls the reflector against the bar. Why not just use a short sheet metal screw like they always have? Why make it difficult, and non-obvious? Jeez!
For those who wonder the unit is a Nutone 665RP.