Monday, January 28, 2013

80% US Men, 77% Women Overweight

The United States clearly has a weight problem. The World Health Organization says a third of American adults were obese in 2008, and 69.4 percent were overweight. Two years later, WHO said 80 percent of American adult men were overweight, along with 77 percent of women. Obesity accounts for at least $150 billion a year in American health care spending.

-from "Obesity and its Consequences Spreading Rapidly" in the Dallas Morning News.

This is getting to be pretty old news.  In light of the government (and its taxpayers) having taken on the task of keeping us all well, perhaps we will see a different approach to the farm subsidies that prop up the meat, fructose corn syrup enablers, sugar, and cow milk producers.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Entering the Windows 8 World

We flew from Ft. Lauderdale to Austin for Christmas.  On the SW Airlines concourse at the Ft. Lauderdale airport, near our departure gate, Microsoft had planted a demonstration area for Windows 8, complete with several tall tables with computer devices on them and people there to assist you with them.  If you "toured" Windows 8 on one of the devices, you got a prize.  In addition, you received a $25 dollar coupon on a SW Air "getaway" flight.  I bit.  I worked with Windows 8 on a Windows "Slate," a beautiful object, every bit as attractive as anything Apple might produce.

I was in the market for a new laptop, because my MacBook had been stolen.  The introduction to Windows 8 led to my purchase of an Asus VivoBook X202E-DH31T 11.6-Inch Touch Laptop. This is light enough to easily carry in my briefcase.  It doesn't have a disk drive, but Asus sells an outboard unit that I added for use at home, and it works very well.  All of this at not much more than half the price of a new MacBook, and I get to try out Windows 8 and a touch-screen device in the bargain.

According to CNET, Intel is pushing very hard for the adoption of touch-screen technology.