Private Mars Rocket II

No Rotary today. It's the last week of the outgoing President's term, and since he had nothing of importance to do, we're just skipping it. This is good - I have an inspection on my new house this afternoon. So, in honor (?) of that, have some random randomness.

A) There are a lot of TVs and movies in which the characters are shooting guns, yet one rarely if ever sees the actors wearing hearing protection. How do said actors avoid going deaf? Even blanks make noise.

B) From Gin and Tacos, reflections on why some people are obese. Tl;dr version = for some people, eating is the highlight of their day. When I was in the Navy and the ship was underway, I was in this boat, pun intended.

C) Regarding the Snowden affair, my thoughts closely mirror those of Lawyers, Guns and Money.

D) A marker for further discussion - arguments from my opponent believes something. I find these extremely annoying.

I had a hankering for Chinese at lunch today. I was unable to find a Chinese restaurant, so I went to Panda Express, where I ordered my usual - fried rice, orange chicken and beef with broccoli, washed down with a Diet Coke.

Now, I have no illusions that orange chicken is anything but bad for you, but the placard of 400 calories per serving got my attention. So, thanks to the miracle of Google and a slow afternoon, I ran the calories as per Panda's handy online calculator. The result? 1010 calories! Ouch!

More gym, less Panda.

I will be on the road Monday looking at branches, so I'm posting some link salad today for your entertainment.

A) Jim Wright says that Mitt Romney is either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid for naming Paul Ryan as his running mate.

B)An interesting meeting with the man who invented the first internally programmable computer.

C)As jeff_duntemann said, here are some examples from the vertical blinds school of aviation.

D) In a rare display of professional consensus, an international consortium of anthropologists, archaeologists, and molecular biologists have formally released an exasperated sigh over the popularity of the so-called “Paleo Diet” during a two-day conference dedicated to the topic.

E) The top 10 differences between white terrorists and others.

F) An interesting pictorial of really cute Faroe Island villages.

G) A reminder about the student loan "bubble:" There’s a few key factors that don’t apply at all to student loan debt. Assets in typical asset bubbles are transferable and they are appreciable and they are held by private entities, none of which applies to student loans.

In this case, that's a literal question. I've been going to the same grocery store for a decade, and I've memorized where things are, or at least "where things I buy are." For various reasons, including but not limited to tore-up kitchen and being out of town, I haven't gone there for a month or so.

Now I return to find that they are remodeling. People, I spent a decade learning this store. Don't move it now!

I suspect that at least one move is driven by the store's suppliers. See, it used to be that Coke and Pepsi were on shelves facing each other. Since I drink the diet versions of either, I'd buy whichever was on sale that week. Now, Coke is on one shelf, and you need to walk behind that shelf (past an increased selection of store-brand stuff) and over to the next aisle for Pepsi. Aha, I say, aha!

Anybody remember the old Leonard Nimoy I-need-to-pay-the-bills-SOMEHOW vehicle "In Search Of...?" You know, the one where Nimoy did the voice-over for all those quacks looking for Atlantis or UFOs? Well, this is my reboot of that concept.

1) It turns out that Groundhog Day is related (vaguely) to Imbolc AKA Candlemas. There were a number of pagan and Christian festivals half-way between winter solstice and spring, largely devoted to answering the question "do we have enough food to make it to spring?"

2) A two-fer from jaylake. First, for most of human history, there were multiple species of human wandering around. Second, 25 things I learned from opening a bookstore.

3) So, I dragged my butt to the health club Wednesday, and will again today. I am officially Out. Of. Shape. Well, unless "round and pudgy" counts as a shape. I'm not trying to be Mister Universe, but avoiding Mister Couch Spud would be nice.

4) I bought and tried the original Fiber One cereal. You know, the stuff that's heavily-advertised. It looked like mouse turds and tasted like sawdust with a little sugar. Yuck. The non-original AKA "good" flavors have about the same amount of sugar in them as Froot Loops. Back to Cheerios am I.

5) I sent out about 250 postcards to various book stores touting my book. At a buck a card, including postage, it was cheap. At least one card was received and will become an order. One down and 249 to go.

1) More good news on the bio-fuel front: using E.Coli to speed up fuel production

2) A long but interesting article on how saltpeter was used to make ice cream.

3) Just a reminder the "Climategate" was a crock: Michael Mann cleared AGAIN of all wrongdoing.

4) David Brin with some interesting thoughts on Seasteading and World Government.

5) The perils of flying while black and the idiocy of our current air travel "security."

6) On a lighter note, my Mom makes the local newspaper.

I'm overweight. Not massively so, but still, it's not debatable. Like most people, I'm overweight because my caloric intake exceeds my caloric output.

Recognizing the fact that I'm overweight, I looked around for a solution. I came to the realization that controlling my weight can be thought of as a game. The trick, then, is to find a game that I like to play.

Now, this could be a traditional game, like, basketball. I know how to play basketball, and played it at school all through grade school and high school. But I don't actually like to play basketball. I played in school because that's what one did in a small Central Illinois town, and when the season was over, I didn't play.

Fortunately, I've found a game that I like to play, and it's called the South Beach Diet. Essentially, the South Beach diet consists of several ways to reduce one's caloric intake without counting calories. Some of the rules include:

1) Avoid hidden sugar. For example, most folks drink a glass of fruit juice with breakfast. What most people don't know is that the typical glass of juice has the same amount of sugar as an equivalent amount of pop. Also, a lot of "healthy" breakfast cereals, such as raisin bran, have quite a bit of added sugar.

2) Skip the starches. Potatoes are limited to an occasional thing. (That McDonald's regular-sized order of fries is like 300 calories). Rice is only marginally better, especially white rice. I've found that a lot of places will gladly substitute steamed vegetables for a starch.

3) Processed flour is not your friend. White flour is low on nutrients and high in sugar. Wheat flour is better, although in general, baked goods should be enjoyed in moderation.

I first went on this diet about three years ago, and it worked. Last year, I stopped playing the game. Unfortunately, diets are like golf - higher scores are worse then low scores!

I wish I was AT the links, instead of writing links for blog postings. Oh well.

John Scalzi's finally got his main blog fixed. He bit the bullet and changed blogging software. At any rate, he's found a cluster of interesting stuff.

How to Fire in France is a very interesting post, outlining how one goes about actually firing somebody in France. The author, an American ex-pat, has a humorous take on it. Now, lest one think the guy's a raving Ayn Rand conservative, his other blog hobby is bashing G. W. Bush. What I found most interesting was the second comment, whereby somebody attempted to defend the asinine French rules.

Also from Scalzi (via one of his paid blogs, By The Way, are two articles about Alzheimer's. My grandfather died of that disease, so I found both of them quite interesting. One claims that Alzheimer's is a form of diabetes.

Lastly, ann_totusek found a link suggesting that low cholesterol leads to premature babies.

I think we're discovering how much we don't know about how our bodies work, and how influential diet is. I also think that we're discovering (slowly and painfully) that sex, age and even genetic disposition are important factors in what you should be eating. No, I'm not a doctor and don't even play one on TV, but there appears to be evidence that there is no one good diet for everybody.