Later On

He’s now an adult. Here he is on the open stage of the 2004 Samois Django Reinhardt Festival, accompanied his father, Swingamajig guitarist Don Fraser, and special guest Felix Baray on upright bass.

I wondered when public announcements would begin. Thanks to a commenter, I’ve been reading the fascinating book Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes, in which he reveals that the medical profession never had any real evidence to support the war against fat and indeed had intimations that carbs might be a problem. I highly recommend the book. The stance today, as reported in the LA Times by Marni Jameson:

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should.

But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America’s ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity,heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

“Fat is not the problem,” says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.”

It’s a confusing message. For years we’ve been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. “Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1,” says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. “Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar.”

Americans, on average, eat 250 to 300 grams of carbs a day, accounting for about 55% of their caloric intake. The most conservative recommendations say they should eat half that amount. Consumption of carbohydrates has increased over the years with the help of a 30-year-old, government-mandated message to cut fat.

And the nation’s levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease have risen. “The country’s big low-fat message backfired,” says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.”

To understand what’s behind the upheaval takes some basic understanding of food and metabolism.

All carbohydrates (a category including sugars) convert to sugar in the blood, and the more refined the carbs are, the quicker the conversion goes. When you eat a glazed doughnut or a serving of mashed potatoes, it turns into blood sugar very quickly. To manage the blood sugar, the pancreas produces insulin, which moves sugar into cells, where it’s stored as fuel in the form of glycogen.

If you have a perfectly healthy metabolism, the system works beautifully, says Dr. Stephen Phinney, a nutritional biochemist and an emeritus professor of UC Davis who has studied carbohydrates for 30 years. “However, over time, as our bodies get tired of processing high loads of carbs, which evolution didn’t prepare us for … how the body responds to insulin can change,” he says.

When cells become more resistant to those insulin instructions, the pancreas needs to make more insulin to push the same amount of glucose into cells. As people become insulin resistant, carbs become a bigger challenge for the body. When the pancreas gets exhausted and can’t produce enough insulin to keep up with the glucose in the blood, diabetes develops.

The first sign of insulin resistance is a condition called metabolic syndrome — a red flag that diabetes, and possibly heart disease, is just around the corner. People are said to have the syndrome when they have three or more of the following: high blood triglycerides (more than 150 mg); high blood pressure (over 135/85); central obesity (a waist circumference in men of more than 40 inches and in women, more than 35 inches); low HDL cholesterol (under 40 in men, under 50 in women); or elevated fasting glucose.

About one-fourth of adults has three or more of these symptoms.

“Put these people on a low-carb diet and they’ll not only lose weight, which always helps these conditions, but their blood levels will improve,” Phinney says. In a 12-week study published in 2008, Phinney and his colleagues put 40 overweight or obese men and women with metabolic syndrome on a 1,500-calorie diet. Half went on a low-fat, high-carb diet. The others went on a low-carb, high-fat diet. The low-fat group consumed 12 grams of saturated fat a day out of a total of 40 grams of fat, while the low-carb group ate 36 grams of saturated fat a day — three times more — out of a total of 100 grams of fat…

Continue reading. It’s astonishing that these medical scientists were so eager to run an experiment on the entire nation, an experiment that turned out horribly, with millions of Americans now obese and suffering insulin resistance if not outright Type 2 diabetes. Too bad that peer review doesn’t really work in validating scientific positions.

I do recommend strongly that you read Good Calories, Bad Calories. It will astonish and appall you.

A winter morning—even just a Monterey winter morning—seems like a good time to use Mitchell’s Wool Fat shaving soap. I got a good lather with the Omega 49 boar brush, although I did have to return to the soap before each pass to refresh the lather.

My iKon did its usual superb and superemely comfortable job, and with a splash of Irisch Moos I’m ready for the day.

UPDATE: Gavin in the comments was exactly right: I did not spend enough time loading the brush with soap. This morning I used same brush and soap, but brushed the soap vigorously with the wet brush for 26 seconds, and I had plenty of lather for all three passes. I think on this shaving I must have loaded the brush for about 5 seconds: not nearly enough.

And it’s quite tasty on a dark, cold, and rainy winter afternoon:

2 tsp Lucini Fiery Chili Oil in 3-qt saucepan.

Sauté in that:

1/2 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
Sprinkle of crushed red pepper
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Add 1 qt chicken stock and 2 large crowns broccoli, coarsely chopped.

Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 20-30 minutes. Use an immersion blender to blend thoroughly.

Add:

12 oz poached chicken breast, chopped
1 c cooked wheat berries

Stir, serve, enjoy.

I’m aiming for this to be three meals in all.

I didn’t realize it, but there’s a serious project underway to build an actual working model of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. You can, of course, help—not by donating money (yet), but by signing an on-line pledge of $10 if he goes ahead with it. Pledge here. Text of pledge:

Pledge “babbage”

“I will set up and run a non-profit organization dedicated to building the Analytical Engine but only if 10,000 people will donate $10/£10/€10 to fund the organization.”

— John Graham-Cumming (contact)

Deadline to sign up by: 31^st January 2011
3,882 people have signed up, 6118 more needed

More details
I will convert the Plan 28 web site (http://plan28.org/) to a non-profit organization whose goals will be:

1. To help digitize and make available in electronic form all of Charles Babbage’s notes and plans associated with the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine.

2. To fund the study of Babbage’s Analytical Engine plans to determine what best constitutes a complete design for the Engine.

3. To coordinate the building of a computer simulation of the Analytical Engine that shows its working in 3D with accurate physics.

4. To build the Analytical Engine and donate it to a museum in Great Britain for public display.

More info here.

We’re having our own winter gale, not particularly sweet, but it brought Sweet Gale to mind, and my use of the Omega Pro 49 boar made me want to use it more, so today’s shave originated there.

I’m still very much enjoying the Eclipse Red Ring—how do you like yours, Michael P?—and with the Swedish Gillette blade it provided three very smooth passes. A splash of Alt Innsbruck, and I venture into the storm. Bravely.

I want to test my mastery of personal food management, so I decided to try more daring dishes, though I still am in weight-loss mode. Perhaps because it’s the holiday season, I want some celebrating with food—but celebrating with quality rather than quantity.

So first up was a rib-eye steak. I decided that in the fat from the steak, I could sauté some mushrooms and shallots and 1/3 cup of the cooked wheat berries (as the starch).

I bought a nice-looking steak, which turned out to be 14 oz. I thought about cutting it half, but was really uncomfortable with that:  7 oz of steak is essentially two servings. Then I realized I could as easily cut it into thirds, which cheered me up a lot: 14/3 = 4.7 oz, which is a reasonable—indeed, generous—serving. And the piece I cut by eye weighed exactly 4.7 oz. (This is me being smug.)

I put the cast-iron skillet in the oven, turned on the oven to 475ºF and let skillet and oven come to temperature, dropped the piece of steak into the hot skillet (use mitts with the skillet), and let it cook in the oven for 4 minutes. It didn’t throw off much fat at all, so I cut a 2-tsp chunk of butter, and when I turned the steak, I added the butter, stirred it until it melted, stirred in the thinly sliced shallots and shiitakes. A brief sauté, then all of that goes back into the oven for 5 minutes more.

It seemed done and delicious. My weight the morning before had been 208.0 lbs, then the morning of the steak dinner 209.3 lbs — no biggie, just variation — but I figured if I had true personal food management kung-fu, a meal built on first principles would work. And indeed: this morning my weight is 208.0 lbs again.

I did, however, omit the wheat berries. Instead, I had some salad left over from lunch, and the salad had some wheat in it. Still: on first test, being a little more venturesome with the foods selected but still following the template: that works.

So today I kick it up a notch: half a duck breast (5.5 oz) sautéed in the skillet on the (fork-pierced) fat side until the fat starts to render, then add 1/4 thinly sliced large sweet onion, 1/2 thinly sliced green bell pepper, and the sliced stems from last night’s shiitakes, along with 1/3 c. cooked wheat berries. Continue to sauté the duck on the fat side for about 7 minutes, meanwhile, stirring and turning the veg and wheat as they cook. Turn duck and sauté on the meat side for 6 minutes.

Right now I’m letting it cool, but it seems sound: protein, starch, veg. I’m counting it as 2 fats.

I’m interested in tomorrow’s weigh-in, because tonight I’m having another 4.7-oz piece of the steak, probably as a stir-fry with chanterelles and shallots and wheat berries.

UPDATE: After thinking about it, I am having the steak another night. For tonight, I feel I’d get a better balance by making a salad with 4 oz poached shrimp and 1/3 c cooked wheat berries, along with the salad greens, chopped scallions, and low-fat miso dressing. I got half a pound of large shrimp (in the shell), and that turned out to be exactly 8 shrimp: pretty easy to divide them into 4-oz servings. For the salad, I cut each into three pieces.

UPDATE 2: The dinner salad turned out to be an excellent idea, and I wondered whether I should in general go for a lunch/dinner contrast of some sort:

Light/Heavy
Simple/Complex
Spicy exotic/Comfort food
Wet (soup)/Dry (roasted)
Hot/Chilled
Crunchy/Smooth
Fat/Lean

UPDATE 3: I think I have it: this morning, after yesterday’s duck-breast lunch and shrimp salad dinner, I weigh 207.5 lbs. So I can eat celebratory foods and still lose weight.

I almost wish I didn’t already have a Dutch oven so I could do this.

Heck, I may do it anyway.

Mark Bittman blogs:

If you’re not already anti-factory-farming, this will do it: The Humane Society just released an undercover investigation (watch the video if you can stomach it, or scroll down the link to find the full report) into the obscene abuses of female breeding pigs and piglets by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest (and probably most profitable) producer of pork. The video leaves me pretty much speechless.(More links here, at Vegan.com.)

I’m usually not one to cry "boycott," but if you, like Paula Deen, are a Smithfield supporter – in fact, if you’re still eating industrially raised pork (or chicken or beef or fish for that matter) – get real. Any industry (and Smithfield is hardly alone, though it does seem to be performing most egregiously) that operates with such infuriating disregard for the welfare of their animals deserves all the trouble we can muster.

In controlling behavior, the usual rule is to remove as many barriers as possible to the behavior you want (example: desired behavior is buy a soda pop from the vending machine; barriers removed are the requirement to have coins in the exact change, then to have enough coins (machine makes change), then bills will do (machine recognizes bills and makes change), and lately, to accept credit/debit cards as well—a succession of barriers removed) and to install barriers to the behavior you don’t want—and it’s this latter idea that Trent Ham addresses in this useful post:

Put up some passive barriers.

About a year and a half ago, Ramit Sethi wrote a great guest post at Get Rich Slowly entitled The Psychology of Passive Barriers: Why Your Friends Don’t Save Money, Eat Healthier, or Clean Their Garages. It put a term – “passive barrier” – on something I’d been using in my life for quite a long time.

A passive barrier is simply something in your life that makes the normal activity more difficult. I’ll give you a list of ten of them – and then we’ll look at each one in a bit of detail.

1. Not having the television remote on the table next to the television.
2. Not having internet access from your computer.
3. . . .

. . .

10. . . .

Let’s see how each of these can help your life.

1. Not having the television remote on the table next to the television.
If you find yourself constantly burning your evenings channel surfing, one great way to make that a little more difficult is to simply take the remote to bed with you and plop it on your bedside table. Then, the next evening, when you find yourself settling in for some television… no remote, and it’s on the other side of the house. When you compare the thought of going all the way over there to get your remote versus the option of doing something else that needs to be done, suddenly the non-television task seems more worthwhile.

2. Not having internet access from your computer.
If you find yourself burning too much time surfing the web, just pull the cable out of the back of your computer. Then, the next time you sit down to surf, you’ll have to ask yourself if it’s really worthwhile. Should you actually get down there and plug it in … or should you find something else to do that’s more productive?

3. . . .

Continue reading.

I’m reading William McNeill’s fascinating book The Pursuit of Power: Technology, armed force, and society since A.D. 1000. Highly recommended, and its well with The Horse, The Wheel, and Language by continuing the story of mankind’s wars against mankind. The contrasting stories of military force and commercial enterprise developed in China vs. Europe is particularly interesting.

In passing, I’m using the Pagekeeper bookmark, which I like a lot. I have several now, holding my place in several different books I’m reading. Like this:

The poll, with results as of now:

Thank you for voting!

No — Being gay is about someone’s sexual preference, not their patriotism, acceptance of duty and their love of country. (59.61%)

Undecided — We’re in a war in Afghanistan, and I’m not sure that this is the right time to undo something that will affect our men and women in combat. (3.65%)

Yes — At the core of an effective military is trust, and allowing a lifestyle that might cause some members of our military to feel uncomfortable cuts to the heart of that trust. (35.59%)

Other (post a comment) (1.15%)

Total Votes:  (48,421)

I’m also surprised to read reasons along the lines of "allowing a lifestyle that might cause some members of our military to feel uncomfortable cuts to the heart of that trust." The idea that, during military service, all members of the military must feel comfortable at all times… well, it staggers me. I would think that the lifestyle of front-line combat produces conditions of extreme discomfort, including rage, terror, loss of limbs, and even the loss of life itself. The notion that the military life is suitable for people who do not wish to feel uncomfortable… well, from what planet do these aliens come, to have such a belief?

I caught myself having a bite that was between meals and not a snack. I had not had a "bite" problem—not even much of an impulse to quash—for several days, and here I was reflexively chewing the bite. I realized that it had slipped in through an unconscious loophole, on the legalistic grounds that it was not a between-meal bite but a late bit of lunch. (It was a bite of leftover lunch salad.)

I had to stomp that down immediately, and I made it internally clear that ANY bite taken after a meal is over, even if the bite could have been part of the meal, is NOT allowed.

I don’t think I’ll have that problem again. Also, I’ll discard or store leftovers immediately after I finish the meal so that they are not casually available.

Still learning, but getting there.

A strong blow against bigotry and ignorance. With something like 70% of voters in favor of killing DADT, Congress briefly overcame its timidity and acted.

Behold my own copy of the Eclipse Red Ring razor, loaded here with a Swedish Gillette blade. After a wonderful Tangerine & Spearmint lather, worked up by the Omega 49 boar brush from QED’s soap, the Red Ring delivered three smooth and flawless passes. A splash of Royall Mandarin, and we’re good to go.

Dan Colman at Open Culture:

Since 2004, Google has digitized more than 15 million books, mostly to build its Google Books service. But yesterday Google Labs released a nice little spinoff product, the Ngram Viewer, that provides a window into how we have historically used words, and what these usages say about our culture.

This new visualization tool lets you map out the usage of a given word, or series of words, over a 200 year period (1800 – 2008). For example, the Ngram Viewer shows us that we think less about  “war” these days, as compared to the 1940s and 1960s, and more about “terrorism.” (Click the links to “war” and “terrorism” and you will see what I mean.) Similarly, the English speaking world has recently renewed its love affair with the dog vis-a-vis cats. And if you invested in salsa and bailed on ketchup in 1980, you would be a pretty wealthy person right now.

Overall, the Ngram database contains roughly 5.2 million books (a subset of the larger Google Books database), with some 500 billion words, and it features texts in Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. Get more details here.

Compare, for example, the usage rates of two words: "man" and "woman".

Mantic ask which of the two razors, the Merkur Hefty Classic (aka “HD”) and the Edwin Jagger DE8x, is more aggressive. So today I thought I’d do a comparison shave.

First, of course, I celebrated with a face-full of that wonderfully aromatic Sweet Gale shaving soap. I got a splendid lather with the Omega artificial badger.

I loaded the HD with a new Swedish Gillette blade, and in the DE87 I had a Swedish Gillette blade that had been used only once. I thought that was a fair comparison.

I shaved one side with the HD, the other with the DE87. They are very much alike, but I would say that the HD seems a tiny bit more aggressive (and not quite so smooth). But, honestly, either will work. Maybe the DE87 just appeals to me, so that YMMV.

A splash of Pashana, and I’m good to go.

When I want not to spend money, I generally avoid going into stores. That way I avoid getting entangled in desire. I’ve noticed that the same thing seems to be happening with my food: I actually make operational decisions about what to eat only twice a day.

The first step that I took was to avoid even so much as a taste of food except for mealtimes and the two snacks. So now I have to deal with food only five times a day.

Three of those are constant: The two snacks are always a piece of fruit, and breakfast is always oat groats with a hard-boiled egg and pepper sauce. So for those meals I simply eat the food without having to make a real decision.

The only decisions—the only time I am constructively interacting with food—are lunch and dinner, and for those two meals I have templates: a serving each of protein, starch, and veggies with condiments as desired (low-calorie condiments, of course). I have to decide format (saute, soup, salad, etc.) and pick out the components, but I know what I’m doing and the direction I’m taking.

So I’m doing this program by working with food just twice a day. And if I control those two meals, everything is copasetic.

As you have undoubtedly picked up, my way of learning something is to explain it to someone. It’s best to explain it to someone who actually knows the subject so they can correct misunderstandings, but people who know a subject are generally not very interested in listening to a beginner’s explanation. So I generally write explanations to myself (in my journal), and I also write explanations in the blog, but I’m mostly explaining to myself.

And, as you’ll note, I keep worrying the topic, approaching it from various angles, until I feel that I really have it.

So last night I had a realization: I had not known that personal food management was a learnable skill. I knew that the diet counselors would help keep me on track, but I had no idea that I would (through a combination of instruction and practice) actually learn the skill so that I can approach the management of my diet as serenely, in Mark Twain’s words, as a Christian holding four aces. I never thought I’d know what I was doing because I didn’t realize what there was to know. And I never thought that I would, in effect, graduate from the course of training able to knowledgably manage my own diet.

It’s a great feeling.

208.4 lbs this morning, 19 min on the Nordic Track, and soon off to Pilates.

And, regarding Pilates, take a look at this site. Or Pilates instructor has been telling us how our muscles are connected, one to another, to make long connections utilized under loads. The book Anatomy Trains (which comes with a fascinating DVD-ROM) has wonderful diagrams and explains these connections. Extremely interesting stuff.

There’s been some vigorous discussion about the best beginner razor—assuming that the Merkur HD is no longer the top choice (see the comments on this post). I was plumping for the iKon open-comb, the most comfortable razor I have, but the commenters pointed out that an absolute beginner in traditional shaving, unsure whether it will work out for him, is probably loath to spend $80 on a razor.

The Edwin Jagger DE8x series has a good price point ($32, noticeably less than the typical price of $40 for the HD) and the new Jagger head (designed by Neil Jagger working with Mühle) is truly wonderful. So I got one, the DE87 shown above, and used it this morning with a new Astra Superior Platinum blade.

But first: a word about brushes and the lather. I read on the Pogonotomy forum a comment on the Omega Lucretia Borgia artificial badger brush (shown above). The commenter mentioned in passing how this brush is too soft to work well on hard soaps.

That is a common misconception, and I don’t understand its origin. I suspect the comment is most frequently made by men trying to make a lather with hard water, for in fact the Lucretia Borgia creates a fine lather. I picked MWF this morning because many consider it a soap hard to lather, and I had no problem at all in generating an absolutely wonderful lather. True, the tap water here is fairly soft. Also, I take my time to load the brush thoroughly. But softness of brush is no barrier to good lather from hard soap. I have Omega silvertips that are even softer and they make a fine lather.

So: great lather, fine razor, excellent blade, great shave: three smooth passes and a splash of St. John’s Bay Rum, and I’ll soon go to my Pilates session.