Archive for April 2009
new look for my hiking blog
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
My favourite Nutrition author — Michael Pollan — has a book I can recommend.
… Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach — what he calls nutritionism — and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.
In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context — out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.
Pollan’s last book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. …
bailing out banks, not home owners
Here is an interesting graph from the New York Times showing the history of home values from 1890 to the present adjusted for inflation. …
click on image for larger version
If you were lucky, you sold a house after it went UP.
If you were unlucky you got stuck with a house that went DOWN in value.
Don’t look for much help from the U.S. government.
… This is a HOUSING crisis, not a BANKING crisis, yet $700+ billion has gone to help bankers and only $75 billion to “help” homeowners. The banker’s money has mainly been spent and the homeowner money has hardly been touched. If this is a HOUSING crisis, why aren’t more resources being devoted to housing? …
I, Cringely – Wall Street and Main Street Don’t Cross
Happily — for me — the value of my Hubba tent is holding up really well.
Moon and Lonely Planet – best guidebooks
On a recent trip Gadling blogger Brenda Yun and friends compared the 4 main travel guidebooks to Cuba:
Lonely Planet Cuba by Brendan Sainsbury
Moon Handbook Cuba by Christopher P. Baker
Frommer’s Guide to Cuba by Susan Boobbyer
The Rough Guide to Cuba by Matthew Norman & Fiona McAuslan
Frommer’s and Rough Guide were worst, as usual.
Moon and LP best. As usual.
LP reinvented the travel guidebook genre. Others were forced to copy them. Or lose market share.
Here’s the most common criticism of Lonely Planet. It’s too popular.
Conclusion
Based on Christopher P. Baker’s wealth of experience in Cuba, Moon is a sure thing. Sainsbury’s Lonely Planet Cuba is also a rich and trusty companion. …
I think it’s worth mentioning that too many people carry the Lonely Planet guidebook around — not just in Cuba but around the world. In Cuba, it’s the only one I saw in at least five different languages (the content is the same). While useful, Lonely Planet is suffering from a unfortunate hipster effect: the same restaurants, hotels, and sights are becoming overrun by “budget backpackers,” and travelers are relying too heavily on LP-specific travel tips and suggestions. …
Get the basics from Lonely Planet. Look for alternative ideas in Moon.
Canadian health system DOOMED
News reporter Don Braid took his wife to the emergency room in Calgary, Canada.
It was bloody AWFUL.
Click through to read the horror story – Welcome to Hospital Hell: 14 hours in the emergency ward
Dr. Brian Mason’s comments:
Ten days ago, Don Braid, local columnist for The Calgary Herald, blogged about the abysmal care that his wife received at the emergency.
It’s something we all know about, it’s something we all wring our hands about, and it was nice to see it written about. Sparked a bit of an outroar, but nothing will happen.
Our politician’s pretend all is good, except that we need to cut back on health care. What a difference from the States. We just returned from San Francisco, where we observed bus ads for local emergency departments that guaranteed patients would be seen within a half hour after arrival. It was shocking not just to compare that half hour guarantee with Don Braid’s wife’s nine hours of intense pain before seeing a doctor but even more basically to imagine a health care system where you are seen as an opportunity (to make money, to be sure) instead of a burden.
So we are lied to already, and now we are lied to again, this time with English beaches standing in for Alberta beaches. I want to be here when Albertans get sick of the lies.
Certainly private Health Care is the only model that stands a chance, long term. But it isn’t working yet in the USA. Once Obama gets through with reforms it will be further muddled.
The Canadian model is too expensive as well as inefficient and impersonal.
My advice … DON’T GET SICK. In either the USA or Canada.
For the record, when I dislocated my finger last Fall, my emergency care in Calgary was very good.
Twitter Eats World: Global Visitors Shoot Up To 19 Million
Twitter’s march towards world domination continues apace. This morning comScore released its global numbers for March, 2009. Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million, according to its estimates. This compares to 9.3 million visitors in the U.S. alone. …
If Twitter can keep this rate of growth up, it should cross 50 million visitors by summer.
TechCrunch – Twitter Eats World: Global Visitors Shoot Up To 19 Million
Twitter is cryptic and useless for most people.
Avoid it if you can. (Though you might want to grab a twitter name now, while there are still many availlable, just in case.)
I have:
https://twitter.com/besthike http://twitter.com/GymCoaching http://twitter.com/McCharles
Actually, once you follow 50 or more people, it can be interesting. I’m starting to like Twitter despite its many failings.
I have not started using any of the Twitter clients, as yet. But I’m leaning towards trying Seesmic Desktop.
Swine Flu internet panic
I’m not sure how dangerous this outbreak will be. Is it another SARS?
Or a real pandemic?
Track Swine Flu on Google Maps
Different this time is the internet panic spreading like wildfire using technologies like Twitter.
dreaming of a desert hike …
It’s bloody SNOWING in Calgary.
I need 5-6 days in an arid, quiet, bleakly beautiful wilderness.
Photo © 1998-2008 Abe Kleinfeld
www.abekleinfeld.com
… I’m ripping library books on MP3 right now, getting ready for future hiking adventures.
my dream – laptop with no spinning disk
I hate the sound, heat and unreliability of traditional Hard Drives.
Carrying around a disk spinning at 10,000 rpm. Not a good idea.
Leo Laporte tried adding this flash drive to his MacBook.
Amazon – Corsair Storage Solutions – Solid state drive – 128 GB – internal – 2.5″ – SATA-300 US$330
It worked for Leo.
Installed a Corsair SSD into my unibody Macbook Pro. Boot and app launch times are lightning fast. Almost instant….
But others report problems.
There’s a 256 GB version for $760.
The price is far too high. But I hope Apple comes out with a reasonably priced flash drive model by the time I need to buy my next laptop.
Alberta mocked for ad that used England as stand-in for province
Boy, is my face red.
My Provincial government paid $25 million for a tourism rebranding campaign.
Might be a good idea. … If a sharp-eyed guy on the internet had not discovered that this promo photo came not from Alberta but “from Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland – home of the castle of the mythical round-tabling knight Lancelot.”
Canadian Press – Alberta mocked across Britain for ad that used England as stand-in for province
Peter Bailey, the sleuth that discovered the phoney photo, “badgered the provincial government with emails for weeks” until they finally admitted the beach was not in Alberta.
“It just brings more attention to our area, so that’s great.”
- Sheelagh Caygill of Northumberland Tourism.
Thanks Garth.
