Having Lived

"The crowd wasn’t enjoying itself because each and every woman at the table was working her Iphone or similar device—silently and autonomously. They were entranced by a parade of photos, likes, or updates from many an elsewhere in the world, but not here.

Their form of interaction with each other was to take many photos of themselves, doing this thing—having this bachelorette party—which they could then post on Facebook. They all smiled broadly and happily at the second that the photo was taken, but these were the only moments when they appeared happy, so their visual archive was misleading.

The problem, of course, is that they weren’t actually doing this thing that they were documenting for Facebook: they weren’t having a party by the usual connotations of the term. They weren’t conversing or interacting with each other; they weren’t taking in the sights together; they weren’t making toasts or engaging in witty badinage.

They were taking photographs to memorialize a non-event whose main excitement and purpose was to have photos of it. The act of living the event—actually having the party, doing the celebration, enjoying each other’s company—seemed to have gotten lost in the act of memorializing it for Facebook."

Having Lived - The Big Think

Is it ironic I post something like this to my BLOG?

Poison

"In response to the question, “Is sugar toxic?” it seems to me the answer is, “yes, sugar is probably chronically toxic to many people.” And so is water. And so is oxygen. My sincere hope, however, is that you now understand that this is probably the wrong question to be asking. The better question is probably “What dose of sugar can I (or my child) safely tolerate to avoid chronic toxicity?” The goal should be to figure out your toxic dose, then stay well below it. (It’s probably not wise to consume 95% of the toxic dose of APAP just because you have a really bad headache.) What makes this important, of course, is that with water and oxygen, the toxic doses are so far out of the range of what we normally consume, it’s not really necessary to expend much mental energy worrying about the toxicity. But with sugar, at least for many of us, the toxic dose is easy to consume, especially in world where sugar resides in almost everything we eat."

Is sugar toxic? - The Eating Academy

Rocket Science

"There are a number of ways of objectively measuring the difficulty of one gradient compared with another. For a start we need to realise that there are three main forces acting against a cyclist while riding: wind resistance, road friction and gravity.



This issue of power-to-weight ratios deserves an article (or several) of its own, but we can see from the above that there are three main ways you can improve your climbing speed:

1. Lose weight — you won’t need to produce as much power to haul yourself and your bike uphill
2. Increase the amount of power you can produce
3. Both"

How much harder are steeper climbs? - The Climbing Cyclist

The Last Ice Merchant

"Twice a week for over half a century, Baltazar Ushca has hiked up the slopes of Mount Chimborazo, the tallest mountain in Ecuador, to harvest glacial ice that covers the highest altitudes of this dormant volcano. In the past, up to forty ice merchants made the journey up the mountain to mine the ice; today, however, Baltazar works alone. Even his brothers, Gregorio and Juan, both raised as ice merchants, have retired from the mountain to find more steady work.

The Last Ice Merchant tells a story of cultural change and indigenous lifestyle through the perspectives of three brothers who have dealt with change in different ways. I wanted to portray the characters as the dignified people that they are and to show the very human story of their circumstances — to make a movie that would portray the indigenous community positively for both an outside audience, and also for the community itself."

One

"Selflessness is a paramount value in our age of motherhood. We see this play out all the time online, where mothers literally erase themselves from their social media profiles. Last year, Katie Roiphe wrote a searing essay about mothers who use their children’s smiling faces in place of their own on Facebook. The online self-obliteration has only become worse since then, and its maternal practitioners more defensive.

Looking out for your own happiness is not inconsistent with being a good mother. This is a vital part of the conversation that’s not being discussed in the chatter surrounding middle-class parenting. As Sandler puts it, “if a kid has no siblings, it’s assumed that there’s a hush-hush reason for it,” either the parents don’t like parenting, or they care more about money than babies, or they waited too long. That they had one kid because it would make them happier is never even mentioned.

As the mother of a baby, I read Sandler’s book with an ever-tilting seesaw of emotion. Sometimes I’d read a section—say, about how many more hours a year a woman must spend on housework when she has a second kid—and start looking into IUDs. But then I’d read a researcher talk about the bonds among his three sons, and have a gauzy fantasy about two children making castles in a sandbox. For Sandler’s part, despite knowing the sacrifices she would have to make to have a second child, the decision is still “fraught with conflict. It’s an emotional struggle that, it turns out, no set of numbers and analysis can erase.”

For other women going through the same struggle, Sandler doesn’t purport to have the answer. She does, however, provide some support for the notion that you should be a little selfish when you’re trying to make this decision, since your only child will likely be just fine whether or not they end up with a sibling. Will the resolve to care about your own happiness stop the marauding sanctimommy in her tracks? Probably not, but at least you can be secure in the fact that you spent your time the way you wanted to, instead of martyring yourself at the altar of cloth diapers and endless school bake sales."

The Case for One - New Republic

Acceleration Chess

"White moves first, but then Black gets to move twice. Then White gets to move three times in a row, then Black four times in a row, then White five times in a row, and so on, with continuing escalation as the game proceeds. You cannot move your King through a check or play another move while your King is in check. If, in the middle of your sequence, you give check, you lose any remaining moves in your sequence and your opponent moves and enjoys his full sequence."

Acceleration chess (also known as Progressive chess) - Marginal

Blimey, that'll make your brain ache.

Toro, One More!

"The chef's name, an alias, is Kenji Fujimoto, and for eleven years he was Kim Jong-il's personal chef, court jester, and sidekick. He had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto's job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredients—to Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader's yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald's, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go."

Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi - GQ

Statins are evil

"According to a report issued by Reuters Health, cholesterol-lowering drugs could be tied to more muscle problems than researchers previously believed, a new study shows. Researchers have compared two groups of similar people enrolled in military health insurance and found that those who were taking statin were about 10% more likely to experience muscle pain, sprains and strains. A previous study has tied the popular cholesterol drugs to muscle weakness as well as the rare muscle wasting disease, rhabdomyolysis."

Statins linked to muscle pain and strains - Longevity

Excel Spreadsheet Artist

"“I never used Excel at work but I saw other people making pretty graphs and thought, ‘I could probably draw with that,’” says 73-year old Tatsuo Horiuchi. About 13 years ago, shortly before retiring, Horiuchi decide he needed a new challenge in his life. So he bought a computer and began experimenting with Excel."

Tatsuo Horiuchi | the 73-year old Excel spreadsheet artist - Spoon & Tamago

Dream Diet

"Major fat burning occurs when we sleep," says neuronutrition researcher Oren Froy of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During the nighttime fast, the liver switches from burning carbohydrates to burning fats, breaking lipids into glycerol and fatty acids. In short, the process makes us leaner and healthier. The longer the fast, the more calories burned. People who sleep more weigh less.

It may sound counterintuitive, but if we supply our digestive conveyor with the right food at the right time while shutting it down at night, we can eliminate cravings, enjoy desserts, and feel full despite staying lean. Our calories will literally melt in our dreams."

Nature's Bounty: A Clockwork Orange...or Pork Chop - Psychology Today

Rave Run

"Running is no longer something we do instead of partying, it's becoming the party itself: we are witnessing the rise of the rave run.

Next month, on a dark night in east London, thousands of women will take to the streets and run 10K through the city, accompanied by a light show and music. We Own the Night, an after-hours event organised by Nike, will start in Victoria Park and end with a party. It has been described as "much less like a run and much more like a party, with lights, installations, smoke machines and music".

This month's Energizer Night Run was a more high-spirited affair, if a little commercial. The event was a valiant attempt to stage both a 5K, and 10K as well as an after-hours party in Battersea Park in south London: runners were given head lamps and glow sticks and encouraged to dress up. There were no brass bands or the pub with a sound system that London Marathon runners are more used to – instead, there was dance music and DJs from London-based running collective Run Dem Crew stationed around the park.

Ah, endorphins – nature's happy pills.

When your body can no longer hack the after-effects of a laser-lit night seeking endorphin rushes chemically, it's time to try a rave run. It's more fun and a lot cheaper."

How running became the new clubbing - Guardian

Opposition

Want a treadmill with your burger?

"A new study out of North Carolina, flagged by Aaron Carroll, suggests that the labels could be more effective if they included additional information—namely, the exercise required to work off the calories at hand.

New York City is, in a way, already testing this out. As part of a public health campaign, it has posted maps like this one that translate a 20-ounce soda into a three-mile walk to burn off the calories."

Want a treadmill with your burger? - Wonkblog

Balance

LCHF

Big (Medical) Data

"Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration’s warning system.

Using automated software tools to examine queries by six million Internet users taken from Web search logs in 2010, the researchers looked for searches relating to an antidepressant, paroxetine, and a cholesterol lowering drug, pravastatin. They were able to find evidence that the combination of the two drugs caused high blood sugar.

“You can imagine how this kind of combination would be very, very hard to study given all the different drug pairs or combinations that are out there,” said Eric Horvitz, a managing co-director of Microsoft Research’s laboratory in Redmond, Wash.

The researchers said they were surprised by the strength of the “signal” that they detected in the searches and argued that it would be a valuable tool for the F.D.A. to add to its current system for tracking adverse effects.

Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Are Found Using Internet Search Data, Study Finds - NYT

Cyprus and Europe

A bit old, but the best three sentences to explaining the Cyprus situation that I have come across...

"The country’s banks were using Russian deposits to buy Greek bonds. The Greek bonds went bad, and the Cypriot banks lost a bundle. They now need a bailout from their euro zone partners, but it’s tough to convince German taxpayers to pony up if they think the money is really going to Russian oligarchs."

The scary politics of the euro zone - Wonkblog

The reason for revisiting and posting is this line at the end of the article.

"The question is whether they’ll remain so. It is hard to be confident in a currency union that must fret over the decisions of Cyprus."