Later On

The USAF Academy is the newest of the service academies and has a spotty record. This will not help: a Christian faculty member who has criticized the excessive evangelical aggressiveness at the Academy returned to his office  after a class and found his service dog had been poisoned.

Yet another excellent shave. The voluptuous Omega silvertip brush does a superb job and has enormous capacity. It quickly worked up a fine lather from the Pré de Provence, a shaving soap that claims to include shea butter, though that doesn’t seem to be listed among the ingredients. But the lather was fine, and the Gillette Milord (an early model, before the center bar was notched) with an Astra Superior Platinum blade delivered three smooth and trouble-free passes. A splash of the TOBS aftershave, and I’m ready for the morning—during which I’ll rush about to ready the apartment for the cleaning ladies.

Interesting. It seems that the course of moderation has much to recommend it.

Australia has passed a simple law: cigarette packages must look alike except for the brand name (in a standard font) and the cigarettes themselves made of all the same diameter (no extra-slender cigarettes) and with plain paper.

The cigarette companies are, of course, fighting this tooth and nail, though through front groups that the companies establish, finance, and direct. (They can’t come out against the measure directly because their credibility has been destroyed by a release of internal company memos, which reveal exactly what the companies are like.)

And these front groups—total spending to date around $10 million—are pushing this notion: “it won’t work.” Why then are the companies squandering so much of their money to defeat a scheme that will fail in any case? Well, of course the companies are lying—they’ve lied for decades, why stop now? The simple change in package will significantly reduce smoking, in all probability (thus the $10-million fight), and then there will be a strong, clear example, available to the entire world, on how to fight tobacco addiction—and, doubtless, lower the price of cigarettes: if all brands look alike, and most advertising venues are banned, the companies must willy-nilly compete on price.

Now is this fair? What if the same approach were taken for spirits, wine, beer, and (to up the stakes) legalized (but taxed and regulated) marijuana. Would that be acceptable?

I would say, “Yes, in a New York minute.” Indeed, spirits and wine and marijuana have long been sold in drab packaging: simple, informative labels attached to the bottle, for example. Those products could easily survive such restrictions. But I don’t think tobacco will.

Here’s the full story in New Scientist.

Osama bin Laden is dead now, and I don’t mourn him. OTOH, one must recognize that, in terms of his self-assigned mission, he accomplished a lot. Radley Balko has a good summary:

n The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden’s motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.

Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama’s first term, we’ll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.

We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .

Continue reading for a list of 13 major changes in the US due to bin Laden’s activities.

I brought out the Treet carbon-steel “Black Beauty” blade that I used to use regularly. It’s been a long time, and it doesn’t seem quite so sharp now as it did then, but still quite satisfactory. Fair warning: Some shavers find these blade intolerably dull, while others like them fine. Probably those who like them are in the minority.

Because the blade is carbon steel, it is prone to rusting. You can rinse the razor head (with the blade in it) after shaving in a jar of high-proof rubbing alcohol: swish the head in the alcohol, and the alcohol displaces the water and immediately evaporates, leaving the blade dry and rust-free. Or—they’re cheap—you can simply discard after shaving.

In the Gillette Aristocrat (gold-plated slim-handle adjustable), the blade did a fine job on a beard softened with copious La Toya lather from the shave stick and the enthusiastic use of the Simpson Duke 3 Best. Three passes, a splash of Pashana, and I’m ready to finish my homework before class today.

This morning I was happy to see that I now weigh in the 170′s (barely: 179.5). It’s been quite a few years since I weighed less than 180.

A while back I mentioned that I finally “got it” with respect to food and weight loss. The “getting it” was a set of related internal realizations and changes in how I looked at things, rather than mere information: it was a realignment of attitudes.

For example, I mentioned that I had in effect “broken up” with food: I still enjoyed it—we are still friends—but the strange passion and compulsions have for the most part drained away. I also became aware of the essential structure of my meals (the starch, protein, fat, fruit, and veggies) and the relatively small amounts I needed and the impact of the added fats. In other words, it was essentially an internal change, derived from the experience and close observations during the first 6.5 months of my weight loss. It was a change in mindset, mostly.

Now I’ve found that my attempt to track my food in my head while still working to lose weight did not work. So I’ve returned to daily food/weight/exercise tracking until I stabilize my weight at the same level (no more trying to lose weight) for three months. At that point—weight stable for three months—I’ll try again tracking my food in my head. The basis for this approach is that I think that holding the same weight for a period might reset some internal monitor and that then I can maintain based on body habit.

Now, the FatSecret oddity. Here are actual figures from what I’ve eaten and planned through lunch:

15.59g fat
53.06g carbs
14.5g fiber
21.92g protein
396 Kcal total

Since we know that fat is 9 cal/g and protein and carbs are both 4 cal/g, we can calories and the percentage distribution of calories:

I don’t like the discrepancy. I’ve asked, but no reply as yet. Note that we don’t even agree on total calories.

I had not seen (or heard of) either of these before: Play Dirty, a WWII film, and The Whistle Blower, a Cold War film that has a lot of resonance today. They both are quite good and definitely worth watching, whether or Watch Instantly or through DVD rental.

I started doing it because I read that capsaicin in particular, and the capsaicinoids in general (especially dihydrocapsaicin), have good health benefits. Then I continued it because I liked it. And today, Tara Parker-Pope explains in the NY Times why it’s a good idea.

So far as I can tell—and my knowledge of Spanish is still quite limited—Spanish uses “menor” for both “less” (things measured rather than counted: water, sugar, coffee, freedom, and so on) and “fewer” (things counted rather than measured: persons, pencils, stalks of celery). Thus the common supermarket sign “Express Lane: 10 items or less” is incorrect (and quite grating). Obviously, the sign is about things counted and should be “Express Lane: 10 items or fewer”. (The distinction does seem to be dying because it is too difficult for many people—sad, but true.) So Spanish here is just ahead of the curve.

I just learned the “personal a“: the preposition “a” is placed before a direct object that is a person, a pet, or a domestic animal. For direct objects that are things and wild animals (no personal connection), the “a” is omitted. It’s not translated into English, but very important for Spanish. I like it.

A couple of other things: Spanish “b” and “v” are pronounced exactly alike. Moreover, the letters make two (slightly) different sounds. I know what you’re thinking: “Two letters? And two sounds? Then each letter represents one of the two sounds, right?” Wrong: each letter makes the same two sounds.

Now, me, if I had to represent two different sounds with two different letters, I’d just take the easy way out: one letter per sound.

On the other hand, Spanish easily distinguishes “This apple is green” (unripe) and “This apple is green” (in color: a Granny Smith, for example).

For the apple’s color, use “ser“: Este manzana es verde.
For the apple’s ripeness, use “estar“: Este manzana está verde.

I like the Spanish usage. The mention of apples reminded of a time some years ago when the word “rotten” was used for anything that struck one as bad: “a rotten movie,” for example. The usage was so common that to say that an apple actually was rotten, it was necessary to say “this apple is bad.” If you said the apple was “rotten,” people would have assumed that the apple was sound but you really didn’t like flavor and/or texture (e.g., me with McIntosh apples). Maybe that’s past now.

I find it refreshing to see evidence that public figures can learn. All too other, a public figure will stick with a (poor/incorrect/insane/stupid) position simply to avoid being a “flip-flopper” (i.e., someone who changes their position on getting new information or thinking further about what the position means). Equally bad, in my view, is changing one’s position without acknowledgement or explanation—more or less trying to pretend that the current position is their only position (cf. Newt Gingrich for a splendid example, but—just one example—all the Republicans who came out strongly in favor of cap-and-trade of CO2 emissions (an idea that originated with Republicans) and who now strongly oppose it without any reference to their earlier support).

Diane Ravitch supported No Child Left Behind, but now that she’s seen the results, she strongly opposes it. She’s now written a book to explain her views:  The Death and Life of the Great American School System. NPR has an excellent review of the book and an interview with Ravitch. Worth the click.

I long since discontinued eating catfish and tilapia. Both are farmed fish, and because they are fed primarily corn and soy, their omega-3, -6, and -9 ratios are screwed up. One of the main benefits sought in eating fish is to gain the omega-3 fatty acids.

Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in her report in the NY Times

. . . Compared with other fish, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oils that are the main reasons doctors recommend eating fish frequently; salmon has more than 10 times the amount of tilapia. Also, farmed tilapia contains a less healthful mix of fatty acids because the fish are fed corn and soy instead of lake plants and algae, the diet of wild tilapia.

“It may look like fish and taste like fish but does not have the benefits — it may be detrimental,” said Dr. Floyd Chilton, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who specializes in fish lipids. . .

The economist Dean Baker:

It seems that NPR is unable to get access to data from the OECD or even the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services. If it were, it would not have so badly misinformed listeners about Medicare costs yesterday.

NPR told listeners that Medicare’s costs are unsustainable and that the reason is that patients do not see the cost of their treatment. Actually, private sector health care costs have risen as rapidly on an age-adjusted basis as Medicare. Furthermore, health care costs in the United States average more than twice as much per person as costs in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands where patients see a much smaller share of their costs than they do under the Medicare system. If the United States paid the same amount per person for health care as these or any other wealthy country it would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the long-term, not deficits.

The article also mentioned Representative Ryan’s plan without pointing out that the Congressional Budget Office’s projections show that it would hugely raise the cost of providing care to retirees. The CBO projections imply that the Ryan plan, which was passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives last month, would raise the cost of buying Medicare equivalent insurance policies by $34 trillion over Medicare’s 75-year planning period. This is almost 7 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall.

In this context it is probably worth mentioning that the Republicans in Congress have targeted NPR for budget cuts.

Some good comments at the link.

That’s not really a “spot what’s wrong with this photo” puzzle. The lid fell over and I rearranged things, and I put the lid back without noticing I had it upside down. It’s Monday—cut me some slack.

I’m feeling much more alert now, after shave, breakfast, and reading the news.

The QED Frankincense & Myrrh delivered a fine lather, thanks to the Simpson Chubby 1 Best. The fragrance is quite pleasant, though light. And the Edwin Jagger Chatsworth with a Swedish Gillette blade did a fine job on the stubble, though I do indeed note the difference between the straight bar and the slant bar in terms of ease of shaving: with a heavy stubble, the slant br is definitely the way to go.

A splash of Klar Seifen, and I’m ready to get to work.

I have fun food for today. The fresh organic strawberries @ $2/lb were all gone, but I got 3 open pints (total 3.38 lb) for $8, so almost as good. Just had 10.6 oz as a snack. Also got a whole pompano, which I will roast for lunch (brush inside and out with olive oil—I use just 2 tsp—and roast at 450º F for 15 minutes) and dinner (whole fish is 2 lbs), along with 375 ml chardonnay. Also a pound of that thick purple asparagus to roast, along with some very handsome domestic white mushrooms and another big plastic bin of baby greens for salad. And 8 red delicious apples. Everything very healthful (in right quantities) and yummy. Now to clean up the kitchen somewhat so I can cook the stuff.

181.0 lbs this morning. Little by little.

UPDATE: 15 min not enough for the fish. Should have gone for 20-25 min. (2-lb fish)

Fascinating article in the current New Yorker, in which David Deutsch makes a good case that the only explanation for the power of quantum computers is the Many Worlds hypothesis.

Comedy is very much a YMMV thing, but these hit the spot for me:

IFC’s Greg the Bunny

Dog Bites Man: The Complete Series

A Bit of Fry and Laurie