Posts of interest to me: cooking, shaving, politics, science, cats, movies, books, ….
I’ve just published the second edition of the Guide. Quite a bit is new. You can look at the table of contents in the “preview” function at the book’s page on Lulu. It will take a while for the new book to trickle down to Amazon, so for now if you want the new edition, order it from Lulu.
At least toward foreign visitors. Look at this story by Nina Berstein in the NY Times:
He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.
But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.
Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse [the new America, under Bush; lucky he wasn't tortured as well. - LG] while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.
You really can’t get good sleep if you have obstructive sleep apnea, but if you don’t, here are some tips from Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project blog, though the tips appear on Huffington Post:
We quickly adjust to being sleep-deprived, and don’t notice that we aren’t functioning at a normal level, but lack of sleep really affects us. If you’re feeling blue or listless, try going to sleep thirty minutes earlier for a week. It can really help.
Here are tips that have helped me get good sleep:
Good habits for good sleep:
1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.
2. No caffeine after 7:00 p.m.
3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes–okay. Analyzing an article–nope.
4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.
5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. The Big Man has a new pet, a Roomba (yes, he loves his robot vacuum) that gives out so much light that I have to cover it with a pillow before bed.
6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.
If sleep won’t come:
This report is surprising. I would assume that white tea would do an even better job. Remember, BTW, that a squeeze of lemon makes green or white tea more effective by preserving the good stuff as the tea is digested.
A cup of green tea may be just what the doctor ordered if you have learning and memory problems related to obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of sleep-related breathing disorder.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) starves the body of oxygen during sleep. Persons with the condition experience pauses in breathing while sleeping. This condition can cause a drop in oxygen levels, which can affect organs of the body. OSA increases your risk for high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes, and affects cognitive function such as learning and memory.
The powerful antioxidants found in green tea may help thwart such cognitive problems, according to a study published in this month’s second issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Green tea contains compounds called polyphenols, which animal studies suggest can protect against neurodegenerative changes related to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Green tea polyphenols (GTP) work by counteracting oxidative stress in the brain. Oxidative stress is cell damage brought on by harmful molecules called free radicals. Antioxidants protect against this damage. Oxidative stress is believed to play a role in many diseases.
Signs of oxidative stress and changes in the brain have been documented among some patients with OSA, the study cites.
“OSA has been increasingly recognized as a serious and frequent health condition,” study author David Gozal, MD, professor and director of Kosair Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Louisville, says in a news release. “A growing body of evidence suggests that the adverse neurobehavioral consequences imposed by [intermittent hypoxia] stem, at least in part, from oxidative stress.”
You just can’t trust them. Article by Arlene Weintraub in Business Week:
A group of researchers at Duke University scoured 746 studies on heart stents published in medical journals over the course of a year and were shocked to discover two huge omissions. First, 83% of the papers failed to disclose whether any of the authors were paid consultants for companies, even though many journals formally require that information. And of those articles specifically describing clinical trials, 72% didn’t say who funded the research. When it comes to policing their disclosure rules, says lead author Kevin Weinfurt of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, “these journals should be doing better.”
Virtually every medical organization urges physicians to be up front about their financial ties to industry. It’s especially a concern when doctors who publish studies about drugs and medical devices receive funding from the companies that make those products. Over the past few years, a spate of safety warnings and product recalls has left journal editors fearful that company-paid researchers might be filtering their results to highlight the positive. So the publications have toughened up their disclosure policies, hoping that transparency by itself would neutralize conflicts of interest.
And I’m simply delighted to read that charring the peppers over a gas flame is NOT the way to go. Read this tutorial.
Thanks to Jack, this nice list to guide your CD acquisition.
While finishing “Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector. First, I asked Schaap to assemble the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. Such attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but “who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of the current situation,” in which music is often bought and downloaded from dubious sources. Schaap bemoaned the loss of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes and booklets. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.”
What follows is a list compiled with the help of my New Yorker colleague Richard Brody. These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music’s century-long history. Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally. We have tried not to overdo it with expensive boxed sets and obscure imports; sometimes it couldn’t be helped. We have also tried to strike a balance between healthy samplings of the innovative giants (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane, etc.) and the greater range of talents and performances.
Since the nineteen-seventies, jazz has been branching out in so many directions that you would need to list at least another hundred recordings, by the likes of Steve Coleman, Stanley Jordan, Joe Lovano, Jacky Terrasson, John Zorn, David Murray, Avishai Cohen, Béla Fleck, Eliane Elias, Roy Hargrove, Dave Douglas, Matthew Shipp, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Fat Kid Wednesdays, and many, many others. There is a suggestion below of the dazzling scope of contemporary jazz, but the focus is on the classic jazz that is Schaap’s specialty.
This reminds me of an earlier effort, the three-part series “Jazz Masterpieces” by Terry Teachout, published in Commentary magazine in November and December 1999 and January 2000. The focus of that list was specific tracks, rather than albums, but I did indeed buy all the CDs, ripped them, and assembled the tracks into an album of my own. Those three articles are worth reading, but access is to subscribers or by purchase.
I really like the Lord Platinum blade—I loaded a new one in the ivory Chatsworth and after applying the wonderful Gold Dachs Rivivage lather, worked up with the Simpsons Emperor 3 Super, I got a wonderful shave from it. The oil pass was Gessato, and the aftershave was the menthol Floïd. Very nice shave for a warm morning.
Written for the man who wants to enjoy his shave. User comment: "I bought this as a gift for my fiancé, along with a wet-shaving starting kit and a safety razor. He DEVOURED this book, and finds himself reading it again and again. He finally enjoys shaving. This book has helped him figure out so many things about wet shaving, and has recommended it to all of his friends and family. Truly a great source of information for any man."