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Been slack! content on the way....

Here's something for which I have no explanation. Yes, Kirsten Dunst.

Nonstop Financial Shenanigans

Since so many clever people on wall street have yet retained their jobs, there will be no end of phenomenally bad ideas. You might assume they would be joking about this.

I Impress The Waiter

When a friend of mine moved here many years ago, a clerk at a bank asked him to spell his last name as she was filling out a form for him. Upon completion, she said, "brilliant." Which left him thinking that brits are easily impressed if being able to spell your own name is regarded as a brilliant achievement.

I thought of that Saturday night when, after placing my order, the waiter congratulated me with a "well done". Blimey, this meal negotiation process must be more difficult than I thought.

Does This Absolve Shoeless Joe?

Who's laughing at my smurfy hobbit footwear now? (Ok, everyone, but still....)

Business Travel

When I order crappy room service from the hotel I'm in, the bill to sign does not make a big deal of it, but upon careful review, I notice they charge 20% for "service" and a $3 "delivery" charge. I'm not sure what service is happening aside from the delivery. Even worse, they then leave a blank line for "tip" and total.

I really miss my family, my butcher, and double cream. Usually in that order.

HDTV? Looks really, really good. When I get home, I'll wonder what's wrong with my TV for a week, before I forget what HD looked like.

Likewise with shower pressure. I always think our shower is broken when I first get home.

The hotel laundry service charges more to wash my t-shirts than I paid for them.

I really miss the per diem model, as opposed to expense limits. The daily limit expense policy doesn't work well for me if I eat a lot one day, over the expense limit, and very little the next day, well under the expense limit. It would be easier to administer if the company could simply figure the average daily spend for the past year's worth of business trips, and specify a per diem slightly lower than that. This would keep spending in check and make everyone happier (and be easier to administer).

"returning no value to the world"

Uh-oh, more people are catching on. Wall Street might want to drop the righteous indignation and just lay low for a while. Don't worry, the jig is not up yet.

Carbs Getting Mention On Room Service Menu

Staying at a Marriott and I've noticed the room service menu is flagging various items as meeting some dietary criteria or other. The designations include "low carb", "high protein", "carb conscious", "low fat", and "low cholesterol", plus various combinations of those. It's actually good to see indications that low-carb is going mainstream. I'm not fully clear what these designations are supposed to mean. I like the sound of "carb conscious", but I can't figure out how it's different than "low carb". Grilled fish gets the "carb conscious" label, while grilled steak gets upgraded to "high protein - carb conscious". Steak & eggs gets only "high protein", not sure why it doesn't also qualify either for low carbness or carb consciousness, and I feel a bit bad for it, whereas a shrimp cocktail gets "low carb, low fat", which means it must also be high protein (unless it pulls off the trick usually reserved only for acaloric items of being low-everything). And some things -- e.g. some of the salads -- have no labels, despite surely being carb contentious or low protein or something.

I wish they'd define the terms then apply them to everything that fits each term, but it's still good to see.


P.S. The only term I find objectionable is "low cholesterol". It's been about 25 years since even one of the most fervent anti-cholesterol crusaders admitted that dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with serum cholesterol. Even if you believe that high serum cholesterol is bad for you, you should know that dietary cholesterol has SFA to do with serum cholesterol. Why do egg beaters still exist? Why are egg-white omelets legal? It seems to me the anti-fat brigade who have known that the cholesterol you eat has nothing to do with anything have not done anything to correct the common belief that it does matter, because they secretly wish it really did.

P.P.S. I had the steak & eggs for breakfast, and it was surprisingly good. It came with mushrooms cooked with tomatoes & bacon. After that, I went 12 hours without eating. The only objection to it was that I found the canary-yellow egg yolks a bit shocking & disconcerting.

"the Americans"

Flying out of Heathrow earlier today, to New York. Our departure was delayed by about 90 minutes because every single passenger was getting frisked before boarding, and every carryon was getting opened and searched. I asked why they were doing this and what all the fuss was about. To his credit, the frisker was very polite and apologetic when I asked (in the US you tend to get nothing but attitude and aggressive posturing if you ask questions like that). His response? "The Americans". He kind of sighed and looked truly regretful as he explained since the underpants bomber, the US is demanding that all passengers and carryons be searched prior to boarding. We are a very, very difficult country to like sometimes.

ATM Card Skimming

Looking at an example such as this, I wonder if a simple measure to make this more difficult would be to have each ATM show a photograph of itself, as it was installed/meant to be, on the display prior to card insertion, so you can compare vs. what you are actually looking at.

Robert Llewellyn

Although I've never seen Red Dwarf, I'm a big fan of his. I adored Scrapheap Challenge (apparently there was a predictably horrendous US version, but the original UK version was charming and thoroughly enjoyable). He's been up to quite a bit, including a regular video podcast series, Car Pool, in which he interviews people while giving them a lift somewhere. His last two interviews were with Patrick Stewart, which was great, and Ben Goldacre, which I've not gotten to watch yet but am looking forward to.

Nutrition Info Shortlist

My shortlist of blogs I recommend is already over to the left there, but here are some highlights for nutrition & health related content.

if you only read one book
make it the Gary Taubes' book (btw, there was a recent review of the book in the British Medical Journal, the unedited version of which is available here)

if you only watch one lecture
watch one of Taubes' lectures on obesity

if you only read one blog
read Stephan Guyenet's Whole Health Source
(don't worry, he's not a low-carb nutter like most of the other bloggers I like)

best lecture of 2009
Dr. Lustig's lecture on fructose
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, has a great lecture on fructose. He's especially passionate since he's been involved in treating obese children. I have 2 quibbles with this lecture. One is that I think he overrates glucose. The second is that he gives Ancel Keys way too much credit. He faults Keys for performing a fundamentally flawed regression analysis, but misses Keys' far worse sin of collecting data from 22 nations but publishing a "7 nations" study by choosing only the seven that best fit the curve he wanted to see. Faulty regression analysis is dumb, burying more than 2/3 of your data is dishonest. But none of this has any bearing on the message or impact of Lustig's lecture, which is a must watch for anyone who thinks fruit juice is "healthy".

best "paleo" blog/best new blog of 2009
No contest: Dr. Kurt Harris's PaNu blog
Don't worry, this is not about paleo re-enactment or some crap about "what would grok do". As an added bonus, he's a midwesterner.

best article on healthcare in the US
Atul Gawande's now-classic 2009 article on costs. There was a nice little followup a few weeks later as well.



some noteworthy blog posts from 2009
A fantastic summary of diet ("what I learned last year") from inflammation researcher Dr. Art Ayers. His blog gets fairly detailed and technical on inflammation, but occasionally he writes concise and accessible posts on diet.

Hyperlipid's excellent challenge to ketosis

Stephan's great series on eicosanoids and heart disease -- part I, part II, and a concise summary for those who don't want to read parts I & II (I have to confess I like saying "eicosanoid signalling" out loud, frequently, so that may be the basis for my fondness for the subject)

A wonderful dissection of some observational studies by Prof. David Colquhoun on his "Improbable Science" blog.

Dilbert

Dilbert was a lot funnier years ago when Scott Adams still had a job. I don't read it religiously because it's often pretty dull now, but when I do I'm struck by what a sanctimonious prick he comes across as. Anyone else notice that Dilbert is pretty much an asshole? Or does this mean my metamorphosis into a PHB is complete?