Fat-free fools

It turns out, all that "fat-free"/"low-fat" food you see on store shelves might not only not help you lose weight (which we've known for a while), it might also be dangerous to you. All because the original understanding and testing didn't account for the particle size of LDL cholesteral.

The original thinking went that since eating fat raises cholesteral, and those with high cholesteral are at general risk for heart disease, eating fat raised your risk for heart diseaes. Turns out, only eating certain types of fat actually leads to an increased risk of heart disease. And this helps explain why cholesteral tests can predict only about 70 percent of those at risk for heart disease. Some people with heart disease might have LDL level completely within the "normal" range, but primarily comprised of the wrong type of particles.

So says this slate.com story.

I say this as I eat sunflower seeds, after having had almonds yesterday, and olive oil (the oil, not the girl) Wednesday. Oh, the good LDL comes from olive oil and nuts/seeds.

And these people want to run our health care? Oh joy.

I haven't posted anything in a God-awful long time

The title pretty much sums it up. But in case you were wondering, "God-awful long time" is apparently defined as 14 days. 14!

I'm not exactly like J.D. Salinger in my disconnection from the world; but hey, I'm not exactly J.D. Salinger in my writing, either. And I'm not dead. So, basically, I'm not like J.D. Salinger any way. Other than that we are both males.

What have I been up to? Uh, wish I could remember. Work has been busy. And we tore out the floor in the kitchen and bathroom. That has taken large chunks of time that I wouldn't have spent blogging anyway, so that is a piss-poor excuse. Its mostly that first one, I guess.

Mundane.

Oh, and I'm tremendously saddened, actually saddened, that President Obama's health-care bill has passed. I do not think it is a good thing. I actually thought of blacking out this site for a day or two in... what, respect, protest, mourning? Mourning, I guess. I still might, though now it just seems silly.

It is now just 10 days to tea time!

Oh, and I got a hat! If you know me half-way decently, you might know that I have a thing about hats. And that my head is sufficiently large, shaven, and oddly shaped that most hats don't fit right. I'm not talking about baseball caps, I'm talking real hats here. Anyway, my sister in law found one that worked. I'll post pictures if I'm sufficiently up for embarrasment.

The weirdest tea I've ever seen

No, I haven't broken my Lent promise. But I did recently order some tea from Adagio. One of the new ones is Black Dragon Pearls, and it looks like this --------->

The leaves/buds are wrapped into a ball almost the height of a AA battery, and about as wide as the black strip on the end of the Energizer battery pictured.

Pretty Weird.

It almost looks like the 90 calorie pack Quaker Oatmeal balls you can buy, or some kind of chocolate-peanut butter cereal. I'm not much of a sugary cereal guy, so you'll have to come up with your own comparison if you want a specific one. I just know that is what it looks like to me.

I'll probably have a post on what it tastes like in, you know, 23+ days, when I'm allowed to have tea again.

Side story: I got 10% off the green teas I bought (3 kinds), plus I had 170 points, which equated to $17 bucks off the entire order. So, I spent a hair above $50 (for the free shipping, you know), but got probably $3 off the green teas and $17 off the entire order. That's $20. So I spent $50 on essentially $70 worth of tea.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy about that.

My Theory

I've started The Art of Happiness. The fact is, I generally respond to questions of "how are you" with the response "excellent." Honestly. There are times when I'm so overwhelmingly happy that my insides feel like they will burst. Or melt into some kind of cosmic glow. And not just when I'm drunk - though I'm an exceedingly happy drunk.

Not to brag, but I really feel like I've had almost no bad breaks in life. Good jobs that I've never lost and always loved. Great wife who has a good job she likes and who is just as silly and generally as, or more, optimistic than me. Sufficient income. Nice house. And perhaps most importantly - good to great health. It really is all about having good health. If you are in pain and sick all the time, all those other things mean mostly, well, squat.

Maybe some of that is the choices I've made. Certainly some of it is luck and birth place and family. Some of it is that I'm a master at exclusion. I simply exclude that for which I have little time, or interest, or which is a drag on my happiness. I'm also a pretty good at parrying. I think I have a keen ability to to take most of what would derail me and - like a good karate block - us its own momentum to safely direct it away and around me.

Having said all this, I should note that I'm also sometimes worried that this means that I've got something very dark in store for me down the road. Hopefully it just means that I appreciate what I have and can block out bad stuff. But I'm still sometimes suspicious. And frankly, typing this isn't helping. Its making me nervous. Its like saying Beetlejuice three times. That summons him, right?

So I'll now move onto the real purpose of my post. I was a strong Republican through high school and into the early parts of college. From the last half of college onward though - and I don't remember the exact moment, but Ayn Rand was a key part - I have slowly moved further away from Republicans and more firmly into the Libertarian/libertarian/liberty camp. Some of my distancing from childhood beliefs is probably just natural growth into adulthood from a conservative upbringing. But some of it is the feeling that some of my childhood beliefs were based on lies.

So much so that while I was a huge anti-drug advocate in high school, I've now become disallusioned with the entire anti-drug crowd and now support drug legalization. So much of it seems like lies now that I have the whole truth.

Anyway, that isn't even the real point of the post. I've really come to believe that any use of force, except in self-defense, is a bad idea. Force - and force is almost always the taking something from someone for yourself - represents evil and darkness 99% of the time. Whether it be theft, or preventing gay marriage, or drug prohibition, or book burning, or racism. Sometimes the force is obvious - as in theft - and sometimes its just implicit - drug prohibition, book burning - and sometimes its just covered by a thin veil of morality - racism, preventing gay marriage.

Anyway, my theory: You should strive to be as liberty and openness loving as possible for your own personal place in the world. Maybe you can't bring yourself to support drug legalization for whatever reason. But you should always be open and accepting of those more open than yourself and mostly reject those more restrictive than yourself.

Maybe you don't support drug legalization, but you should always consider it a goal and possibility and option. Maybe you can't get comfortable with gay marriage (and shame on you, if you can't - that's me rejecting the more restrictive point of view) but you should allow it for the sake of liberty and openness.

I know - pure acquintances, mostly from message boards - some anarchists, or minarchists. And while I don't think anarchy has any chance of being imposed in any reasonable, not world destroying, way, I can accept their position and can see it and can wish that it would be possible. I wouldn't support its application here today, as we stand, because I don't think it would work, but I have no problem working toward its implementation. I reject all efforts at more restrictions, however. Its funny, because I've always rejected the "Indians knew best and were perfect" thinking. Until recently. When I've come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, we would all be better off if we lived, not like them, but more like them. Keep the technology. Lose the subsistence living. Keep the dispersed, underpopulated nature. Its actually quite Jeffersonian, who believed we should be a nation of yeoman farmers and warned against cities.

Anyway, that's where I stand. I know this was long. And somewhat rambling. And somewhat pendantic, perhaps. And somewhat preachy. And not at all peachy - though click-and-sniff internet hyperlinks would be awesome and absolutely have to be the next thing people work on. I hope you managed to read all this and didn't quit. I feel like it was something that I needed to say and put out there. If only to have said it and explained it and made it clear to myself.

Also, I'd kinda like a critique or thoughts about my "more free than you" theory.

The Adventures of Tea Man

I may not be doing the "tea" thing during Lent, but that doesn't mean its not still on the front of my mind. Its in my thoughts even more now, perhaps.

So this Inquirer article about the trend of men drinking tea caught my eye.

Admittedly, I've - at different times - been squimish about my love of tea. The whole doily, pink tea houses, flower and fleur-de-lis & hen teapot, old blue-haired ladies with pinkies outstretched stereotype made me somewhat uncomfortable.

So I smiled two weeks ago when a male character from my favorite show - Lost - asked for Earl Grey tea, and was greeted by another male character with the reply "ah, a gentleman's drink." The first character is alternatively butch and a whiner, and the second went from one of the best acted creepy-evil characters of all time to a neutered follower, but you can't have everything, can you?

Then I smiled even larger at the Inky article.

So imagine my smile at following the Inky story to TeaGuySpeaks (just google it - I'm not providing a link) . Here. And then imagine it widened to Cheshire Cat-sized proportions when I followed that link down the rabbit hole to steepster.com. Where I promptly signed up quicker than the Mad Hater went mad. (How quick was that, do you think? - Cause I signed up right away, so if it was a slow, gradual dissent into madness than my point is kinda ruined) Man I wish I had created a website that could be described as "one of the liveliest tea communities on the web."

Heck, I'll settle for this admittedly awesome website (and humble!), which might as well be a straight rip off of my original song and dance. You just have to imagine mine an octave higher and with one more assemble. Without, you know, the work, advertising or risk that went into something like that.

I'm kinda just hoping my combination of an ounce of dry wit, pound of variety and half teaspoon of talent makes this blog take off one day. Then I'll worry about making it lively. Though I guess that's kinda like building a cart without considering the possibility affordability of actually buying purchasing a horse, but whatever - its how I'm going about it.

Anyway, back to tea. So steepster.com will let you rate teas, put a wish list together and see real-time reviews by other tea drinkers. It's kind of the facebook of tea.

Meanwhile, back in Wonderland, I calculate its only another 792 768 hours until I can have a cup of tea. Man in the sky that seems like a long time.

CONTEST: Help me select my first post-Lent tea!

Just post your suggestions in the comment section. I might put up some posts with possible candidate teas.

Rules: Has to be actual Camellia sinensis . It can be a tea I currently have (English breakfast, gun powder, assam harmony, ceylong sonata), but additional consideration and likely additional points will be awarded for teas I haven't yet tried. The contest closes March 31. That's pretty much it.

I guess it wouldn't be a contest without a prize, huh? So the prize will be... um, my gratitude. My appreciation. The honor of having made a suggestion that impressed me enough to convince me to go with that drink after more than a month away.

You get the idea. Its a big, big prize you can receive without the problem of having to find a place to put it in your house or where you should have it delivered or the trouble of having to find the UPS store where it was delivered.