Following my diagnosis of NHL 13 years ago, Carol and I became quite interested in improving our health. We focused on what we seemed to be able to control, diet and exercise. Along the way, we became involved in Weight Watchers, which has helped us focus weekly on the matter of nutrition and we have read books and magazines, especially Nutrition Action Health Letter (which we would recommend).
Carol is simply a marvelous cook, and she transformed our diet: we moved away from red meats almost entirely, we eat plenty of vegetables, whole grain breads, brown rice, and so on. It would be difficult to be in a family where the cook is not on the same page. Carol is not only on the same page, she has developed simply delicious and healthy meals over the years.
Some people in the nutrition community, maybe a bit on the fringe, believe that being under-weight contributes to good health and longevity. This week I bumped into a the website of the "Calorie Restriction Society" where this thesis is presented and discussed. Among things that I note, after a brief review of the site, are these points:
1. Low glycemic index foods are much preferred. This is the thesis of Sugar Busters, a best seller for many years.
2. The sweet spot of being underweight is somewhere below 10% of our teenage weight. I weighed in around 145 when I was a teenager. When I got my cancer diagnosis, I was pushing 180. I weigh around 160 right now, although my Weight Watcher “goal weight” is 155, and I am trying to get back there. So that would make my sweetspot around 130, which I am sure would alarm everyone I know if I were to get to that point.
3. The reason one lives longer on this particular diet seems to be that the poisons and toxins in foods that one eats tend to be stored in fat, where there is fat around in which to store such things. So less fat means that those toxins and poisons will be sloughed off as you eat only what you will burn up in energy. And I guess the less food one eats over all, the less the foods will poison you. And, of course, the healthier food one eats, the less one is poisoned. I think this is it, but I am going to read more about this.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
"The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship"
Read the entire interview of Mario Vargas Llosa in the weekend edition of the WSJ, kindly reproduced without charge at OpinionJournal.com.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Movies
Sean keeps an eye on Kelly's blog, which is worth keeping an eye on. Sean points to Kelly's post on the updated American Film Institute's new top 100 "American" movies. It looks like political correctness is alive and well at the AFI.
I like Kelly's comments. For example, I couldn't agree more with his comment on Saving Private Ryan. But his comment on Gone With the Wind shouts "Yankee! Yankee! Yankee!" But some of my best friends are Yankees.
I like Kelly's comments. For example, I couldn't agree more with his comment on Saving Private Ryan. But his comment on Gone With the Wind shouts "Yankee! Yankee! Yankee!" But some of my best friends are Yankees.
Hello on Sunday.
Obama is a Bible reader.
Phoebe's portrait.
Build your own computer for $72? Sounds like fun!
The case against cardio.
Flash Gordan Conquers the Universe! John Williams has nothing on Franz Liszt, and other similarities. CW is one of the advanced technologies exhibited in this masterpiece. Plus one of the deepest thoughts ever affirmed on the silver screen: "There is no power in the universe powerful enough to destroy human thought." And don't you think that Buster Crabbe could be Billy Graham's uncle?
Phoebe's portrait.
Build your own computer for $72? Sounds like fun!
The case against cardio.
Flash Gordan Conquers the Universe! John Williams has nothing on Franz Liszt, and other similarities. CW is one of the advanced technologies exhibited in this masterpiece. Plus one of the deepest thoughts ever affirmed on the silver screen: "There is no power in the universe powerful enough to destroy human thought." And don't you think that Buster Crabbe could be Billy Graham's uncle?
Saturday, June 23, 2007
A Tall Poppy? Not I.
From a column by Dorothy Rabinowitz in Friday's WSJ.
Duke President Richard Brodhead was doubtless disturbed by the charges [in the Lacrosse team case] and the plight of the accused athletes. But that didn't prevent him from firing the lacrosse coach, in deference to the reigning hysteria--or treating the team members as though they merited shunning. For the most part, he kept his head down while the fires raged around him. His was, it should be said, not unusual behavior. The great consuming career goal of our college and university presidents--with the exception of oddities like Harvard's Larry Summers--has for more than two decades been the same: to avoid any word or deed that might incur the wrath of their gender- and race-obsessed faculties and allied campus activists. University presidents once had higher ambitions.
The entire article is worth reading.
Duke President Richard Brodhead was doubtless disturbed by the charges [in the Lacrosse team case] and the plight of the accused athletes. But that didn't prevent him from firing the lacrosse coach, in deference to the reigning hysteria--or treating the team members as though they merited shunning. For the most part, he kept his head down while the fires raged around him. His was, it should be said, not unusual behavior. The great consuming career goal of our college and university presidents--with the exception of oddities like Harvard's Larry Summers--has for more than two decades been the same: to avoid any word or deed that might incur the wrath of their gender- and race-obsessed faculties and allied campus activists. University presidents once had higher ambitions.
The entire article is worth reading.
Can it? Should it?
In an earlier post I posed the question "Can this marriage be saved?" in referring to the matter of a long-running disagreement between Carol and me over the question of whether any part of our precious lives should be spent engaged in board games and the like. I want to be sure that everyone understands the ironic allusion behind my use of the question "Can this marriage be saved?". It may not be obvious to younger members of the community.
"Can this marriage be saved?" was the title of a column in the Ladies' Home Journal, a women's magazine that was a best-seller in the 50s. The writer would present a particular non-fictional marital situation, one that seriously threatened the marriage, and then would offer suggestions on "saving" the marriage. The question, "Can this marriage be saved", crept into the language idiomatically, and, for example, one spouse would use the phrase as a sort of benediction after describing a not too serious disagreement with the other spouse.
I would see my mother reading that column sometimes and I would ask, "Should that marriage be saved?" But that was a little irreverent and, of course, not scriptural. My mother had an idiomatic phrase that she used in replying to me, her son, but I won't repeat it.
"Can this marriage be saved?" was the title of a column in the Ladies' Home Journal, a women's magazine that was a best-seller in the 50s. The writer would present a particular non-fictional marital situation, one that seriously threatened the marriage, and then would offer suggestions on "saving" the marriage. The question, "Can this marriage be saved", crept into the language idiomatically, and, for example, one spouse would use the phrase as a sort of benediction after describing a not too serious disagreement with the other spouse.
I would see my mother reading that column sometimes and I would ask, "Should that marriage be saved?" But that was a little irreverent and, of course, not scriptural. My mother had an idiomatic phrase that she used in replying to me, her son, but I won't repeat it.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
3,500
The average number of abortions that were performed daily in the U.S. in 2002, according to US Census figures. But don't worry, immigration will make up for it.
On the other hand, there's this.
On the other hand, there's this.
"Flightplan"
Saw this movie with Jodie Foster on DVD last night. (By that I mean Jodie Foster was in the movie and I saw the movie. Jodie and I, in other words, were not on a movie date.)
(No Wednesday night Bible study for the rest of the summer. There was some sort of board-game activity last night at church. I should say "bored-game night". I came home after the supper. Carol, on the other hand, stayed on. She was in her element with the bored games and enjoyed every minute of them. Which leads to the question, "Can this marriage be saved?")
(Alert! Alert! I may give away too much of this movie.)
Anyway, I put on this DVD. It's not the kind Carol would have enjoyed: mother loses her kid on transatlantic flight and everyone else thinks she's delusional and never brought the kid on board in the first place. The movie is spookily dark. Jodie Foster is at her usual best, and Sean Bean plays the captain of the airplane, a giant 757 sort of thing. He's good, playing a slightly befuddled, tough, good guy. (He was in Lord of the Rings, the original member of the Fellowship who gets killed by orcs toward the end of the first movie. Hollywood can't decide whether he should be a hero or a villain when they cast him. He can go either way.)
The plot moved quickly, so quickly that after the movie I was unable to explain the plot to Carol. But it seemed to make plenty of sense as it was flying by. Of course, it comes out OK at the end, but the denouement is disappointing.
What disturbed me about the denouement is that the Jodie Foster character is essentially unforgiving of the people who didn't believe her, in particular the captain and an Arab passenger whom she erroneously suggested had been looking in her daughter's bedroom window before they left for the airport. During the denouement, both of them make gestures of regret about their not believing her, and she just looks at them without saying anything like, "Gee, I can understand the position you were in with me, although you probably should have realized this movie was made in Hollywood and I'm Jodie Foster. But it's OK."
I guess forgiveness - grace - is not a big value in Hollywood. But the movie disappointed me in that respect. I would have given it a B, even a B+, with an appropriate denouement. Instead, it gets the B-.
(No Wednesday night Bible study for the rest of the summer. There was some sort of board-game activity last night at church. I should say "bored-game night". I came home after the supper. Carol, on the other hand, stayed on. She was in her element with the bored games and enjoyed every minute of them. Which leads to the question, "Can this marriage be saved?")
(Alert! Alert! I may give away too much of this movie.)
Anyway, I put on this DVD. It's not the kind Carol would have enjoyed: mother loses her kid on transatlantic flight and everyone else thinks she's delusional and never brought the kid on board in the first place. The movie is spookily dark. Jodie Foster is at her usual best, and Sean Bean plays the captain of the airplane, a giant 757 sort of thing. He's good, playing a slightly befuddled, tough, good guy. (He was in Lord of the Rings, the original member of the Fellowship who gets killed by orcs toward the end of the first movie. Hollywood can't decide whether he should be a hero or a villain when they cast him. He can go either way.)
The plot moved quickly, so quickly that after the movie I was unable to explain the plot to Carol. But it seemed to make plenty of sense as it was flying by. Of course, it comes out OK at the end, but the denouement is disappointing.
What disturbed me about the denouement is that the Jodie Foster character is essentially unforgiving of the people who didn't believe her, in particular the captain and an Arab passenger whom she erroneously suggested had been looking in her daughter's bedroom window before they left for the airport. During the denouement, both of them make gestures of regret about their not believing her, and she just looks at them without saying anything like, "Gee, I can understand the position you were in with me, although you probably should have realized this movie was made in Hollywood and I'm Jodie Foster. But it's OK."
I guess forgiveness - grace - is not a big value in Hollywood. But the movie disappointed me in that respect. I would have given it a B, even a B+, with an appropriate denouement. Instead, it gets the B-.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
I, Claudius
I, Claudius was on Ann Perry's list of favorites that I mentioned in a post on May 17. I just finished reading it. It is an historical novel written in the 1930s. Robert Graves, the author, drew together all sorts of historical materials concerning the reigns of Caesar Augustus, Tiberius Caesar, Caligula, and finally Claudius himself (him, briefly, but there is a sequel Graves wrote just about his reign). Graves used a fictional narrative purportedly written in the first person by Claudius.
I have been reading Livy's, The Early History of Rome, which is so densely written (at least to me) that I can only read it in short sittings - but I am making good progress. It is "history" and not fiction, but it has the same feel as I, Claudius without the characterizations that help move Graves' narrative along. I enjoyed I, Claudius, and I continue to enjoy the bits and pieces of Livy that I am reading. (I'll finish it one day.)
Maybe you saw the Masterpiece Theatre series, I Claudius. It was broadcast at a busy time of my life, and I didn't get to see it. But I've ordered the first two DVDs of it from NetFlix. It was allegedly the most popular Masterpiece Theatre series of all time.
I have been reading Livy's, The Early History of Rome, which is so densely written (at least to me) that I can only read it in short sittings - but I am making good progress. It is "history" and not fiction, but it has the same feel as I, Claudius without the characterizations that help move Graves' narrative along. I enjoyed I, Claudius, and I continue to enjoy the bits and pieces of Livy that I am reading. (I'll finish it one day.)
Maybe you saw the Masterpiece Theatre series, I Claudius. It was broadcast at a busy time of my life, and I didn't get to see it. But I've ordered the first two DVDs of it from NetFlix. It was allegedly the most popular Masterpiece Theatre series of all time.
Email Survival
I was going to title this post "Email Management", but I realized that I do not find myself even near an "email management" status; I'm simply trying to survive. I would like to know how the community is dealing with their emails these days. I am not doing well.
At my former firm (KDW) when email first began to become prominent, the lawyers were very careful about publishing their email addresses. For example, a client would ask a lawyer's secretary for the boss's email address, and the secretary said "she [or he] would check", and not give it out without permission. An email address was treated something like a cellphone number is now treated (or itself used to be treated).
Now our email addresses are printed on our business cards and stationary. They are better known than our mailing addresses and telephone numbers. They tumble in, not mediated by receptionists, mail room clerks, and secretaries. They come in without any priority except the time of receipt. Nowadays, they come in with a receipt feature, so the sender will know if and when I opened it, and I would not be able to duck it by using "my spam filter ate your email" white lie. (Anyway, we are criticized for not reviewing what our spam filter eats.) Not that I would use such a lie, of course.
I have started using Outlook "rules" to try to herd some of this stuff. I have tried telling people who are not clients to use my home email, and that's very often ignored.
Macon told me that he has (or is thinking about) an automatic response that says something like "I'll get back to you within 24 hours". I am thinking about "I'll get back to you in about 24 weeks".
I would appreciate suggestions and links to advice on managing this mixed blessing of email. I suggest we label such posts "email survival".
Don't send me an email on this. Just post something.
At my former firm (KDW) when email first began to become prominent, the lawyers were very careful about publishing their email addresses. For example, a client would ask a lawyer's secretary for the boss's email address, and the secretary said "she [or he] would check", and not give it out without permission. An email address was treated something like a cellphone number is now treated (or itself used to be treated).
Now our email addresses are printed on our business cards and stationary. They are better known than our mailing addresses and telephone numbers. They tumble in, not mediated by receptionists, mail room clerks, and secretaries. They come in without any priority except the time of receipt. Nowadays, they come in with a receipt feature, so the sender will know if and when I opened it, and I would not be able to duck it by using "my spam filter ate your email" white lie. (Anyway, we are criticized for not reviewing what our spam filter eats.) Not that I would use such a lie, of course.
I have started using Outlook "rules" to try to herd some of this stuff. I have tried telling people who are not clients to use my home email, and that's very often ignored.
Macon told me that he has (or is thinking about) an automatic response that says something like "I'll get back to you within 24 hours". I am thinking about "I'll get back to you in about 24 weeks".
I would appreciate suggestions and links to advice on managing this mixed blessing of email. I suggest we label such posts "email survival".
Don't send me an email on this. Just post something.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
A Duke Faculty Member for a Duke Alum to be Proud Of
Steve Baldwin, Professor of Chemistry.
Here is a post about him and what he had to say about the Lacrosse Travesty. Be sure to follow the link to what he wrote last year in the Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper. (Thanks, Instapundit.)
Here is a post about him and what he had to say about the Lacrosse Travesty. Be sure to follow the link to what he wrote last year in the Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper. (Thanks, Instapundit.)
Monday, June 18, 2007
Steve Peifer's Computer Ministry
Macon and I have posted about Steve's work in Africa before, and I am going back and label those posts "Steve Peifer". His computer ministry, to which I made oblique reference when I was suggesting Father's Day gifts, is now featured on the AIM website. (Mary sent me the link.)
Sunday, June 17, 2007
"God said, 'Put down the Boxing Gloves'."
In a comment to Kellsey's great Rhythms post, a friend of her's, Nancy, tells her that a mutual friend of the two of them, a young woman, has died of cancer. Nancy writes:
[Sandra] would have been 31 on June 30. After fighting cancer for 3 1/2 years, she is no longer in pain. A week before she passed she said that God was telling her to put down the boxing gloves. Now she is celebrating with her dad and our Heavenly Father.
(Nancy solicits prayers for Sandra's family.)
Such a poignant metaphor - "Put down the boxing gloves" - especially in the context of a mortal disease. But I would think it applies to everyday life as well. God says, "Put down the boxing gloves, I have plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." See Jeremiah 29.11
[Sandra] would have been 31 on June 30. After fighting cancer for 3 1/2 years, she is no longer in pain. A week before she passed she said that God was telling her to put down the boxing gloves. Now she is celebrating with her dad and our Heavenly Father.
(Nancy solicits prayers for Sandra's family.)
Such a poignant metaphor - "Put down the boxing gloves" - especially in the context of a mortal disease. But I would think it applies to everyday life as well. God says, "Put down the boxing gloves, I have plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." See Jeremiah 29.11
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