Sunday, February 4th, 2007
Michael Pollan wrote the best 10,000 words I’ve read about food since Fast Food Nation. The article appeared in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, and can be read online at Pollan’s site (no registration required): Unhappy Meals
It would be a ridiculous conceit to think that I could write a few more words anywhere near as eye-opening, foundation-shaking, or truthful about dietary science, nutrition, and food culture than Pollan has. I mean, I’m going to do it anyway, but please just go and read Pollan’s essay right now. This feeble tribute will still be here when you’re finished.
(But, do be sure to come back here afterwards because there’s a surprise gift below.)
Now, on with the conceit:
If you’ve been frustrated by conflicting recommendations about healthy food choices (Margarine! No, wait, butter! No, wait —!), you’ll appreciate Pollan’s explanation of “nutritionism” — an ideology that attempts to reduce the complexities of healthy eating to a few slightly mysterious compounds that can be avoided (trans fats!) or embraced (omega 3 fatty acids!).
If you’re a student of history, you’ll love hearing the origin of so much bad nutritional advice — a 1977 report from a Senate committee on nutrition, whose clear recommendation “reduce consumption of meat” was quickly replaced, following a “firestorm” of pressure from the beef and dairy industries, by a misleading and arguably fatal compromise: “choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.” Pollan points out the gulf between the simple directive “eat less” and the gutless “reduce saturated-fat intake.” Consider which one leads to better health, and which leads to a supermarket full of superlative health claims in boldface type on the labels of processed food (or, more accurately, food-like substances).
A couple more examples of literary double-takes from Unhappy Meals:
It was in the 1980s that food began disappearing from the American supermarket, gradually to be replaced by “nutrients,” which are not the same thing.
…
You might think that a national fixation on nutrients would lead to measurable improvements in the public health. But for that to happen, the underlying nutritional science … would have to be sound. This has seldom been the case.
…
No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that’s exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism.
Maybe the most quotable line is the first sentence of the essay, which I won’t repeat because you’ve surely gone and read it by now. It is a phenomenal achievement to summarize a life- and planet-saving dietary plan in seven words, and it is illustrative of my point that Pollan spent about 9993 more words explaining the first seven. But it’s surely the best dietary advice you’ve seen in years.
I’ve commemorated Pollan’s advice in a poster. Hang it in your kitchen where you will be sure to see it often, hopefully as you’re reaching past the all-natural whole-grain low-fat anti-oxidant energy bar for an apple, ideally one that grew up within 100 miles of your home. Click the image to download a print-at-home poster [PDF, ~140k] or click here for the high-res version [PDF, ~1016k].
Tags: pollan, nutritionism, saturated fats
posted to channel: Food & Cooking
updated: 2011-07-03 20:23:18
Friday, February 2nd, 2007
I believe we’ve fixed the shading problem reported last Fall — which practically zeroes my PV array’s output at 5:00 PM, with one hour of valuable peak-period sunlight remaining in the day.
The photo from September is difficult to make sense of. The trees on the left side of the image are tall Eucalyptus on the edge of the property, a few hundred feet from the roof. The lighter green foliage on the right 60% of the picture is attached to three birch trees planted adjacent to the house. It’s impossible to tell from the picture, but the sun is behind both.
The arborist returned this week to execute the plan from last Fall: trim the tops of the distant Eucalyptus and the nearby birch trees. We didn’t have to take any trees down, and fortunately for my breakeven date we only had to trim one Eucalyptus — those trees are tall.
The lower image shows what looks like success — a great big hole in the treeline for the sun to shine through. We’ll know next Fall whether we’re still generating electricity after 5:00 PM.
Tags: solar, pv, shading
posted to channel: Solar Blog
updated: 2007-02-05 14:51:01
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
What does it cost to play music on a mid-fi stereo?
Electricity consumption for a 65 watt-per-channel integrated amp plus a pair of bookshelf speakers, as measured with my Kill-a-Watt:
| Mode | Watts |
| off (aka “phantom load”) | 0 |
| idle | 19 |
| playing | 20 |
The speakers are Polk Audio RT-25i.
Power consumption rose a bit with volume, presumably because the amp draws more power as it works harder. The “playing” value in the table above was measured at a moderately loud volume; in a bigger room, the amp could be made to work harder without deafening the guy with his hand on the volume knob.
It’s nice to see that this amp isn’t burning power when it’s turned off. The same can’t be said for all the components of my stereo; see measurments for the Polk Audio subwoofer.
Tags: kill-a-watt, a500, rt-25i
posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2007-02-06 05:57:03
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
I’ve never seen anyone play a drum machine like this.
Here’s another video that shows Haynes’ hands in close-up.
(Chuck, thanks for the link.)
Tags: hr-16, david haynes
posted to channel: Music
updated: 2007-01-31 06:00:28
Monday, January 29th, 2007
Looking into backup media options this morning, I came to the conclusion that I guess everyone else had come to already: tape drives are impractical for backups, because disk drives have gotten so inexpensive.
Why do I say tape drives are impractical? Because I can’t find a tape drive for less than $500. Here’s 36/72 GB internal DAT drive for $554
Seems to me if tapes were still a viable backup mechanism, the drives would be fast, have multiple interfaces, sell for about $99, and be more reliable than, say, the two DAT drives I used to use that died after a year apiece. Look at the example of inkjet printers: Amazon sells the Epson Stylus C88+ InkJet printer for $69.95. Sure, they make their money on the ink and paper. The people with tape drives have to buy media, too.
Iomega, famous for its Zip drive, has a “removable hard drive” product called the REV. It seems to offer the best of tape and fixed-disk worlds: pay for the complex mechanism just once, buy as much storage as you need, swap media around for offsite backups, etc. Its disks are likely more reliable than tapes, and offer faster (random) access to data.
The one problem of tape-media solutions that REV hasn’t yet addressed is cost. The drive costs over $300 (amazon: Firewire REV for Macs, $333; USB 2.0 REV for Win/Mac, $327), and a 4-pack of 35GB disks costs $180
GraniteDigital makes an interesting hybrid solution: firewire enclosures with hot-swappable drive bays. The unit is portable. Additional “media,” in the form of hard drives, can be purchased in various sizes and unlimited quantities. The device of course offers random access to files, is maintenance free, and supports offsite backups — although I’d guess hard drives are less robust, meaning more sensitive to physical trauma, than tapes or even REV cartridges. Best of all, this solution benefits from the aggressive pricing in the disk-drive market.
Here’s a table that rounds up my options. The items are somewhat arbitrarily configured, in terms of storage space; the three options with removable media would show a lower $/GB price if I’d buy more media, but I wouldn’t want to spend more money to get started.
| Mechanism | Configuration | Total $ | $/GB | Specs, purchase |
| Standalone USB2 disk drives | 2 500GB | $330 | $0.33 | Western Digital 500 |
| Internal SCSI DAT | drive + 5 DAT-72 tapes | $653 | $3.63 | Certance CD 72 Internal |
| Iomega REV | drive + 4 35GB disks | $510 | $2.91 | Firewire, or USB 2.0; media |
| FIREVue hotswap drive bay | enclosure + 2 160GB disks | $410 | $1.28 | enclosure, drives |
If nothing else, this investigation suggests that setting up a mirrored RAID for every workstation is an important first step in data longevity, as that halves the risk of a bad disk destroying days, weeks, or months of files. But a mirrored RAID won’t insulate anyone from an app that goes haywire and corrupts its database, or an accidental deletion, or a virus attack or other exploit.
So, it’s still necessary to make backups. But I have to say, I don’t love any of these options. Maybe I’m back to Amazon S3 after all, e.g. via JungleDisk. Is there really any difference between renting storage from Amazon and buying fresh media every few months? I guess that’s an analysis for another day.
Tags: backups, rev, dat, raid
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2007-01-30 22:05:59
