Category: Personal

I didn’t label this blog as Getting My Crank On for nothing, people. These jizzbots at ATT (the TV group this time, not the Internet access side) call me up to schedule an appointment to determine if my set-top boxes are subject to a manufacturer recall. They will come, or so they told me last Monday, between 10 a.m. and noon today. How surprised are you to read that they never showed?

Even better, when I called to see what was up their butt, I was told that the work order never got into the system. So the field tech never had my place on his stop list for today. “We’re so sorry. But there’s nothing we can offer beyond that apology. Not even credit for your time,” said the ATT customer service rep. “When can I reschedule the appointment for?” he asked, revealing a shocking deficit in his understanding of proper English grammar as well.

I so wish there was a reasonable alternative to ATT service that was likely to be both better and still in business in, say, two years. This is far from my first post on these low wattage lightbulbs. Uggh!

In a bit of blinding coincidence, two articles on diet came across my screen today. First, Marc Ballon, writing in the Los Angelese Times, says Obesity blamed on bigger meals and then Gary Taubes, writing in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, asks What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?

What, you might ask, has 1,552 calories? That not so tiny tidbit comes from Ballon’s article: a supersized McDonald’s Quarter Pounder (with cheese) Extra Value Meal. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has launched a campaign to require restaurants to meet labelling requirements similar to those already in place for foods sold in markets. I’m sure most of you have noticed the growing size of portions served over the last decade; even the plates most restaurants use are bigger now. Industry representatives say that consumers are not forced to overeat, that they are just responding to competition and consumer demand, and that further the blame should be placed where it really belongs: more hours spent watching television, playing video games, and surfing the Internet.

No one doubts that a quarter pounder with cheese, large fries and 42 ounces of Coca-Cola is body-abusive. McDonald’s is even producing public service TV commericals (Eating Right with Willie Munchright) featuring a charming clay spokesthing aimed at teaching kids about a balanced diet. The company goes so far as to publish a nutritionist’s guide right on the website though, amazingly, the combinations that make a meal barely feature any of their big name meals. The only one that includes french fries (small portion) is matched with a hamburger (remember, the McDonald’s hamburger is their smallest meat offering) and a small Coke still winds up with 180 calories from fat. Where are the “balanced meals” featuring the Big Mac (590 calories), the Quarter Pounder with cheese (530 calories), and Super Size French Fries (610 calories)? “But,” say McDonald’s Today (the nutrition guide), “remember, there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. It’s your total diet that counts.” Oh, I see.

The Taubes article, a beautiful, in-depth survey of current scientific thinking on obesity, is much more useful and, I believe, an important milestone in changing public perception on a healthy diet. The focus of his article is the changing academic perception of “a diet that simply seems intuitively dangerous,” the low carbohydrate Atkins Diet. The change is being driven by the need to understand why Americans are more obese today than they were 25 years ago.

In the 1970s, weight was not the priority it is today and we had a much lower percentage of obese adults and children. Of course there were enough overweight people to fuel study. Researchers were more focused on heart disease, though, and were looking for ways to reduce it. Reduced cigarette smoking alone should have made a huge difference but it hasn’t. Beginning in the mid-70s, we began to hear the cry to lower our fat intake and agribusiness created new low-fat and fat-free products to fill supermarket shelves. Still, we got fatter. Worse, medical researchers began to see significantly increased reports of what has come to be named Syndrome X, a cluster of conditions that can lead to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

Atkins hasn’t stood still since publishing that first book, using the tens of thousands of patients who’ve passed through his Manhattan clinic to accumulate data beyond the reach of any other researcher. In the past few years he has particularly been harping on the need to change our diets to combat Syndrome X. But the medical establishment, beginning with a 1973 critique from the AMA, has been harshly negative to the cardiologist and dismissive of his work despite lacking any studies to support their opinion. Now, Taubes explains, researchers are finally getting grants to compare and contrast these different diets and we may finally see real answers.

What is the Atkins Diet (and other similar ones like Barry Sear’s The Zone)? While the media tends to focus on what you can’t have–pasta, potatoes, rice, and refined sugar–the truth is that you can eat quite a bit and you can eat fats? Like butter on your steak and cheese on your eggs? Is your idea of a good snack 10 strips of bacon? Go ahead and eat them every day, as much as you want. Any meat or fish is a freebie, since they are all protein and contain no carbs, as are most cheeses. The first week or so is difficult as your body goes through a sugar withdrawal but after that the difficulty is mainly psychological. I wonder, also, whether in 10 years we’ll look at high carb, low fat diets the way we look at cigarettes today.

Where does exercise come into the picture? Actually, though it doesn’t seem to matter much for weight loss, at least modest exercise is required to maintain your cardiovascular system and conditioning and is significant in maintaining good health as one ages.

My personal connection: A couple of years I went on the Atkins Diet myself after seeing the success a few friends and acquaintances had with it. Starting at 247 pounds, I dropped 38 pounds in four months and was well on my way when I ran into a vacation in Mexico and the 2000 holiday season; I kept telling myself I’d get back on it but never did. Sure enough, I gained back all the weight. I did revolt against the high cost of dietary supplements prescribed by the Atkins plan — $20-30 per month each for several different pills — and the strict prohibition against bagels.

I would encourage you to spend a little of your time to read these articles and consider your eating habits and health.

Update, next day: Dr. Atkins and a Dr. Eckles, head of the American Heart Association, both made brief appearances on CNN this afternoon. They were supposed to be the main story, discussing the NY Times article, but got cut short by the latest episode of “Where’s My Bush?, um, I mean coverage of the President’s news conference. There wasn’t time for much more than a sound bite a piece but the two questions I would have posed to Eckles are: How do you account for the 45,000 patient histories that Atkins has accumulated over the decades? How come your group has never funded a study that directly examines the claims of low carb, high fat diets?

Denbeste comments

Eric Rohmer gives us a seaside meditation on love in 1983’s Pauline a la plage. Pauline, 15 and just coming into her femininity, joins her perfectly beautiful cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle) late in the summer season, when their Normandy beach town is mostly empty. Pierre, an old love of Marion’s, Henri, for whom Marion quickly hungers, Louisette, who plays into the adult mix, and Sylvain, a boy for Pauline, are the only other players we meet.

Rohmer, who wrote and directed this film, puts each character into an identifiable space and shows us their real selves. Which turn out to be quite independent of their self-identification. He mutes the tempo, the lovely natural scenery, and even the emotional acting out so we are forced to focus on the words and actions. As Diana Lind said in her review, “This could potentially be boring, but fortunately the dialogue is provocative and the evolving plot is suspenseful.”

Recommended but you need to be in the right mood. You’ll know if this is your kind of movie after watching the first 15 minutes.

A stroke due to complications from spinal surgery took a great movie and TV director away from us today. Frankenheimer began his career directing longform dramas in the Golden Age of live TV, back in the late ’50s, mainly for Playhouse 90. In the early ’60s he moved ito film, hitting it out of the park with an amazing trio: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and especially Seven Days in May (1964).

After his close friend Robert Kennedy was assassinated–Frankheimer had driven him to the hotel that night–he turned to alcohol and his career slid down a bit. There was the occasional strong outing, like Black Sunday (1977) and 52 Pick-Up (1986), but it really took until the early 1990s and four straight best director Emmies for HBO films that he restored his good name. 1998’s Ronin, with Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno, was excellent. His last completed film was the recent HBO hit Path to War, an examination of Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war in Vietnam.

The Onion A.V. Club has an excellent interview with Frankenheimer, though while it’s clearly recent, there is no date. He was slated to direct the coming Exorcist prequel but had pulled out due to poor health in the last couple of months. Frankheimer will be part of the class when the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences inducts the 2002 honorees into its Hall of Fame.

Criticism comes in from all directions: Europe says we are arrogant, Islam says we are corrupt, Africa says we don’t do enough to help, and South America says our drug habits are causing their domestic problems. Steven has written extensively on why this is happening and why we are right, most of the time, to react and respond as we do. Now even the NY Times has publicly agreed with him: One Nation Plays the Great Game Alone.

What does Peter Jackson have in store for us December 18? Here’s a two minute clue.

Or for you total SF geeks: Terminator 3 and X-Men 2

I just noticed that the previous post reviewing American Outlaws was the 100th movie review I’ve posted to BillSaysThis, according to the movie review index. The first one was for Almost Famous on March 30th of last year although I admit that wasn’t much of a review. Guess I needed to find my style. Still, 100 movies in about 15 months is a decent total. And if Hollywood would make decent films more often…

A recent take on the Jesse James story. The script, by Rod Taylor, casts the outlaw gang in a very different light. Returning from losing the Civil War to their farms in Missouri, they find that some railroad baron (Harris Yulin, with a goatee to make himself look evil) has gotten government support to take away their farms. Rejecting the railroad’s offer, they get their farmhouses burned down and Jesse’s mom is killed.

Colin Farrell, so good in Minorty Report, plays James and Scott Caan, who doesn’t bluster as well as his dad at the same age, plays Cole Younger. The two lead the gang in a series of robberies intended to deny the railroad the resources needed to continue driving the rail line through Missouri. Allan Pinkerton, the real one, played by Timothy Dalton with a scraggly beard and Irish accent, is the nasty hardass hired by Yulin to stop them. In the end, of course, he does but really achieves no better than a Pyrrhic victory. Ali Larter, famous for her acrobatic Doritos eating feats, does a fine job of dressing up the screen as Jesse’s love interest and Kathy Bates has a small part as his mom.

Recommended for cable viewing by Western fans

Evan, the Sweet One, and I had an enjoyable afternoon at the Palo Alto Summer Festival and Chili Cook-off. We took a bunch of photos, but the old-fashioned, film kind, so I won’t be posting them for a short while yet. In terms of the competition, the Sweet One voted for the Palo Alto Runners Club, Evan went for booth 16, but I had the correct answer: Home Brew. There was a pretty good turnout, probably 3,000 people or so, although this made for some long lines to get chili, especially at the Palo Alto Firefighters booth. The Zydeco Flames made some good live Cajun music including a rocking version of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.”

Getting Nasty – South Park went to town on the Catholic priest sex scandal tonight. That was fast!

Business 2.0 published a powerful article by Paul Kaihla in its July issue: The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.. Read in light of current events, this article to a certain degree refutes claims by Libertarian absolutists that restrictions on technology and oversight are always a bad thing. Certain pundits scream foul at the least invasive regulations but this article, unless it’s a complete fabrication, shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the bad guys are no longer settling for pickup trucks and AK-47s but are using the latest technology to continue their operations.

I opened another instance of IE, created a new Blogger account and Blog*Space blog (like I would ever tell YOU the URL!), and published something there. Next, back to this window to see if it goes through.

Recently I posted about the Florida woman who is suing the State of Florida, which refuses to issue her a driver’s license unless she submits to having a full frontal photograph of her unveiled face taken. This woman is a good example of one end of the spectrum regarding cultural attitudes towards women, the Islamic point of view which seems to say that men can’t be trusted to control themselves unless women are covered from head to toe.

Today garret points us to the other end, an article on the treatment of women in Mexico, land of machismo, where few women report rapes and when they do the police ignore them, abuse them, or allow the men to buy their way out of punishment.

Just thought I would point out the contrast. Then again, how does that old saying go? Too much of anything is a bad thing?

My friends and I have often come around, during many a bitch session, have wheeled around to the concept of corporate loyalty. The boss says, “Hey, we have a ship date, can you work Saturdays for the next two months?” Or something similar, plenty of times, but of course we are salaried/exempt employees and expected to work however many hours needed to get the job done.

Or put up with BS bureaucratic procedures to do things related to work, like get reimbursed for expenses. Why the heck employees are expected to pay for the expenses on a business trip and then get reimbursed weeks or months later is beyond me. You all can think of similar examples of how employers expect us to put out for them.

Barbara Ehrenreich lays it on the line in her NY Times essay Two-Tiered Morality: “Only a person of unblemished virtue can get a job at Wal-Mart — a low-level job, that is — …It turns out, however, that Wal-Mart management doesn’t hold itself to the same standard of rectitude it expects from its low-paid employees.”

Yeah, so here’s a shock: the loyalty runs up but rarely down. I could point to my own situation, where my bosses eliminated my job last year just because I needed some time off to recover from the stress they’d put me through. But that would be crying over spilt milk. Instead, look at the many, many companies (including my former employer) who are requiring that employees take the three business days this week off, either as PTO or unpaid. That’s about a 2% cut in pay, right off the top, though the employer PR tries to spin it as just days off the employee needs a little push to take.

The one that takes the cake, though: what about the huge compensation packages the execs get, even when rank and file employees by the thousands are being laid off? Again, the PR machine is hard at work, claiming the executive pay is needed to keep such good people from jumping to another company. But but but!!!! If the so-called “other company” can afford it, how about letting them? Are the PR flacks trying to say that only one person can possibly run the company successfully? Even Microsoft, possibly the greatest example of a really large one man shop today, is doing fine with Bill Gates having stepped aside from running the company in favor of Steve Ballmer.

Of course, I don’t have a “real” job just now. If I ever do get hired again, keep a watch and see if I mouth off about the subject in any meaningful way then, ‘k?

[via Karl, a Java programmer with a social conscience]

Turns out that lovable president GW Bush himself appears to have played some financial shenanigans regarding stock he held in an oil company back in the days when he was just a lush and not a politician. Harkens Energy bought a money losing company called Spectrum 7–GWB was the CEO–and then hid its own losses with a transaction that the SEC ruled was phony and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. GWB sold a hunk of his Harkens stock before the news was made public and did not report this transaction for almost nine months.

An internal SEC memorandum concluded that Bush had broken the law but no charges were filed; since this occured when Daddy Bush was president, one can’t be too surprised. Asked about this business yesterday, our Fearless Puppet said “Everything I do is fully disclosed, it’s been fully vetted.” Yes George and if Daddy hadn’t been president at the time, you never would have been elected governor of Texas, much less president of these United States.

So then the question becomes, does it really matter any more to the non-fabulously wealthy citizen? If Bush and possibly Cheney can run amuck with no repercussion, hiring executives for the Administration from companies that have clearly bought and paid for the chance, do you and I even have a chance in hell to do anything about it? And the stock market appears to love all this terrific CEO hanky panky news too, doesn’t it?

The end comes and it is the Brasilieros running wild on the field, draped in their green and yellow flags, jumping for joy, and kneeling in prayer. Ronaldo showed everyone he’s recovered from the knee injuries and pressure that laid him low for four years, that the last final against France was not his true form, and at only 26 he has yet to see his full potential. Rivaldo and Cafu are a little older but Cafu especially would be brilliant to see in the next go round; there are many young players ready to come on and Big Phil made that point by standing Kaka at the substitute line in the last few seconds. Marcos was strong in goal, getting in front of a couple of rippers, doing what he needed.

If there was a man of the match for the Germans it was the defender Metzelder, only 21 years old, doing his best against the three R’s at the back and making it forward for some of his team’s best offensive opportunities but without enough of a goalscorer’s skills to make a difference. Khan made so few mistakes all tournament long, allowing only one goal before this match, and holding off the much better front line until injury and a weak back line made that too much to ask.

Brazil showed everyone why they are the best with this win. They came in after a weak qualifying round leading most to put them in the second tier behind France and Argentina; those two teams went home after the first round while the South Americans took the 11 pounds of gold and a clean sheet of seven wins.

Everybody Samba!

In the 79th minute, Kleberson sends a pass along the top of the 18 yard box, Rivaldo allowed the ball to go through his legs to Ronaldo, who took one touch to settle and then went all the way to the other side of the goal. Khan stretched out as long as he could but that wasn’t far enough as it rolled into the netting; the German goalie clearly seems to be hurt from an earlier collision. But Ronaldo has now tied the greatest scorer of all time and the South Americans seem sure to lift their fifth trophy.

Who we love?

Yes! Rivaldo takes a long left-footed blast, Khan blocks it but cannot control and Ronaldo is right there to slam it home! Ronaldo nets for his seventh goal of this tournament and 11th all time to leave him only one goal behind Pele on the Brazilian scoring sheet; unless Klose gets a hat trick in the last 20, Ronaldo will definitely take the Golden Shoe.

Brazil had the better shots on goal though Germany seemed more in control, with tighter marking, keeping Brazil from getting into rhythym. Neither team has been able to pass through the middle third; Germany has been passing back to Kahn and using his big boot while Brazil is getting long balls out of the back line over the top along with a couple of long runs by Lucio and Cafu. Italian Pierluigi Collina, four time FIFA referee of the year and no questions about quality or favoritism, showed with two early yellows that he wasn’t going to allow much though he did miss a clear dive by Ronaldinho.

Oliver Khan, as predicted, has been the difference so far with Germany missing Ballack and Brazil able to sneak through for several good shots by Kleberson and Ronaldo. If the German backline doesn’t get better in the back 18 yards, Khan won’t be enough by himself.