Here it is again ladies and gentlemen...a Free For All Friday! Except I'm adding a new wrinkle...I'm deputizing all of you in my fight to mitigate the impact of age, sloth and poor eating habits as I attempt my annual summer weight loss ritual. I'll report weekly the status of my effort, opening myself to the praise or condemnation of readers, whichever is warranted. As you can see from the provided chart (above), I am a bit obsessed with measuring my weight--there's 4.5 years of data in that chart, and as you can see, the last year has provided a new high and a new low.
The diet started June 1, at which point I was 189 lbs (I know, I know).
This morning I weighed in at 184.6.
More importantly though, use the comment section of this post to ask a question, pose a riddle, make a comment or provide a topic for further discussion.
Is there a goal weight? Is the economic downturn the proper time to be cutting into sales of adult HUSKY pants?
ReplyDeleteI want to see the "10000 Pennies" guy do a You Tube pennies analysis of your weight trends. He might title it "Pennies from Heavy" (yes, I know, I out-heavy you by at least 10,000 pennies).
ReplyDeleteFree for all topic: Violence upswing in Baghdad as 30 Jun withdrawal of US security forces approaches. At least some US Commanders on ground saying they would stay if left to them...leaving during upswing in violence makes no sense and opens the door to lose all they accomplished over the last several years. Counter argument is you'll never get to the point where you can leave without an upturn in violence as opportunists attempt to position for early advantage as the last forces depart. My feeling is as long as we make it clear that we are not in this for the long haul any longer, the latter argument has merit. Only if you let the opportunists know that we will outlast them and that their best course of action is to help create, rather than destroy, the society in which they live, will we ever get to the point that a withdrawal could occur similar to our eventual withdrawal from Japan in WWII for example (not that this is a very good parallel geo-politically). I'm an at sea guy though, so curious how our ground-based veterans see this. Or anyone else who has a, preferably, informed opinion.
ReplyDeleteDo we get badges?
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind,
ReplyDelete1 gram of fat = 9 calories
1 gram of protein = 4 calories
1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories.
Protein: 10-20% of daily calories
Fat (good and bad): No more than 30% calories
Carbohydrates: About 60% of caloric intake.
However, if trying to lose fat, it’s recommended that you consume about 20% fat and 20% protein.
I believe President Obama may have a stimulus plan for losing weight. It involves either making you so poor that you cannot afford to purchase food, or by causing hyper inflation where you get very little food for an astronomical amount of money.
http://www.warriorfitnessworld.com/articles/2007/07/how_much_protein_carbohydrates.php
Great ideas often come from the intersection of two or more other lines of thought.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, producers of 8 inch floppy disks missed the inflection point and allowed producers of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks to flourish while they essentially perished. Creative destruction if you will. Numerous examples exist, perhaps GM is one. The thing about 5 1/4 inch floppies was that at first, they were more expensive for the same capacity of storage and required new hardware so there was quite a bit of risk associated with making the jump to the new "S curve" on the part of the producers of 5 1/4" disks. There was not a consumer demand for the new product because it did not exist. Again, the producers of 8 inchers who held on to their business model went away. The destruction of one firm often comes at the hands of another firm since it is very hard for managers with a profitable product to scrap it at the point of inflection and commit resources to a new product which may not (at first) result in the same profits.
On another axis, we have a potential threat with global climate change. We have preemptively acted on lesser threats, the threat of WMD's in Iraq for one. By lesser I mean that a) less people were potentially threatened and b) there was, arguably, less intelligence on the subject. Could there be a lesson somewhere at the intersection of these two points? Is it possible that we could miss the inflection point because of our fear of the chaos that comes along with creative destruction of our current energy reliance, the same creative destruction that we proponents of capitalism espouse or worse yet, individual greed set on wringing the last bit of profits from an old business model?
bbauer - that is one of the better presentations of the case for acting now that i've seen. i really liked it. there are some assumptions, I believe, in your argument that bear discussion: (1) changing our reliance on carbon based energy will in fact turn the global climate change around (2) that doing so now will have soon-enough realizable return on investment such that the ends actually justify the means (5 1/4" floppy producers would have gone out of business, or at least dropped the line, had the ROI not been realized within a couple years of introduction) and (3)that the danger imposed by WMD in the hands of a despot was in fact a lesser threat than the global climate change you cite. You may be thinking that there is overwhelming evidence that manmade climate change is a real threat. But then there was similar overwhelming evidence that WMD existed in Iraq. Again, not trying to diminish a really fine argument, just want to examine the assumptions which is where I believe the most controversy is bound to exist.
ReplyDeleteIsn't there a secondary benefit from investing in climate change friendly technologies? It seems to me that there is a great deal of overlap between the technologies & policies one would pursue to achieve a greater deal of energy independence/security. Increased competition for scarce resources is a much more tangible threat than catastrophic climate change.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, are we not acting because it easy to wrap our minds around the risk to the bottom line in the short term of increased regulation (cap & trade) and investment in new technologies, but more difficult to comprehend the risk of some disaster (climate change beyond some threshold) in the future?
How much overlap is there between actions to mitigate against climate change and making us less reliant on foreign sources of energy? If there is a great deal of overlap, isn't that a compelling enough argument to act?
Even if CC could be measured to be a low probability event. When factoring in the catastrophic impact of this event, shouldn't we be more compelled to act now? Even if we couldn't change the ultimate fate (CC is irreversible given current and near-future technology), shouldn't we take actions to lessen the hardship.
Finally (and more controversially), how many people on the conservative side of the climate change argument belief in the "End Times"? Given that answer, is it conceivable that some policy foot dragging or obstructionism in preparing or future hardships is supported by the notion that it won't matter anyway?