A Cat and a Box

Here is a funny video about cat and a box. While I like the first half where the cat is obviously thinking over the best way to get in the box, I also got laughs from the second half where he is just kinda springing out of it!

Obama and Big Numbers: The Difference Between 100 Million and Several Trillion

Yet another great visualization of the numbers that are being tossed around in Washington these days: Obama Budget Cuts Visualization.

Amazing Bike Moves

I'm pretty impressed with these bike stunts: Inspired Bicycles: Danny MacAskill - April 2009. The video starts out slowly, but stay tuned... you don't want to miss all the stunts once it gets going. (Thanks to Diana for the link.)

Gary Taubes is One of My Heroes

The subject line says it all: Gary Taubes is officially a heroe of mine. His book Good Calories, Bad Calories is an eye-opening, mind-blowing chronicle of the scientific history of everything that is wrong with dominant nutritional thinking these days.

But I not only admire him for his book, but I just watched a video (Feb. 2008) of him speaking and making many of the same points from his book... and he is just amazing. He clearly has lived and breathed his research for several years. This video, Big Fat Lies, is over an hour long. And like his book, it gets heavy at some points. But if you are into this subject and want an education, it is well worth the time to watch it.

The material from Taubes -- whether book or video -- are not for everyone. While I highly recommend them, if you want something simpler (not simplistic, just less heavy than Taubes) that makes the case for low-carb/paleo/primal nutrition, then I'd recommend The Protein Power Lifeplan by Drs. Eades and Eades. And if you really just have a matter of minutes and want the summary, then watch the video I blogged about recently: Paleo in a Nutshell, Part 1: Food.

Part 2 of Paleo/Primal in a Nutshell Video Series

I recently blogged about what I considered to be one of the very best videos I've ever seen posted to YouTube. I still think there are few that are as well done, and that speak truth on such an important topic, as Paleo in a Nutshell, Part 1: Food. If you haven't seen it yet, go to that post and see it!

So I was delighted to watch the second in the series: Paleo/Primal in a Nutshell, Part 2: Exercise. Like many movie sequels, this one isn't quite as good as the original. But still quite excellent, and well worth watching.

These two videos summarize quite nicely (and with nice background music even) much of what I have learned in the areas of nutrition and exercise since August, when we started down the wonderful, life-improving path that we did.

On Big Numbers and the Obama Budget

My friend Will Wilkinson's brief article Obama budget adds up to a big problem nicely summarizes many of the points I've been making lately to anyone who will listen. He notes the feebleness of Obama asking each cabinet area to cut $100 million, how such numbers are dwarfed by the number $3.5 trillion, and the obvious long term problem being that we will all have to pay for this spending spree at some point down the road -- through higher taxes or through inflation (a tax on money you already have). Well done Will!

On the Future of Books

Stephen Johnson has written a fascinating piece for the WSJ: How the E-Book Will Change Will Change the Way We Read and Write. I was going to quote some of his points and predictions, but there are too many interesting bits to choose just a few. I'm not sure I believe all of his predictions will come true, but I suspect many of them will. It will be fascinating to watch what happens over the next 10+ years in this realm.

Contra Strunk and White

The April 17th issue of The Chronicle Review had a great article by Geoffrey Pullman of the University of Edinburgh titled "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice". Well worth reading, as he takes the famous "Strunk and White" team to task for many mistakes and other problems with their high-school and college grammar standard "The Elements of Style".

I'm not a grammar expert. But I've always felt that certain "rules" from Strunk and White -- or their guidelines that others interpreted as rules -- seemed overly restrictive. Two examples: overly strict editing regarding passive voice and split infinitives. So it was nice to read this article and learn I'm not alone! After giving many great examples to prove his points, he ends with:

It's sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write "however" or "than me" or "was" or "which," but can't tell you why. The land of the free in the grip of The Elements of Style.

So I won't be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own
misbegotten rules.

On Jackie Chan's Recent Comments

I was saddened to hear of Jackie Chan's recent comments. It might not be good for over a billion people to have freedom? I don't assume that moving a country that size away from single-party rule and a relative lack of individual rights will be easy or could be done overnight. But to say what Mr. Chan is saying? Ugh.

Microsoft Video on Technology of the Future

See this short video posted at Jay Cross' blog, a Microsoft video about technology improvements that are coming in the future.

The technologies shown vary a bit in terms of how soon we'll see each: some are already in early-release/expensive/prototypes from various providers, others I assume won't be ready for many years.

My random thoughts:

• You can see how we'll get here from the latest advances we've already seen in recent years, such as the UI of the iPhone/iTouch, the latest Kindle device, Microsoft's table-top "Surface" technology, and early digital whiteboards.
• I presume a bit further out will be the examples that are more holographic or similar to what we saw in the movie "Minority Report".
• People have been talking up GPS-driven technology for years, but I hope we'll get better scenarios than stores giving us personalized digital coupons as we walk by their doors.
• The quick example of changing prices in the supermarket... wow! That would be a big efficiency gain for these kinds of stores!
• I've been reading about "digital paper" for a while too... the example of the newspaper shown here is impressive... if that comes soon enough, might it keep more traditional newspapers alive I wonder?
• Language-translation-during-conversation example... very "star trek"... and would be great if near-100% accurate. Less than that, could be annoying and cause major problems.

You might need to watch the video twice to catch all the good examples flying by... enjoy!

Bathroom Mirror Prank

I liked this at YouTube: Bathroom Mirror Prank Funny. A few times the woman even made references to vampires!

Tim Teufel Statue

I found this brief item from the Onion to by kinda funny. Baseball fans, esp. Mets fans, will get the humor here.

Cat with a Bag on its Head

This is a pretty funny video, of a cat who gets a paper bag on its head. It manages to walk around several rooms quite well. Unless I am missing something here, I find this quite interesting and consistent with the behavior of every cat I've ever had in that they get very agitated when you change furniture, introduce new objects into their living space, and so on. Based on this video, where this cat was able to navigate quite well based on memory (or so it seems), that would explain why cats don't like such changes.

Another Comes Around on Drug Legalization

Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts is the latest to begin to realize that the "war on drugs" is a massive failure, and that the time has come to consider legalization (starting with Marijuana, presumably). See his recent column "Maybe we should legalize drugs". It is nice to more and more regular newspaper columnists coming around on this issue.

Paleo In a Nutshell Part 1: Best YouTube Video I've Ever Seen?

Like many people, I've probably watched well over a thousand video clips on YouTube over the years. Some are hilarious, some educational, some very strange. Hard to say what my all-time favorite video is, as for one thing it is hard to compare them when they range so much in their purpose. But this morning I may have seen what I now consider to be my all-time favorite YouTube video, Paleo in a Nutshell, Part 1 (see also his blog posting announcing the video):



This video is simply brilliant. We've gone relatively low-carb/paleo in our eating/lifestyle since August, and with great results. However, when this has come up in conversation it can be difficult or frustrating to explain to people (just as it would have been difficult to explain to us prior to our deep dive into this in August). I usually give a few points about the argument from evolution, a few bits of the science we've learned since August, and then recommend the book The Protein Power Lifeplan by Drs. Eades and Eades.

But this 5-minute video will likely now be my first resource to send people to who are newcomers to low-carb/paleo/etc. and are interested to learn more about it. Here are some comments about this video as to why I like it so very much

• He uses simple animation with text to make the points. As proven by CommonCraft and others, this makes for a very effective learning approach.
• He covers just about all the key points, and does efficiently in five minutes: what to eat, what not to eat, the point about valid science backing up the paleo argument, the problem with the government/most scientists and "nutritionists"/the pharmaceutical companies/ etc., the need for natural grown/raised food, and the evolutionary argument in general.
• Along the way he both puts forth the positive position and responds to common criticisms.
• There is no narration, but rather text to go with the images. Very effective.
• The background music is a favorite song of mine from the movie O' Brother Where Art Thou -- not critical to the message, but a nice bonus!

I could go on. This is just a wonderful piece of work, one that I and many others will make great use of in the months and years ahead, whenever conversations come around to this topic. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thomas Sowell on One Major Cause of the Housing Crisis

Thomas Sowell recently wrote a good essay focusing on one of the biggest causes of the financial crisis -- the unnecessary and economically damaging government emphasis and programs to try to artificially increase home-ownership. A good read.

Health Care Reform and Drugs That Save Lives

Virginia Postrel wrote an outstanding article for the The Atlantic, titled and subtitled as: "My Drug Problem" -- The cancer drug Herceptin saved the author’s life. It also cost $60,000. Would health-care reform put it, and other expensive new drugs, out of reach?

A provocative question. The article is well worth reading in full, but here is a key excerpt:

Not everyone in similarly rich countries is so lucky—something to remember the next time you hear a call to “tame runaway medical spending.” Consider New Zealand. There, a government agency called Pharmac evaluates the efficacy of new drugs, decides which drugs are cost-effective, and negotiates the prices to be paid by the national health-care system. These functions are separate in most countries, but thanks to this integrated approach, Pharmac has indeed tamed the national drug budget. New Zealand spent $303 per capita on drugs in 2006, compared with $843 in the United States. Unfortunately for patients, Pharmac gets those impressive results by saying no to new treatments. New Zealand “is a good tourist destination, but options for cancer treatment are not so attractive there right now,” Richard Isaacs, an oncologist in Palmerston North, on New Zealand’s North Island, told me in October.

A more centralized U.S. health-care system might reap some one-time administrative savings, but over the long term, cutting costs requires the kinds of controls that make Americans hate managed care. You have to deny patients some of the things they want, including cancer drugs that are promising but expensive. Policy wonks dream of objective technocrats (perhaps at the “independent institute to guide reviews and research on comparative effectiveness” proposed by Barack Obama) who will rationally “scrutinize new treatments for effectiveness,” as The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn puts it. But neither science nor liberal democracy works quite so neatly.

She then goes into some detail regarding the situation with New Zealand's Pharmac and the drug Herceptin, the political turmoil it has caused, and the difficult situation the egalitarian leftists find themselves in. Towards the end she summarizes with:

The good thing about a decentralized, largely private system like ours is that health care constantly gets weighed against everything else in the economy. No single authority has to decide whether 15 percent or 20 percent or 25 percent is the “right” amount of GDP to spend on health care, just as no single authority has to decide how much to spend on food or clothing or entertainment. Different individuals and organizations can make different trade-offs. Centralized systems, by contrast, have one health budget. This treatment gets funded, and that one doesn’t.

And if you'd like more of Virginia Postrel's excellent writing along these lines, see her follow-up article where she responds to many who commented on her article. (Thanks to Paul Hsieh at FIRM for the links.)

On Altruism and Health Care

My favorite blog for health-care industry analysis and commentary is We Stand FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine). However, I was introduced recently to another good blog, ReasonPharm, via this posting that notes the impact of the call for greater altruism in medicine and the health care industry. I'm definitely adding this blog to my regular reads.

Animals Who Hate Baths

This is a great series of photos of animals who hate taking a bath. Some seriously grumpy looking pets here! If I had pick my favorites, I guess I'd go with #41-39, 35-32, 24, 20 (see paws), 18, 17, and 9. (Thanks to Diana Hsieh for the link.)

Scary Debt Numbers

As a follow-up to my recent posting "Scary Deficit Numbers", see the graph that accompanies the March 23 WSJ editorial. These are the CBO estimates for the federal debt held by the public as a share of GDP if President Obama's 2010 budget becomes law. Notice it skyrocket from just over 40% to close to 60% in 2009, and then gradually increase to over 80% by 2019. Just yet another visualization of the enormous spending being proposed here!

Example of Neither Side Understanding Individual Rights

Very often I see both liberals and conservatives in this country argue passionately about some issue, but upon closer investigation discover that neither side understands the fundamental principles involved -- often the fundamental concept of individual rights and how they apply on that issue.

Greg Perkins has done an excellent job identifying such a situation and explaining quite succinctly. The example is the issue of pharmacies and drugs and the "freedom of conscience" of the pharmicist.

Impressive Lego Artist

I gotta admit, Sean Kenney is an impressive artist -- one who works exclusively with Legos as his media. See his portfolio page to browse around his works.

Scary Deficit Numbers

See this graph from the Washington Post. The White House numbers are scary enough, but the independent CBO numbers are even more frightening. See Paul Hsieh's post at NoodleFood for some further comments on this.

I'd love to re-watch the many quotes -- from Democrats in particular -- the countless times they criticized the now relatively-puny-deficits from the past 8 years (particularly before they took over congress). Those quotes should play on a loop on some cable station me thinks.

And just keep in mind folks -- these numbers are the annual deficit numbers, which means they are cumulative on top of the already existing huge debt.

We'll soon need new adjectives here folks!

Obama's Snicker is Shameful

Granted, President Obama has stated that under his watch the Feds will ease up on going after medical marijuana patients and shops in states that have laws allowing for it. That is progress. But it is just a first step of what is needed: federal decriminalization.

Recently pro-medical marijuana and pro-decriminalization folks jammed the online question queue at the White House website, suggesting that decriminalization -- replaced by regulation and taxing marijuana -- could be a good economic move (as it would bring more revenue for the government in these tough times). That is a rather weak argument for their cause, but leaving that aside, it was disheartening to see Obama snicker at this suggestion. He could have instead simply noted that the money this would bring in is minor in the grand scheme of the federal budget, and that the issue of legalization of marijuana shouldn't be decided on purely economic grounds. He could have said that and safely (politically speaking) not hinted one way or the other at his wider views on the matter. But no, he chose to laugh it off -- yeah, real funny Mr. Obama. The War on Drugs is a horrible disaster for countless reasons, we've got a huge problem brewing in Mexico and spilling over into the US, and you get a few laughs at the expense of serious people raising a serious issue. Nice move.

For a great read on this topic, see Will Wilkinson's excellent (and in the end, brave) posting on this: I smoke pot, and I like it.