liberated of his watch

some pickpocket fleeced dubya of his watch while he was shaking hands with a crowd of "adoring" albanians. check it out, at about :46 into the video, you can see dubya's wearing a watch on his left wrist and at about :55 you can see someone tugging on his arm and then the watch is gone.

a new lens for my camera

my bunk got me a new lens for my (ahem, his old) camera for my bday, so i thought i'd visit with the bees in my nasturtium this morning...







[it's worth it to click thru to my flickr page and see the original size photos for close ups on the bees.]

memorial day weekend in bed

so, who gets a cold in the end of may? i do. this sucks. so, i'm in the fold out bed in the guest room with the sore throat and the stuffiness and the completely plugged up right ear. did i mention this sucks? i'm completely wired, though, so i'm not at a loss for entertainment or communication during my banishment. i've got my laptop, my blackberry and my zen mp3 player. i've got my trillian instant messenger going on my laptop so i can buzz my cutie to bring me tea, if i need it. it's like a 21st century bell! and i've got the slingbox connection going, so i can watch tv from my laptop while in bed. on the low tech side, i've got two white furballs taking up some space on the bed doing their best to keep me warm. i'd like to think they're concerned about me, but they're just happy to have any excuse to sleep on the bed. right now, i'm watching the indy 500. there's three women driving this year (sarah fisher, danica patrick & milka duno) - how cool is that!?

samaritans too busy these days?

as i was walking up to the bus stop this morning, i saw a woman in a car pull up next to another car and start honking. "oh, she must know the person in the other car," i thought. then she really started honking. the light was green, so she was holding up traffic and the other car wasn't moving either. i was starting to be annoyed by this traffic-blocking reunion. after a few seconds more, the woman drove off, but the car in the other lane was not moving. i looked up and then i saw that the driver, a man in his 30s or so, was just sitting there, his head slumped forward onto his chest. just as the car drove off, another woman approached the car on foot and started knocking on the driver's side window. nothing. no response. the guy did not move. not good. i got out my phone and started fumbling with my phone to call 911. i told the kids sitting on the bus bench to look around for a cop car and flag it down if they saw one. as i was still fumbling with the phone, the woman who had been knocking on the window came over to the sidewalk and, just as i was asking her if she had tried to open his door, the guy in the car snapped his head up and drove right off like nothing happened. he must have been asleep or having a george michael moment or something. now here's the kicker, after the guy drove off, we were all talking excitedly and one of the kids said, "oh yeah, he was like that for about five minutes." i can't believe that a man could be slumped over in the seat of his car on a busy city street for five minutes until someone did something.

garden

a bee visiting the nasturtium flowers in my patio container garden.

do not name the well...

one of my favorite websites is cuteoverload.com. it's like a little vaction in the middle of a bad day. you can go the site and see cute little kittens and puppies and hamsters and you can't stay mad after looking at a few posts. seriously, they should do up a mobile web capable version so you could calm down people in arguments, etc. by just pushing your mobile phone in someone's face with one of the pictures on the screen. or broadcast it on giant screens all over baghdad. whatev. anyway, there was a podcast that had an interview of the site's creator, meg frost. the interview remarked on how positive all the comments are and i have to agree. i don't generally read too many comments on blogs that i read, except in a few circumstances: cuteoverload; some food blogs; and knitting blogs, like crazy aunt purl. in all these kinds of happy blogs, you tend to get really positive, supportive and funny comments. it restores my faith in humanity. but on critic sites and hipster sites like chowhoundchowhound or mefi, you just get people trying to take the poster and/or the other commenters down a notch. and some of these "cute" sites have huge numbers of readers and tons of comments. it's kind of like web 2.0 providing new proof of the old adage that you draw more flies with honey than vinegar.

...from which you will not drink. oh my god. i've turned into my mother.

otter smooch

cuteotters.com had this picture on the site today (the photo is by flickr member zeul):


look at the smile on the face of the otter being smooched. it kind of reminded me of this picture of me and my bunk:



[i normally don't like to post photos of myself online, but i thought it was a pretty cute parallel.]

The O'Jackass Factor

hfcs on the outs?

economics to the rescue? hfcs may become more expensive as ethanol companies drive up the price of corn (don't even get me started on ethanol), which could prompt soda makers to switch back to sugar. via accidental hedonist.

now if we could only get them to stop using it in every other damn product on the market. this just in, though: trader joes has both ketchup and bbq sauce that are hfcs-free. my momma got me a bottle of ketchup for easter. thank you easter bunny! bok bok!

oh, for fuck's sake

so it's possible that the artificial sweetener splenda is basically 99% made from hfcs. seriously, people. i tried so hard to avoid hfcs for lent and it turns out i may have been consuming it all along. the irony is, i only use splenda in the regular coffee at my office, but i don't use it in the cappucino. i never used to drink the regular coffee and only started drinking it to replace the cappucino, because the cappucino mix had hfcs in it. can you hear me screaming in frustration?

from green republican's post on splenda:

Since sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar, they have to use bulking agents to manage the sweetness. Those bulking agents are dextrose and maltodextrin, which come from high fructose corn syrup (pure sugar). And not just a little bit... Since sucralose is SOOOOOO sweet, 99% of the powder in those little Splenda packets is bulking agent.

i say "may" because i can't easily put my finger on information showing that dextrose and maltodextrin are made from hfcs. dextrose is just a form of glucose (sugar). maltodextrin is made from corn starch, but that doesn't mean it's made from hfcs.

but while we're on the subject, let's talk about splenda, which apparently has more in common with pesticide than it does with sugar. from the woman to woman article "sugar substitutes and the potential danger of splenda" by marcelle pick, ob/gyn np:

Splenda is the trade name for sucralose, a synthetic compound stumbled upon in 1976 by scientists in Britain seeking a new pesticide formulation. It is true that the Splenda molecule is comprised of sucrose (sugar) — except that three of the hydroxyl groups in the molecule have been replaced by three chlorine atoms. (To get a better picture of what this looks like, see this image of a sucralose molecule.)

While some industry experts claim the molecule is similar to table salt or sugar, other independent researchers say it has more in common with pesticides. That’s because the bonds holding the carbon and chlorine atoms together are more characteristic of a chlorocarbon than a salt — and most pesticides are chlorocarbons.

the article goes on to state:

So, is Splenda safe? The truth is we just don’t know yet. There are no long-term studies of the side effects of Splenda in humans. The manufacturer’s own short-term studies showed that sucralose caused shrunken thymus glands and enlarged livers and kidneys in rodents. But in this case, the FDA decided that because these studies weren’t based on human test animals, they were not conclusive. Of course, there are countless examples of foods and drugs that have proved dangerous to humans that were first found to be dangerous to laboratory rats, and then again, countless others that have not. So the reality is that we are the guinea pigs for Splenda.

even stevia (an herb that is being promoted as a sweetener, of which i have a big jar at home) is not without it's problems, possibly causing reproductive and metabolism problems and, perhaps even, cancer, according to a nutrition action healthletter published by the center for science in the public interest.

sheesh. i give up.

hfcs update

it's been a rather successful lenten season in terms of the giving up of the hfcs. it wasn't hard to give up the sugary sodas, i rarely have those anyway. but i really miss the flavia cappuccino drinks at my office. i've been good about looking at labels, too, and actually spit a chocolate chip cookie into the trash after finding hfcs in the ingredient list on the package. for those of you that know me, that's pretty much the absolute limit of my willpower. one thing that i've found that has been suprisingly difficult to avoid is ketchup; it's so innocuous sitting there on your burger or waiting for your fries. i'll admit to slipping up a few times with that. i've also been surprised by how ubiquitous hfcs is in items that are supposed to be healthy. for example, it is the first ingredient in power bars and is in hansen's "natural" sodas.

the main reason that i'm really against hfcs is the political aspect, namely the corporate welfare that is involved. corn subsidies and sugar tariffs make corn sweetener really cheap to use. you can't blame companies for using hfcs when its several times cheaper than sugar. however, you can blame the government and the mega-agricultural companies like adm and cargill who conspire to exploit the corn subsidies designed to protect the american family farmer and fatten themselves at the trough of u.s. taxpayer dollars. seriously, someone should bring a r.i.c.o. suit against these people. for your reading pleasure, here's a really good article on the economic realities of hfcs.

in the meantime, only a few more days of lent to go, but i think i'm going to try to keep up with this.

great serialized fiction

i know i've mentioned this author before, but if you didn't listen to me and still aren't reading the blog of cheeseburger brown's serialized short fiction on a regular basis, you need to get with it, people! the most recent story, tim, destroyer of worlds, just linked in with cbb's novel, simon of space (which was written and posted serially over the course of a few months during the summer of 2005), in the most amazing way. this is some of the best writing out there and definitely some of the best stuff on the web and, amazingly, it's free! i can't recommend it enough.

uk comic relief

a spot that ricky gervais did about kenya for the british comic relief. it's 8 1/2 minutes, but watch it all the way to the end, it's worth it...

go bruins!

the tournament starts in just a few minutes. boy, do i love me some march madness. i've got my "howland is my homeboy" shirt on and i'm ready to cheer on my guys! goooooooooooo bruins!

the corn mafia has found me

and it didn't take long.

so i received an interesting comment on yesterday's hfcs post. apparently, someone calling themselves marylandbluecrab has found my humble little blog. nobody reads it except my mom and my aunt and a random canuck or two, so i found it really interesting that someone would leave a comment on my hfcs post, especially one that so resoundingly stated that there's absolutely nothing wrong with hfcs. hmmm... a blank blog with a profile that simply states "female, marketing, washington, dc." could it be any more obvious that my new blog reader is some toady working for a marketing firm paid by a hcfs industry group or perhaps the american beverage association to search the interwebs for bad references to hfcs on a regular basis and post responses that spout their propaganda?

and i beg to differ, marylandbluecrab, that "there's no study out there..." sure, studies that are funded by the american beverage institute and the corn refiners association support your claim. but scientists in the pocket of tobacco companies said smoking is safe for you, too. what about independent studies, such as this one: "Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity," in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 79, No. 4, 537-543, April 2004)? the study's authors state in their abstract:

"The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight, this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain."

simply put, it appears that hfcs doesn't trigger the signals that your body puts out to make you feel full, as opposed to glucose, which does. so, you can drink a lot more hfcs-sweetened coke before you begin to feel full than you would if it were sweetened with sugar. seems like a perfect solution for coke, now doesn't it? yes, americans are chronic, excessive consumers of food (and many other things). but you can't ignore the correlation between the increasing prevalence (i'd almost call it ubiquity) of hfcs in our food and the corresponding rise in obesity and diabetes in this country.

so, welcome, corn mafia. happy reading! i'm glad at least that someone not related to me is reading this blog. ;)

UPDATE: i'm not the only one who has had this experience. check out this guy's article. you can see another corn mafia response in the comments to his article.

high fructose corn syrup

so, i have decided that high fructose corn syrup (hfcs) is the root of all evil. it's in absolutely everything and it appears to be really bad for you. the rise of the use of hfcs and the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in this country have happened at the same time. coincidence? i think not. ever the conspiracy theorist, i'll also point out to you the link between giant agribusiness (adm, cargill) and u.s. government corn subsidies and sugar tariffs that make sugar prohibitively expensive to import.

i'm really sick of being the victim of giant corporations' greed, so i have decided to give hfcs up for lent and see if i can stick with it after. the problem is, hfcs is in freakin' everything and lots of stuff you wouldn't expect. cokes and sodas, candy and off-the-shelf baked goods: it's pretty easy to guess that those items are loaded with the stuff and are pretty easy to avoid. but hfcs lurks everywhere, like in ketchup (which i discovered after eating some fries the other day) and in the mix for the cappuccino for my office's flavia coffee machine (realized that one several days into the process; very upsetting to have to give that up).

i'll be posting lists of products that i find it in as i go along and maybe some articles about hfcs. if i end up dead, you'll know it's the corn mafia and will avenge me, right?

you're on my list

look who stephen colbert has put on notice now...



who knew stephen and i hated the exact same things!?

gravity

john mayer doing a live version of gravity. the audio quality is so-so, but you get the point...

our disposable society

i was just kvetching the other day about the countless plastic bottles associated with my newfound bikram yoga habit: bottles of water; bottles of gatorade; bottles of vitamin water; bottles of propel fitness water. and then the path to freedom urban homestead folks had this little post: bottled water is like driving a hummer. they suggest purchasing one of their stainless steel water bottles as an alternative (yes, these hippies are serious capitalists). i'd try that, except after a bikram yoga class, i'd expect that my water would be hot enough to make tea! i've been lugging around one of those faux-nalgene bottles for a while, but if i forget it, i just buy the water before my class. now, i'm going to make a serious commitment to keep it by my side and try not to be tempted by the fancy vitamin waters and sports drinks. i'm sure by pocketbook will be happier, too.

how i buy it

"At age 41 you will die from wounds delivered by a blender after trying to make your sixteenth magarita [sic] of the day. (And it's on 3:00pm, shame on you!)"

The Amazing Death Predictor would seem frighteningly prescient, except i drink my margaritas on the rocks, not blended.