Sunday, August 10, 2014

When you've lost Alan Dershowitz...

When you've lost Alan Dershowitz ... it's pretty much time to turn in your “progressive” membership card.  Even the progressive elite are starting to realize that Jimmy Carter is a hypocritical, pompous, lying, and corrupt son of a bitch...

Fish oil: the new snake oil?

Fish oil: the new snake oil?  Reader and friend Simon M. passes along this article (caution: link goes to Slate, which may cause conservatives' heads to explode) and comments:
“I enjoyed your drink when you're thirsty blog. Makes perfect sense to me.

Eat when you're hungry works too. :)” 
I totally agree, but I'll extend it a bit: eat when you're hungry, and eat whatever you want to – in moderation.  Most of what I eat is relatively healthy (according to nutritionists), because that's what I like.  But ... there are plenty of things I like – and eat – that most nutritionists (at the moment, anyway) would call unhealthy: rare (or raw) beef, premium ice cream, Braunschweiger, etc., etc.

Back when I was still employed, I was 40 or 50 pounds overweight.  Every time I went to my doctor (who has known me for 25 years or so) for a physical, I asked him if there are things about my diet I should change, or if I should be making an effort to get more exercise.  His answer was always the same: there was nothing wrong with me, so whatever I was doing wasn't causing any problems, so don't worry about it.

Now that I'm retired, I'm getting much more exercise, sitting around far less, but my eating habits haven't changed at all.  I've dropped about 40 pounds, and I think my weight is still headed down.  At the time of my last physical, I'd dropped about 20 pounds.  My doctor, upon hearing about my change in lifestyle, was sure it was due to the exercise – and once again, he found nothing for me to worry about.  It's much easier now to go up stairs and to hike, and I feel better in general.  But ... absolutely none of that is down to diet.  It's entirely due to exercise, so far as I can tell.  I'm tracking my weight now, though (at my doctor's advice), just to be sure that it's not changing in some way that's not in sync with my level of exercise.  He warns me that come wintertime, when likely I'll be sitting on my butt a lot, I should expect that weight to pile back on...

Air quality egg...

Air quality egg (updated)...  We now have an Air Quality Egg (AQE) up and running at our house in Paradise.  The AQE is an air quality monitoring system that reports its data up to the web.  Our AQE monitors temperature, humidity, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and particulate concentration (very fine dust).  The particulate sensor has a problem of some kind (I have a query into the maker about that), but the rest of it seems to be working fine.

Update: the particulate sensor is now working (all it took was unplugging and replugging the sensor board).  This sensor was one of the main reasons I picked the AQE in the first place, as Cache Valley (especially the northern part of it, near Logan) has occasional significant particulate pollution during temperature inversions in the winter.  The data right now is showing between 1 and 3.5 million particles per cubic meter (multiply the values on the graph by 3,534 to convert to pcs/m3), which is within the limits for the lowest grade of clean room – pretty good!  We'll see what happens to us this coming winter when there's an inversion.  Our very limited experience last winter, when we were house-hunting, is that the southernmost extent of haze (particulates) caused by the inversions is around the town of Hyrum, four miles to our north.  We're hoping this proves to be a generalizable phenomenon...

The community web site currently displays only temperature, humidity, NO2, and CO.  The full data set is available at Xively for all the AQEs.  Our AQE's page on the community site is here (note: the temperature is in degrees Celsius), and our Xively data feed is here (click the “graphs” link to see a timeline for the data).

Break out the Kleenex...

Break out the Kleenex...  Grandpa's not alone any more...

Earthrise: the backstory...

Earthrise: the backstory...  Via my card-carrying, pissed-off, ancient-American mom.  There were quite a few details in this short documentary that I had never heard before – most especially that the photo almost didn't happen!

My mom is a little more pissed off than usual this morning, because she had to call me to rescue her from a confusing (and deliberately misleading) Java update process left her with an unwanted, crapware-ridden Ask toolbar, and home pages reset to the Ask site.  The folks at Oracle ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for loosing this evil upon the world.  We have this message for the Java product manager responsible for this horror: may the concerted efforts of 100 Congressmen be applied to your next software update...

Meerkat overload...

Meerkat overload...  Meet the family...

Cute overload...

Cute overload...

What she said...

What she said...  Neo-neocon echoes my feelings about Obama's speeches...

Oh, noz!

Oh, noz!  Oh, say it ain't so!  My favorite non-alcoholic drink is intoxicating...