This is an interesting talking head documentary and road trip across North America, taking a look at the many cultures and the power of lobbying and advertising.
This DVD, along with SuperSize Me, is already a popular homework assignment in some high school classrooms, flipped and otherwise.
Americans enjoy finding out how they have been manipulated with clever misinformation. The power of advertising excites the neuro-scientist within.
The USDA comes off as pathetic, as one would expect. As the authorized "pusher" it crams dairy products down unwitting throats, basically child abuse on a vast scale. These children grow up reciting the same ridiculous mantras from their junkyards of mental wreckage, their true American heritage denied them.
Washington DC is more interested in killing and/or imprisoning Americans for profit than providing them with a good nutritional support system, but that's not news. Its policies have been similarly cruel overseas.
I do enjoy dairy products and tolerate lactose well. However I treat cheese and chocolate as luxuries, not because I can't in principle have unlimited amounts but because luxuries are only such if enjoyed in strictly limited amounts. One can't be luxury class and swill one's luxuries, an oxymoron.
I've been reducing my milk intake. I'm brand loyal to Tillamook and Alpenrose.
I've eaten my share of such products and do not wallow with self pity in denying myself as much future access. I'm actually rediscovering my power to enjoy food in my imagination again, as when reading books containing food scenes.
Food may be interesting and rewarding in different ways than just through the sugar family (thinking about ice cream, candy and breakfast cereal). Chemistry and food prep (including cooking, but also raw foods) go together.
For those looking for ways to lose weight, I recommend studying nutritional science and really taking an interest in the biochemistry.
Make weight loss your door to the whole of the life sciences and really take an interest in upgrading your sources of information.
Turning away from junk memes in supermarket checkout lanes, in favor of better sources for science, expands your focus from a personal obsession to a concomitant and related societal phenomenon (obesity, a form of malnutrition) which is actually the level where effective anti-bodies are needed.
Food Not Bombs has been a great influence in my case, expanding my horizons regarding foods, and Wanderers, which percolates with the biochemical interests of our hero Linus Pauling.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
TriMet Gets Cheap
Shame on those who made these new benches legal. What a travesty. Compare the older benches, ergonomic, designed with the bus-riding public in mind:
Just around the corner, what some thoughtless bureaucrat in a cube thought was a good idea: vertical sign backed benches with chintzy advertizing caring for your spine (not!):
Remember, whoever advertises on these new benches is low life. Don't buy their products. Send them an email explaining why.
Anything TriMet advertises: consider boycotting. Don't encourage sell-out bureaucrats who hate the public. TriMet, please replace these horrible benches soon. We are viciously opposed to them and will fight you every step of the way, count on it.
The loathsome benches are already starting to fall apart. Tri-Met sure is the big loser on this deal. The boycott (of any advertiser who supports this insult to Portland riders) is continuing to gather steam.
Just around the corner, what some thoughtless bureaucrat in a cube thought was a good idea: vertical sign backed benches with chintzy advertizing caring for your spine (not!):
Remember, whoever advertises on these new benches is low life. Don't buy their products. Send them an email explaining why.
Anything TriMet advertises: consider boycotting. Don't encourage sell-out bureaucrats who hate the public. TriMet, please replace these horrible benches soon. We are viciously opposed to them and will fight you every step of the way, count on it.
The loathsome benches are already starting to fall apart. Tri-Met sure is the big loser on this deal. The boycott (of any advertiser who supports this insult to Portland riders) is continuing to gather steam.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Pop is Still Groovy
One could read that on a number of levels... Anyway, I rest my case:
I'd actually take it back to the movie Samsara (saw it with Melody) which is about the machine-like powers of humans, to be precise (with a little help from their auto-tuners). I'm happy to have found Lindsey-the-violinist through this group.
Great mugging by the way, such pros.
"Television... rules the nation" and it's the music that gets you feeling free. Yep. Back to EBN.
Hey, add this to the Blue House party mix!
I'd actually take it back to the movie Samsara (saw it with Melody) which is about the machine-like powers of humans, to be precise (with a little help from their auto-tuners). I'm happy to have found Lindsey-the-violinist through this group.
Great mugging by the way, such pros.
"Television... rules the nation" and it's the music that gets you feeling free. Yep. Back to EBN.
Hey, add this to the Blue House party mix!
Monday, March 10, 2014
Other Worldy Toons
If you watch this short toon by Andreas Hykade et al, I recommend clicking through to Youtube and getting it high def on a big screen, as I did, if at all possible.
If you recall Disney's Fantasia, this is every bit as visually and musically interesting as one of those, but a tad more demented, in a way that recalls a cartooning style that Disney defines itself against, as cuter, less demented.
You can see links to Cubism, Picasso, and of course Dali and surrealism, in this genre, as well as in this very toon. So iconograpic. So language. So Wittgenstein therefore (these are "words with use" too, these signifying "heads", so familiar).
In calling it the Videogrammatron a long time ago, when still with McGraw-Hill, my proto Youtube-like database for STEM.math-teaching via TV's CTW, I was dreaming of clips like this one, off the wall yet compelling, engaging.
They're other-worldy in a way, as in "Other World": not merely imaginative an the "idle fantasy" sense. Like The Lego Movie, they partake of the daimonic as Patrick Harpur uses the term.
These blogs go in layers and if you dig back you'll find the Portland Knowledge Lab (PKL) working to keep Portland weird by underlining its underground comic identity as ToonTown, could be one of many. We love our manga and anime.
I realize now the Cabalistic Tetragrammaton was influential at least in providing the word (Videogrammatron -- with tron more from Tron and elecTronics); but also in the sense of "combinations and permutations" ala Sesame Street, with each episode a mix of old and new material, lots of repetition.
This is also a Hypertoon a sorts, an idea also defined in these web pages.
Saturday, March 08, 2014
AFSC Governance
I'm blogging from the back row of the meeting hall, having been in a breakout session with the general secretary and other board and corporation members. I learned from Shan that we had not actually fallen below quorum in these annual meetings. That was a fear, not a reality.
Upon returning to the main worship room, I took the microphone to mention my experience earlier this year, of wanting to share a draft regional strategic plan to which I was privy as an Area Program Committee person, with other corporation members from North Pacific Yearly Meeting. Although the co-clerk of the regional Executive Committee approved such sharing, the Regional Director overruled that decision, saying this draft was eyes-only to AFSC staff and Area Program Committee. This seemed to me a breakdown of the feedback loop.
AFSC has made a come back since a financial meltdown in 2009. We're much healthier, financially, today, in 2014. About 20% of the budget is spent on administration. Annual income hovers at around $30 million with $39% from planned gifts, 42% from charitable donations, 6% from endowment, 10% from grants. Reserves (separate from the endowment, which is valued at almost $40 million) are up to almost $28 million, after going negative in 2011. Reserves as a percent of budget are still not up to 1990s levels.
AFSC spends non-admin funds on staffed programs, internships and fellowships, and various strategic initiatives.
The idea of streamlining the corporation of to allow at most two, rather than at least two, Yearly-Meeting-appointed representatives, is still under discussion but with no plan for action this year. I had expected that would be our main business, so was naturally surprised by the deferral. I won't be here next year I don't think, as my term ends this year.
Carol, my mom, is also here. She's an "at large" corporation member. We've enjoyed having meals together and walking to and from the hotel. She's on the sixth floor, me on the twelfth.
Upon returning to the main worship room, I took the microphone to mention my experience earlier this year, of wanting to share a draft regional strategic plan to which I was privy as an Area Program Committee person, with other corporation members from North Pacific Yearly Meeting. Although the co-clerk of the regional Executive Committee approved such sharing, the Regional Director overruled that decision, saying this draft was eyes-only to AFSC staff and Area Program Committee. This seemed to me a breakdown of the feedback loop.
AFSC has made a come back since a financial meltdown in 2009. We're much healthier, financially, today, in 2014. About 20% of the budget is spent on administration. Annual income hovers at around $30 million with $39% from planned gifts, 42% from charitable donations, 6% from endowment, 10% from grants. Reserves (separate from the endowment, which is valued at almost $40 million) are up to almost $28 million, after going negative in 2011. Reserves as a percent of budget are still not up to 1990s levels.
AFSC spends non-admin funds on staffed programs, internships and fellowships, and various strategic initiatives.
The idea of streamlining the corporation of to allow at most two, rather than at least two, Yearly-Meeting-appointed representatives, is still under discussion but with no plan for action this year. I had expected that would be our main business, so was naturally surprised by the deferral. I won't be here next year I don't think, as my term ends this year.
Carol, my mom, is also here. She's an "at large" corporation member. We've enjoyed having meals together and walking to and from the hotel. She's on the sixth floor, me on the twelfth.
Monday, March 03, 2014
The Armstrong Lie (movie review)
I watched this while "queue slaying" which is slang for "my job", which happens to be linked to another timezone, with 10 pm a witching hour i.e. I was trying to meet a deadline -- not unlike Lance Armstrong, how's that for a segue?
Yes, he lied. When you're behind the false facades in a Wild West town, with so many brave fronts on main street propped up by slats, with willing true believers (fans) thronging in the streets, who would be first to let them down? Organized religion comes to mind. He'd become a cult leader and frankly, that's not the easiest role, whether you're a class act or the neediest of televangelists.
He wanted to rescue a sport and replace it with a fairy tale, while knowing, back room, it was all based on biomedical engineering, euphemistic for "drugs". So much around "drugs" is really just "adults" not able to face reality. We actually need those opiates etc. What's with burning another's perfectly good poppy fields, if not seeking more control for oneself, a competing drug lord. The hypocritical preachy self-righteousness around "doping" is awfully thick.
SH dropped in for the last 30 minutes or so and I poured us some drinks (greyhounds to be precise). With athletes uploading ever more bioticker statistics, direct from sensors to cloud, I could see where a cycling cult would open itself to crazy doctors, a few on to something, a human guinea pig bonanza, like Tour de France has been for a long time, Lance not the scapegoat (in my book). Follow on the web, study the biochemistry.
Doug Strain did experiments like that as a CO (conscientious objector to solution-by-mayhem): he and his buddies lived in a freezing cold box many hours a day testing different diets, gathering data to help budget wars i.e. feeding soldiers in the field. Doug was proud that they'd found cutting corners made for a less fit army, which could lead to losing the war. Nutrition is not where to arbitrarily cut back. Do so at your peril.
Under the soap opera and melodrama, with many reputations lost, is the physical feat of going from being a serious cancer case to winning one of the toughest races, with medical help. The lies are all on top of that, but I still admire the stamina and courage involved. Behind the curtain, he's still a mortal, not superman.
Since the analogy was made: to bank robbers returning to rob the same bank again, just to show that they could, and thumb their noses: I'd admire such people at some level, even if they got caught, at least if it were a movie and no animals were harmed in its making. Nor did Lance have that much choice. He was uber-curious about his limits, as a legend in his own time. He's a scientist, perhaps a mad one.
Yes, he lied. When you're behind the false facades in a Wild West town, with so many brave fronts on main street propped up by slats, with willing true believers (fans) thronging in the streets, who would be first to let them down? Organized religion comes to mind. He'd become a cult leader and frankly, that's not the easiest role, whether you're a class act or the neediest of televangelists.
He wanted to rescue a sport and replace it with a fairy tale, while knowing, back room, it was all based on biomedical engineering, euphemistic for "drugs". So much around "drugs" is really just "adults" not able to face reality. We actually need those opiates etc. What's with burning another's perfectly good poppy fields, if not seeking more control for oneself, a competing drug lord. The hypocritical preachy self-righteousness around "doping" is awfully thick.
SH dropped in for the last 30 minutes or so and I poured us some drinks (greyhounds to be precise). With athletes uploading ever more bioticker statistics, direct from sensors to cloud, I could see where a cycling cult would open itself to crazy doctors, a few on to something, a human guinea pig bonanza, like Tour de France has been for a long time, Lance not the scapegoat (in my book). Follow on the web, study the biochemistry.
Doug Strain did experiments like that as a CO (conscientious objector to solution-by-mayhem): he and his buddies lived in a freezing cold box many hours a day testing different diets, gathering data to help budget wars i.e. feeding soldiers in the field. Doug was proud that they'd found cutting corners made for a less fit army, which could lead to losing the war. Nutrition is not where to arbitrarily cut back. Do so at your peril.
Under the soap opera and melodrama, with many reputations lost, is the physical feat of going from being a serious cancer case to winning one of the toughest races, with medical help. The lies are all on top of that, but I still admire the stamina and courage involved. Behind the curtain, he's still a mortal, not superman.
Since the analogy was made: to bank robbers returning to rob the same bank again, just to show that they could, and thumb their noses: I'd admire such people at some level, even if they got caught, at least if it were a movie and no animals were harmed in its making. Nor did Lance have that much choice. He was uber-curious about his limits, as a legend in his own time. He's a scientist, perhaps a mad one.
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