Later On

I’ve been enjoying some movies lately. Last night I watched—and enjoyed—Despicable Me.

More interesting were some backstage musicals I watched together, and recommend: 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Broadway Melody of 1940. The first two are Warner Brothers musicals—very working-class in atmosphere and tone—and the last is an MGM musical, quite highfalutin. This is the only time Fred Astaire danced with Eleanor Powell, a shame (though I’ve read he was somewhat intimidated to dance with her). We also George Murphy, later a GOP Senator from California, stepping out. The special features, especially the one on the Gold Diggers DVD that tells us all about 42nd Street, are quite interesting and informative.

The dance routines in all three movies are wonderful.

This is an extremely intriguing idea.

Jack in Amsterdam points out this article by Roni Caryn Rabin in the NY Times:

Many of us sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day, and then go home and head for the couch to surf the Web or watch television, exchanging one seat and screen for another. Even if we try to squeeze in an hour at the gym, is it enough to counteract all that motionless sitting?

A mounting body of evidence suggests not.

Increasingly, research is focusing not on how much exercise people get, but how much of their time is spent in sedentary activity, and the harm that does.

The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one’s health that physical activity doesn’t produce much benefit.

The study followed 4,512 middle-aged Scottish men for a little more than four years on average. It found that those who said they spent two or more leisure hours a day sitting in front of a screen were at double the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who watched less. Those who spent four or more hours of recreational time in front of a screen were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause. It didn’t matter whether the men were physically active for several hours a week — exercise didn’t mitigate the risk associated with the high amount of sedentary screen time.

The study is not the first to suggest that sedentary activities like television viewing may be harmful. A study last year found that men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars were more likely to die of heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less, even if they exercised. And a 2009 study reported that young children who watch one and a half to five and a half hours of TV a day have higher blood pressure readings than those who watch less than half an hour, even if they are thin and physically active.

Another small study found that when overweight adults cut their TV time in half, they burned more calories than those who watched five hours or more a day. Children whose TV time is cut tended to eat less, but that wasn’t true for adults. And the light activities adults filled their time with, like reading and playing board games, actually burned more calories than watching TV.

In both the United States and Britain, people are spending three to four hours a day on average watching television, said the study’s author, Emmanuel Stamatakis, of the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London.

“This is excessive,” he said. “It is more than 20 percent of total waking time for most people.” And, he added, “it’s 100 percent discretionary.”

During the study’s follow-up period, from 2003 to 2007, . . .

Continue reading.

That’s a nice milestone to hit. 24 lbs to goal.

My GOPM lunch and dinner, by layer from the bottom:

6 scallions, sliced thinly
1/3 c rice
8 oz boneless pork chops, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces
5-spice powder, salt, and pepper on the pork
a sprinkling of crushed red pepper
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thinly (I used orange, in fact)
6 kumquats, each sliced cross-ways into several slices
6 asparagus, chopped
1/2 can sliced water chestnuts, drained.
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 head cabbage, chopped
2″ piece of ginger, grated

Mix in small bowl:

2 Tbsp soy sauce or ponzu sauce
2 Tbsp sherry (I use Amontillado)
2 Tbsp vinaigrette

Whisk together and pour over the contents of the pot. Cover pot, put it into 450º F oven for 45 minutes. Serves two (or one for two meals).

The campus offices were all closed, but I did wander around a bit and found the library, student center, bookstore, and so on. I’ll go back on Tuesday, when they’ll be open. It’s a bit smaller than I had pictured.

I’m about to put in the oven a repeat of the chicken, mushroom, and spinach dish, though I’ll do everything I did yesterday and also add some chopped asparagus on top. This time I’m using rice for the starch.

Molly is simply enormous.

When I was at the grocery store, I got to talking to a guy who was curious about the duck eggs and I told him what I knew. He ended up buying a couple. I told him that I would definitely be eating more, but only after reaching goal. Today I’m 201.0 lbs, so I’ve now lost 49 lbs, which I told him—I could see he was dying to know—and he made a comment about how it takes willpower.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since. I think that’s a mistake. I came home, fired up Scrivener, and wrote a draft of an introduction to the book I’m planning about this project, emphasizing that, with the right approach, willpower is not such an issue.

Find out here. It takes just 25 minutes and supports (and contributes to) scientific research. Go on, give it a go.

A bad sign of what our government has now become:

For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it’s sometimes easy to lose perspective about just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are.  One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary.  Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security’s practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products — laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like — copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it.  Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime.  It’s completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained.  There’s no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing.  And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse — not even to have their property returned to them.

When you really think about it, it’s simply inconceivable that the U.S. Government gets away with doing this.  Seizing someone’s laptop, digging through it, recording it all, storing the data somewhere, and then distributing it to various agencies is about the most invasive, privacy-destroying measure imaginable.  A laptop and its equivalents reveal whom you talk to, what you say, what you read, what you write, what you view, what you think, and virtually everything else about your life.  It can — and often does — contain not only the most private and intimate information about you, but also information which the government is legally barred from accessing (attorney/client or clergy/penitent communications, private medical and psychiatric information and the like).  But these border seizures result in all of that being limitlessly invaded.  This is infinitely more invasive than the TSA patdowns that caused so much controversy just two months ago.  What kind of society allows government agents — without any cause — to seize all of that whenever they want, without limits on whom they can do this to, what they access, how they can use it:  even without anyone knowing what they’re doing? 

This Homeland Security conduct has finally received some long-overdue attention over the past several months as a result of people associated with WikiLeaks or Bradley Manning being subjected to it.  In July, Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer, was detained for hours at Newark Airport, had his laptop and cellphones seized (the cellphones still have not been returned), and was told that the same thing would happen to him every time he tried to re-enter the country; last week, it indeed occurred again when he arrived in Seattle after a trip to Iceland, only this time he was afraid to travel with a laptop or cellphone and they were thus unable to seize them (they did seize his memory sticks, onto which he had saved a copy of the Bill of Rights).  The same thing happened to 23-year-old American David House after he visited Bradley Manning in the Quantico brig and worked for Manning’s legal defense fund:  in November, House returned to the U.S. from a vacation in Mexico with his girlfriend and her family, was detained, and had his laptop and memory sticks seized (they were returned only after he retained the ACLU of Massachusetts to demand their return).

But this is happening to far more than people associated with WikiLeaks.  As a result of writing about this, I’ve spoken with several writers, filmmakers, and activists who are critics of the government and who have been subjected to similar seizures — some every time they re-enter the country.  In September, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of these suspicionless searches; one of the plaintiffs on whose behalf they sued is Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old dual French-American citizen who had his laptop seized at the border when returning to the U.S. last year: . . .

Continue reading.

Ed Brayton:

Here’s a new twist on the already appalling reality of asset forfeiture in this country, and it happened right here in Michigan. Oakland County authorities raided a medical marijuana club in Oak Park this week, seizing $20,000 in cash from employees and patients — but without filing any charges against any of them. They were in compliance with state law, so no charges were filed.

But the police still seized all that cash, not only from the organization but from the wallets of every patient in the place. The Detroit Free Press reports:

Oakland County authorities raided the Oak Park headquarters and retail complex of medical marijuana entrepreneur and advocate Rick Ferris, 46, of Berkley but made no arrests “because none of us were breaking the law,” Ferris’ spokesman Rick Thompson said.

“It seemed more like intimidation than anything else,” Thompson said after the raid Wednesday…

In Wednesday’s raid, officers wore bulletproof vests, and one wore a mask, said attorney Jim Rasor, who represents Big Daddy’s Enterprises. But they took nothing except about $20,000 in cash, gathered from receipts, the offices and wallets of about 10 employees and patients, he said.

The sheriff gets 80% of the money seized, under state drug forfeiture laws that give the rest to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, said Rasor, who also is an elected Royal Oak city commissioner.

“I know, as a public official, that the public sector is running out of money. But it’s just plain wrong to finance your operation on the backs of people who are ill (or) providing a safe alternative to obtaining medical marijuana on the street,” Rasor said.

This is more than intimidation, it’s nothing more than legalized theft by the government. The asset forfeiture laws allow the government to seize cash or property that is either gained through a criminal enterprise or involved in the commission of a crime. But because the forfeiture is called civil rather than criminal, they can seize the assets without even charging you with the crime in question, much less convicting you of it. Worse yet, the burden of proof is then on the victim of the seizure, not on the government.

That’s pretty bad, but even worse: if you read the story in the Detroit Free Press on-line, they removed all of the story beginning in the middle of the third paragraph quoted above, starting with the sentence that begins “But they took nothing except about $20,000 in cash…”.

This seems consistent with Glenn Greenwald’s point that journalism in the US has become a government propaganda and protection organ. I did write to the reporter who wrote the story to ask about the editing, but no reply as yet.

Greenwald explains the change in American journalism, with good examples, in this column, well worth reading.

The Spiced Rum tallow & lanolin Prairie Creations shaving soap is quite nice, and the Wee Scot ginned up plenty of lather for three passes. The Wee Scot is a fully functional shaving brush, not just a novelty.

The Gillette red-tipped Super Speed with a Wilkinson blade did a good job, though the blade seemed to struggle a bit so after the shave the blade went into the blade safe.

A splash 0f Lustray Spice aftershave, and I’m off on errands.

Trying out another homemade recipe using the Glorious One-Pot Meals technique of building layers in a 2-qt cast-iron Dutch oven and then popping that into a 450º F oven for 45 minutes or so. This one should be for 45 minutes based on my first time making the recipe. The layers, in chronological order (thus the first layer listed is at the bottom):

1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 c whole-wheat Israeli couscous
1 Tbs water, to wet the couscous
8 oz chicken breast cut into chunks
salt and pepper
6 domestic white mushrooms, sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thinly
Fresh spinach, washed, drained, and chopped (as much as will fit: it cooks down a lot)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 small Meyer lemon, cut into chunks
1 small yellow crookneck squash, chopped coarsely

Whisk together in a small bowl:

2 Tbsp vinaigrette (I used Bragg All Natural Ginger & Sesame Salad Dressing)
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Pour that over the top. Cover, and put in 450º F oven for 45 minutes.

Two meals is the result.

Let’s see how that works.

UPDATE: I knew that my own recipe would taste better. This was great, so far as I was concerned. The original recipe had one problem:  too much liquid (probably because a lot of liquid cooks out of the lemon, squash, mushrooms, and spinach). I have now changed the recipe above so that it’s correct, but obviously recipes are made to be tinkered with, right?

UPDATE 2: I just remembered that Yarnell writes that you can readily use frozen spinach: just place it at the right layer. Frozen spinach will probably add even more water, so I would skip the 1 Tbsp at the beginning, too.

UPDATE 3: I’m going to make it again but using 1/2 c. rice as the starch.

UPDATE 4: Just made it again, the rice variation. For me, 1/2 c rice is too much—I will go with 1/3 c next time. (I do recall that this is for two meals, but 1/2 c rice raw is a lot of rice cooked.) The fresh spinach I used had sat out overnight and was probably drier than yesterday, so I’ll add a bit more water in such circumstances, and it also occurs to me that the rice might require more water. Because I was a little short on spinach, I chopped up several stalks of asparagus and put those on top, along with the squash, minced garlic, and chopped lemon.

The Eldest observes that a little crushed red pepper would go well in a lot of such recipes, and that tempeh might work extremely well as the protein since (a) you can’t overcook it, and (b) steaming improves flavor. She sent along this idea:

Pork strips or tempeh or firm tofu
Cabbage in large chunks
sliced carrots
Chopped green onions
chopped garlic
grated ginger
soy sauce
sherry
walnut pieces (for texture)
chopped water chestnuts (for texture)
chopped bell peppers
sliced mushrooms
Parboiled brown rice

Doesn’t that sound tasty? I certainly will try this. Parboiling the brown rice (rice in cold water, bring water to boil and boil rice a couple of minutes, then drain) is to make it cook in the 45 minutes this method uses. You could go longer, of course, but by the time brown rice is done (it takes close to an hour), the vegetables will be inedible.

But you can see how you can get into this—and filling the little pot is actually quite a bit of fun. From the health point of view, the starch and protein layers don’t use up much of the pot, with the result that you get a LOT of vegetables—all to the good. This method requires little fat—2 tsp for the whole pot seems plenty, but even 1 Tbsp (3 tsp) wouldn’t be bad.

Because you’re building the entire meal (for two, or two meals for one) in the pot, you eat everything you cook: no leftovers. And because you’re building by layer, it seems easier not to get carried away and, for example, double the amount of protein you’d use. Measure and layer, and Bob’s your uncle: a healthful meal with a lot of vegetables.

Here’s the only 2-quart enameled cast-iron Dutch oven I’ve been able to find.

The CoreAlign is a strange little machine, but it really seems to do the job—at least if you also have an instructor’s help. My Pilates studio has one of these. Take a look:

And another look:

What’s sort of strange is working at some exercise for a while and then suddenly discovering (as it were) the muscle you need to use in the exercise. Makes a world of difference.

Useful information in Science News, by Bruce Bower:

High school and college students go from choking to smoking on big tests by writing about their exam fears beforehand, a new study suggests.

In what amounts to a Heimlich maneuver for choking under pressure, writing down test-related worries for 10 minutes before taking a major exam appears to dislodge those concerns and clear the way for higher achievement, say psychologists Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock, both of the University of Chicago.

Writing about unspoken fears of failure and related anxieties lets students reevaluate such concerns and keep them at bay during a test, Ramirez and Beilock propose in the Jan. 14 Science.

“One bout of writing about test anxiety can substantially increase students’ test scores and prevent the dreaded choke,” Beilock says.

Ramirez and Beilock provide the first evidence of people reaping immediate benefits from expressive writing, remarks psychologist James Pennebaker of the University of Texas at Austin. His earlier research linked writing about personal conflicts and traumas over several days at the start of a college semester to improved physical health and final grades by semester’s end.

Researchers have also found that depressed people who write about distressing personal experiences over several months ruminate progressively less about melancholy topics.

It’s unclear whether students plagued by test anxiety can repeatedly raise their test scores via expressive writing, Beilock notes.

Pennebaker agrees. “As with any novel intervention, there is a strong possibility that the effectiveness of the writing exercise diminishes over time,” he says.

Over two consecutive school years at a Midwestern high school, Ramirez and Beilock had teachers randomly assign one of two writing exercises to a total of 106 ninth graders about to take final exams in biology. Each student spent 10 minutes writing thoughts and feelings about the upcoming exam or a description of a biology topic that they suspected wouldn’t be on the exam.

On questionnaires administered six weeks before the final exam, 54 students had reported constant worries about taking, and potentially failing, tests.

Among test-anxious students, those who wrote about exam-related feelings scored an average of 6 percent higher on the final than those who wrote about biology topics. Expressive writers received a B+ average on the final, versus a B- for biology writers.

Worriers who wrote about their feelings scored as highly on the final as students who . . .

Continue reading.

Fascinating post at BruceOnShaving.com.

There is an odd notion about, unsupported by experience (at least, unsupported by my own experience), that a soft brush cannot generate lather from hard shaving soaps—e.g., triple-milled soaps. I fully understand that some may prefer a brush that’s on the stiff side—we all have personal preferences—but a preference for a stiff brush does not imply that a soft brush doesn’t perform equally well in generating lather.

I think the mistaken notion arises simply because some men fail to load the brush with soap—they brush the surface of the soap briefly, then try to make a lather. Surprise! You cannot make a good lather with insufficient soap. But a soft brush can pick up plenty of soap through this technique: Wet brush with hot tap water, shake the brush, then brush the surface of the shaving soap briskly for 30-45 seconds. Move the brush to your wet beard and brush vigorously. Voilà! Lather.

Except maybe not: If you follow the above instructions and still get miserable lather, I suspect that you may be a victim of hard water.To check, go to the drugstore and buy a gallon of distilled water (sometimes called “purified” water—it’s sold for use in steam irons and humidifiers and the like). Heat some of that and try making the lather with that water. If that works, you pretty clearly have hard water.

I am lucky to have soft water, and the Omega artificial badger brush above—not especially soft, IMO—generated a terrific lather from the triple-milled Vintage Blades LLC shaving soap. Three smooth passes from the Eclipse with a Swedish Gillette blade, a splash of New York, and I’m ready for the day.

This sounds pretty cool for those involved in team sports.

I was planning to go the Monterey Peninsula College and wander around the campus: check out bookstore, library, find the language lab, etc. But it’s raining.

Still, I did an outing and stopped at Nob Hill for a few things. One was a bunch of beef fat: I’m rendering that now and will use it to season cast-iron stuff. (Whole Foods will neither sell nor give away beef fat; Nob Hill gave me a couple of pounds, no charge.)

I also got some stuff toward my first one-pot recipe of my own. The layers, from the bottom up:

1/2 large onion sliced thinly
2/3 cup whole-wheat Israeli couscous (the large ones)
8 oz center-cut boneless pork chops (after trimming fat)
5-spice seasoning
1/2 red bell pepper, cut in thin strips
6 kumquats, cut cross-wise into slices
1/4 head green cabbage chopped
8 asparagus spears, chopped

I’m still not sure about the seasonings. It probably should have a little cayenne, salt, pepper, … And I’ll add some liquid—perhaps some vinaigrette: say, 2 Tbsp along with 1/2 cup water and 1 tsp Dijon mustard.

Layer the food in 2-qt cast-iron Dutch oven, put into preheated 450º F oven, and remove after 45 minutes.

Serves two.

These are outrages against human decency:

(1) Gulet Mohamed — the Somali-born American citizen who just turned 19 and who described how he spent a week being interrogated, beaten and tortured by unknown captors — remains in custody in Kuwait despite not being charged with any crimes or wrongdoing of any kind.  As his lawyer said in an interview with me on Tuesday, it is the Americans, not the Kuwaitis, who are responsible for his ongoing detention by virtue of placing him on the U.S.’s no-fly list — likely, they believe, in order to enable his ongoing interrogations by the FBI without a lawyer or other legal protections to which he’d be entitled if he returned to the U.S.

Yesterday, Mohamed’s lawyer told me that while American officials do nothing to help him (and much to ensure his ongoing detention), Mohamed was visited again by FBI agents and “interrogated aggressively for hours despite repeated requests that the interrogation stop until his counsel is present.”  He added that “at one point during the interrogation, the two agents started screaming and yelling at Gulet inches from his person,” and that “a Kuwaiti official actually intervened at this point and directed the agents to calm down and not treat Gulet like they were.”  As he put it:  “Gulet has to rely on agents of the government that probably executed his torture to protect him from his country of citizenship.”  The photograph of Mohamed in detention was taken by his brother yesterday.  A letter sent by Mohamed’s lawyer to the Attorney General regarding the details of the FBI’s conduct is here.

If Mohamed is guilty of anything, then he ought to be charged and prosecuted.  Forcing this 19-year-old to remain imprisoned and subjected to ongoing interrogations without the slightest explanation — particularly after the ordeal to which he was subjected — is a true travesty.  Denying his  constitutional right to return to his own country through a secret, unexplained placement on the no-fly list is even worse.  The American government has the obligation to assist its citizens in these circumstances, but in this case is doing precisely the opposite.   His attorney has written another letter to the Attorney General, but it appears as though legal action is necessary to redress his plight.

(2) Jacob Appelbaum — the WikiLeaks volunteer who was detained and interrogated for hours and had his electronic goods seized the last time he attempted to re-enter the U.S., and who was told that this would happen each time he left the country and came back — indeed encountered similar treatment on Sunday when he returned home from Iceland.  This time at the Seattle airport, he was again detained, questioned, and had his electronic goods taken — all without a warrant — though this time he purposely traveled without a laptop or cellphone (the only item he had with him was a memory stick onto which he embedded the Bill of Rights).  Appelbaum recounted his ordeal yesterday on Twitter, and BoingBoing has collected his narration here.

(3) This morning, the Bradley Manning Defense Fund announced that WikiLeaks has given the fund $15,000.  That brings the total raised for Manning’s defense to more than $100,000, which guarantees that he will be able to pay for a vigorous defense.

UPDATE:  Regarding the issue I raised yesterday of the false claims being circulated about WikiLeaks’ role in releasing a diplomatic cable concerning Zimbabwe, The Guardian, through its deputy editor, Ian Katz, has a good, straightforward explanation of this episode and the issues I raised.  I don’t agree with everything Katz writes there, but kudos for addressing the issues with such clarity and transparency.  I wish all news organizations were willing to respond with even a fraction of that candor and openness when challenged.

On a related note, Armando at TalkLeft deftly highlights the key issue in this whole episode.

Above you see the tiny brush collection, Wee Scot on the right and boar/badger combo brush on the left (the brush I used in this shave a couple of days ago. This morning I used the middle brush: a tiny Omega badger brush. It worked up a fine lather from Prairie Creations Gentleman’s Pipe—this one is tallow plus lanolin.

The brush held ample lather for three passes, and the Apollo Mikron did a fine job with its still-sharp Swedish Gillette blade. A splash of Floïd and I’m good to go.

You have to admit that he’s damn good:

Maybe it’s time to make it. I do have the requisite one-pint jar…