desirable things | writing notes

Thoughts before the weekend begins…

In the largest dietary study ever American researchers followed over 800 overweight subjects for two years. The participants followed four popular diets and they all lost weight. After six months the average weight loss was six kilos then this planed out and after two years the average loss was between three to four kilos. Only 15% of the participants lost 10% of their original weight and only 4% lost more than 20 kilos. The results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

I guess that this is good news for those of us who do not like dieting – the solution is basically what we all know. Ignore all the fancy diets. Stick to the basics: eat less, exercise more.It may sound boring but it seems to be the most simple and efficient method that does not involve surgery 🙂

Actually I do want to leave some tips I picked up from here: 14 Habits That Make You Fat

1 TV Watching
2 Eating Too Fast
3 Task Snacking
4 Frequent Fast Food Consumption
5 Eating To Manage Feelings
6 Too Busy To Exercise
7 Your Friends Can Make You Fat
8 Lack Of Sleep
9 Unaware Of Calories And Fat
10 Credit Cards
11 Missing Meals
12 Uncomfortable Clothing
13 Neglecting Scales
14 Boredom

For more details follow the link – have a good weekend.

Posted on February 27, 2009 by mklang

Horrocks cartoon

horrock

This cool cartoon has been making the rounds online and I thought it was so cool that I would add it to my blog. IN addition to being a great cartoon it also has the caption “This cartoon is NOT copyright by Dylan Horrocks ’09”

Dylan Horrocks has at least two blogs (here and here) and a website.

Nice one Dylan!

Posted on February 23, 2009 by mklang

Love and hate my job

Feeling decedant tonight slouching on the sofa watching tv, celebrating the completion of the initial part of my empirical research – I have completed empirical studies of a mailing list containing over 15 000 discussion threads over an eight year period. This work has been negative, depressing and very very very boring. This part of my work I really really hate. It’s not the results but the reality of the everyday grind that I hate.

The part that I like is the recognition. I was asked to be part of examination committee which was/is a major honor. And to add a cherry to this already great place is that I get to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland in March. I will not be there for a long period but I will be in Iceland! This is so cool and I am really looking forward to the trip.

Posted on February 18, 2009 by mklang

Scooby Doo is ancient and Chinese

Scooby-Doo was a childhood favourite of mine the cowardly, hungry dog always getting into scary situations provided lots of memorable occaissions. Common knowledge was that the characters in the series were created by Hanna Barbera in 1969 but I have made an important discovery on the streets of Göteborg today.

Photo Chinese Scooby Doo by Wrote (CC by-nc)

This stone statue of the great Scooby was, according to its dating certificate, fired somewhere between 1500 – 2400 years ago according to the Thermoluminescence Analysis Report. So here finally the massive conspiracy has been unmasked 🙂

Posted on January 14, 2009 by mklang

See dead people's books

LibraryThing is a fun site which allows users to put their libraries online which helps comparisons and recommendations based on users libraries. The new project launched by LibraryThing is really cool it puts online famous people’s libraries, the project is called I see dead people’s books.

Try it out and browse the libraries of Sylvia Plath, Mozart, W.H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. Lots of new old libraries are on the way – this is a cool idea I like this bibliophile voyeurism.

For more information about the group involved:

I See Dead People’s BooksDescription: A group for those interested and involved in entering the personal libraries of famous readers into LibraryThing as Legacy Libraries.
If you’d like to join a Legacy project already underway, please use the contact information listed below, or contact jbd1.
If you’d like to start a new Legacy project, visit the Cataloging Guide and learn how to get started. Also see the wiki page for more info.
Questions? Comments? Additions? Contact jbd1.
NB: This is an LT standing group, so there’s no need to join. Just jump right in and participate!

Posted on December 15, 2008 by mklang

Craving xocolatl

The Aztecs of Mexico spoke a language called Nahuatl. This langauge contained the word xocolatl, a combination of the words, xocolli, meaning “bitter”, and atl, which is “water”.

Dark xocolatl contains epicatechin which has been found to be beneficial to human health and a significant antioxidant action, protecting against LDL oxidation, perhaps more than other polyphenol antioxidant-rich foods and beverages. Some studies have also observed a modest reduction in blood pressure and flow-mediated dilation after consuming dark xocolatl daily. From Wikipedia: xocolatl

… has been used as a drink for nearly all of its history… The Maya civilization grew cacao trees… and used the cacao seeds it produced to make a frothy, bitter drink… In the New World, chocolate was consumed in a bitter, spicy drink called xocoatl, and was often flavored with vanilla, chile pepper, and achiote…

It was not until the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs that chocolate could be imported to Europe, where it quickly became a court favorite. To keep up with the high demand for this new drink, Spanish armies began enslaving Mesoamericans to produce cacao. Even with cacao harvesting becoming a regular business, only royalty and the well-connected could afford to drink this expensive import.

My Chocolate Shoppe, Shellharbour Village by Vanessa Pike-Russell (CC by nc nd)

Oh! enough with this attempt to motivate it. I need to go buy some chocolate.

Posted on December 10, 2008 by mklang

My favourite things

Three of my favourite things have been elegently combined and make me happy. The Simpsons have done a satirical take on Apple culture. So what can I say: Simpsons, Apple and Satire… three of my favourite things are all collected in a perfect package.

It’s on YouTube (for now). The best part is when comic book guy re-enacts the iconic 1984 Apple commercial. Or maybe when Lisa enters the “Mapple Store” and says: It’s so sterile!

Wonderful stuff.

Posted on December 1, 2008 by mklang

Support a photography project

I read about this photography project on Boing Boing and thought it was worth the advert on this blog. Giving alternative groups of people access to photographic technology leads to the production of exciting new material.

Los Angeles-based photographer and blogger Dave Bullock says:

The Skid Row Photography Club‘s first show, The Beauty of the Street, premiered last Thursday during the Downtown Art Walk. The participants were ecstatic to see their beautiful work on the walls and the hundreds of people who came into the gallery loved what they saw.The SPRC started as an idea I “borrowed” from the movie Born Into Brothels . I wrote a proposal to the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council to buy digital cameras which we then gave to people living in Skid Row. I gave the participants brief lessons in composition and turned them loose. For the last six months we’ve met every Tuesday at UCEPP in Skid Row.

During that time they shot over 20,000 photos between them. An amazing body of work ranging from flowers to architecture to a man defecating in the middle of the street.

Dave asks if any Boing Boing readers might want to donate digital cameras to folks living in Skid Row, so they might extend the project. “The cameras we’ve been using are about $200 each,” he explains. “We’re just a club, not a non-profit as of yet.”

More info here on how you can participate. The short version: if you would like to donate digital cameras please email Dave directly at eecue@eecue.com.

Skid Row, in case you don’t know, is a massive, permanent homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles — the largest such community in the United States. About 8-9,000 homeless people live there. This “heat map animation” provides a compelling visualization of the site, though data hasn’t been updated in a while.

Posted on November 25, 2008 by mklang

Flying to a medieval city

One of the best things with this job are the occaissional opportunities to travel to places of interest that I may not normally have traveled to. Tomorrow I get to travel to one of those places which has been on my list of travel destinations for a long time. Tomorrow the first leg of the journey is Stockholm (lovely city but not much excitement here) but the second part is a flight to the island of Gotland and the amazing city of Visby.

Luckily I have the afternoon to explore the medieval city, I only hope that the snow lets up and maybe the sun will shine for enough time for some photography.

The real reason for the visit is a copyright and technology seminar at the Swedish National Heritage Board. So all in all a trip to look forward to: an exotic medieval city and a cultural seminar. This is my kind of trip.

Posted on November 24, 2008 by mklang