Shocker: Enviga Doesn’t Actually Burn Calories – Consumerist
Heck, we’re only marketing it as ‘The Calorie Burner.’ It’s not like we’re saying it burns calories or something!
I wrote about this before, and now it seems that the calorie burning soda-tea or whatever it is doesn’t really burn calories. Still no information on calorie content.
TIME.com Daily Rx: Choose Your Fish Wisely
While Americans are eating more fish on average today than at the turn of the century, we’re not eating the healthiest kinds of seafood. The most popular form of seafood, shrimp, is high in cholesterol and contains low levels of omega-3 fatty acids. And that cafeteria staple, fish sticks, contain very low levels of methylmercury but are equally poor sources of omega-3 oils
You, undoubtedly, should eat more fish. What I recommend you do is go to the store and purchase some fresh tilapia, a lemon, some broccoli, a few tomatos, garlic, vegetable broth, olive oil, black pepper, and oregano. Come home and put the fish in some tin foil, drench it in lemon juice, sprinkle with oregano and black pepper, and then seal the tin foil. Preheat the oven to 400 and bake for 10-15 minutes, maybe more, depending on the thickness of the fish. If you don’t know how to tell if fish is done, consult someone who does.
Meanwhile, saute the garlic in the olive oil. If you don’t already have olive oil, you really should. I know, it’s expensive. But a bottle lasts a long time, and it’s good for you. Anyway, saute the garlic, then add the tomatos. Make sure you throw the juice and squishy stuff from the tomatos in to the pan, too. There should be a layer of liquid covering the pan. If not, add a bit of vegetable broth. Once the tomatos are simmering, toss the broccoli, turn down the heat, and cover. Do NOT stir in the broccoli – it should be sitting on top of the tomatos. You’re basically steaming the broccoli with the tomato juice. If you’ve timed it correctly, your fish will be done right as the brocolli gets nice and tender. If you have, let me know, because I’ve never managed to do it. When it’s all done, throw the fish on a plate, add some of the broccoli/tomato mixture (I think it should go on top of the fish, but that’s just me), and enjoy.
I think the problem with fish (It was my problem, at least) is that people are scared to cook it. It’s really easy to cook. Yes, you should be careful and make sure you’ve cooked it all the way through. But other than that, it’s very easy to cook, and I find it delicious. And it’s good for you.
TV might cause autism. By Gregg Easterbrook – Slate Magazine link via Futurismic
Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3.
So, really, when they say that TV rots your brain, maybe they were actually right. The article makes it clear that they have not proven that watching TV too much when you’re under 3 causes autism. But they have shown that the percentage of children with autism were rising faster in areas with cable TV than those without, and this is based on data old enough so that there still were areas without cable.
Research has shown that autistic children exhibit abnormal activity in the visual-processing areas of their brains, and these areas are actively developing in the first three years of life. Whether excessive viewing of brightly colored two-dimensional screen images can cause visual-processing abnormalities is unknown.
There are other factors that may come into play here. The negative effects of the TV watching could be due to increased time indoors rather than the actual TV. But it’s interesting that autism may be more strongly linked to the first couple years of life rather than genetics.
Regardless, get your kids outside. Playing in the backyard with the neighbor’s kids definitely doesn’t cause autism, or ADHD, or obesity.
I’m still unhappy with the result of my inquiry to the DMV about Seven Corners. Today, as usual, someone wanted to be in my lane. And it’s dark when I go through the intersection at this time of year, and raining this morning. It just makes it worse.
So I’ve decided to do something about it. I just wrote a letter to Congressman Jim Moran, 8th District of Virginia. I’ve decided that I should write more letters to my representatives. I may write to Tim Kaine and complain about his treatment of my wife when she volunteered for him (He never sent even a mass-email thank you). I’ll write to my Senator about this same issue at Seven Corners.
I invite all of you to write your representatives, as well. If you send me a copy of the letter, I’ll post it here. Then you’ll be famous with ten to twenty people a day just like I am.
Edit: I sent the letter to Senators Warner and Allen as well. You can see that letter, and the future letters I plan to write, once I write them, by clicking the “Angry Letters” link at the top of the page.
For first time, unmarried households reign in US – Yahoo! News
Unmarried couples gravitated toward big cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while the farm states in the Great Plains and rural communities of the Midwest and West remained bastions of traditionalism, according to the survey.
Interesting survey, maybe, except Yahoo doesn’t really provide any numbers. Their main point is that in 2005, for the first time more than 50% of households were not a heterosexual married couple. The gist of the story is, “OH NO! The family is going out the window! Soon the evil gays will run the world!” You have to read between the lines a little bit, but that’s all there.
I don’t think this points to any sort of decline in family values. In fact, maybe it points to a growing financial intelligence among young people. Nothing in the article supports that, but it’s not my fault that Yahoo’s reporting is not very thorough.
What I’m talking about, though, is that they don’t take into account people cohabitating because it makes financial sense. For example, about three years ago, I was living with two roomates. We were renting a house because none of us could really afford a place on our own. The two of them, encouraged by our landlord/realtor, decided to buy a house. They were both tired of throwing money away in rent, but we live in Northern Virginia. It’s really expensive to live here, and most single people in their mid-twenties have a little trouble buying.
So, they bought a house. They signed some contract so they used both of their incomes as co-buyers. I rented from them because I wasn’t ready for that kind of financial commitment.
Now, a few years later, I’ve moved out, bought my own place, and gotten married. One of the roommates is currently renting with his fiancee, and the other just got married a few weeks ago, and he and his new wife are moving somewhere together.
My point here is that we were a household that didn’t involve a heterosexual married couple, but it wasn’t because we’re bad people or we hate family values or anything like that. It was because we were unmarried and didn’t want to spend three quarters of our income on housing.
I have no idea if there’s anything in the survey to support an increase in situations like that. But this shows the danger in showing partial statistics. If you can pick and choose which numbers and which relationships to show, you can support just about any hypothesis you want.
I really need to figure out how to motivate myself to write outside of November. This morning, I’m home alone because the wife has to meet with her boss and get some stuff done at the office. Since it’s Sunday, and there’s no football on yet, I’ve been struggling to amuse myself. I’ve been using PBWiki to see if it’s a good way to plan out the novel, and so far it seems to be working. I just had a mini-epiphany this morning on the plot of this year’s novel, which is always fun.
It makes me wonder why I can’t get myself to do much writing outside of the confines of Novel Writing Month. I like writing. I like that feeling when the solution to your sticky plot point just comes to you. And, according to some (biased, I know) people, I’m not a bad writer.
It’s just frustrating that, since November 2002, my first Novel Writing Month, I’ve written over 150,000 words of fiction in four Novembers (And one, 2004, I only wrote 400, so really in three Novembers), and probably 30,000 words in the other thirty-two months. That’s not very good.
I think part of me is convinced that one day something will just click and I’ll just “be a writer”. But the more sensible part of me knows that it’s not that easy.
But, Nano 2006 seems to be coming together nicely, so I’m going to keep working on it and enjoy the month of November. And then on December 1st, I can see where I am. Either I can go back to working on 2003’s Love in Black and White, or I can continue with this year’s still untitled novel. I expect all of you to yell at me if I don’t.
Boing Boing: Fake beauty, video about transhuman tricks used on models
That is, when I have a daughter. But the likelihood of me having a daughter is pretty good. I mean, the first kid has about a 50/50 chance of being a girl, right? So if I plan to have multiple children, which the wife currently is on board with, I have a better than 50/50 chance of having a girl.
Anyway, the point is, how would you explain this to a little girl? The video shows an attractive but perfectly normal woman, and the process to make her face into a billboard. Makeup, which isn’t surprising, but then the digital manipulation of her face is a little shocking. They make her neck thinner and longer, raise her eyebrows, make her lips fuller.
I can’t imagine explaining that to my (As yet unborn, or even conceived) little girl when she’s six and asks me why. There’s a long time in a kid’s life when they understand enough to ask hard-to-answer questions, but they may not understand enough to hear the real answer. Assuming there is one. I mean, I don’t know why we’ve built up completely unreasonable expectations of beauty.
I’ve heard the arguments that some of it is based on propagation of the species, and the claim that a fit woman with wide hips is well-suited for reproduction. But what do full lips and a long, slender neck have to do with reprodcution?
Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
Wild Blue Wonder – washingtonpost.com
The wife and I were driving from her office in the city to Arlington to take my grandmother on some errands when we passed this new monument, and what looked like a circus or something or other happening at the Pentagon. I didn’t know anything about it, but apparently she had heard something about a new monument. So we surmised that this was the dedication ceremony. I have to say that, from 395, the monument is kind of dumb. I mean, it’s big and shiny and sharp, and I guess it probably strikes fear in the hearts of terrorists or something. But it’s sort of ugly.
But, whatever. Art is subjective, and I’m picky about my art. I’m happy to honor the Air Force, as they’ve done a great deal to protect my way of life.
Anyway, my real point was that part of the ceremony is an air show. As I was turning off of Spout Run Parkway, we heard a loud plane overhead that turned out to be one of these.
Plainly visible, right overhead through my open sunroof on this sunny and brisk day, a friggin’ stealth bomber. I’m not usually one to get all worked up over something like this, but these things cost $2.2 BILLION each. And, it’s a stealth bomber. That’s pretty awesome. We saw a few other planes (And heard even more), some that I recognize from video games and whatnot. But the stealth was the highlight.
Anyway, I hope that hotlinking to airforce-technology.com isn’t going to cause any problems. At least they aren’t likely to goatse (Link to worksafe explanation, for those who don’t know) me.
Edit: Didn’t realize that the image was too big for IE, since I avoid using IE as much as possible. So I made it smaller.
Utube.com deluged with YouTube seekers | CNET News.com
How many times have you heard a radio commercial that directs people to a website? And how many of those times has the actual site been something different than what you heard? English is a funny language – we have these things called homophones, and they can make it difficult. Sometimes you can figure it out from the context (Assuming you know how to spell), but I’ve heard commercials, although of course I can’t think of an example, where it’s impossible.
Part of this is due to the fact that sometimes the company name isn’t a real word. If you’ve invented the spelling of the company name, I’m not necessarily going to be able to spell it if you say it.
I suppose it’s not that big a deal. It’s just dumb.