The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Blog

  • Week 51 in the Program

    Well, I’m closing in on one year in the HMR program and, looking back, I feel pretty satisfied.  I hit my nominal target (weight loss of 150 lbs) a couple of weeks back and have managed to keep going a bit, so it wasn’t a fluke.  My blood pressure today was 110 over 80, which is much better than when I started (when it was something like 180 over 130).

    The next step is the transition into maintenance but I’m holding off on that until after the holidays.  It’s going to be hard enough without adding in all the irregularity of the next six weeks.

    Since August I’ve been tracking my weight twice a day, when I get up and just before I got to sleep.  The first thing that struck me is how irregular this is.  Although the morning weight has been mostly consistent, the nightly weight has bounced around.  The second thing is, it’s been a good review of linear regression.  I can use the daily tracking to predict the weight I get at HMR, to a pretty good extent.  This means I can keep track and, after a day when I might tick upward, be sure to even out.

    Weight 2009_1124

    projection 2009_1124

  • Security v. Security Theater

    Not surprisingly, Bruce Schneier has an excellent piece talking about the psychological dimensions of terrorism and what a strong, stable industrial democracy can do in the face of amorphous threats… without sacrificing its principles, its freedoms, or its citizens.

    If you live in an advanced country, you should probably read this — before the next attack and the urge for primal reactions.

  • Week 48 in the Program

    Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written an update, for absolutely no good reason. Things continue to go really well and I’m very happy with my progress. I weigh at 225.6 lbs. now, which is not only 147.4 lbs below my start weight — it’s lower than I’ve been since, most likely, high school! My blood pressure today was 108 over 70, which is fantastic and really in the end justifies the work.
    Because we’re closing in on when I should switch to the maintenance part of the program, they remeasured my body stats.

    2008 Nov 20 2009 Nov 3
    Weight 373.0 225.6
    Chest 57 44
    Waist 61 45
    Hips 59 45
    Biceps 13 11
    Thigh 24 19.5

    And some pretty graphs to go along with it:
    Overall weightDaily Projection

  • Some PSAs on the Health Care Debate

    And, who’s looking out for the Insurance Companies?

  • Health Care Debate Quote of the Day

    Ezra Klein writes what is fast becoming my favorite go-to blog regarding the health care debate (and politics at large), and he had a truly fantastic quote about the recent Michael Steele discovery of Medicare:

    “Still, what we’re seeing here is the GOP swearing that they will protect, defend and preserve a single-payer health-care system. And this comes after months spent fighting a “government takeover” of health care. If you could hook that kind of cognitive dissonance up to a turbine, we wouldn’t need cap-and-trade.” {bold added}

    If you haven’t read Klein’s blog, give it a whirl — it’s pretty insightful with just the right dash of snark.

  • Knowing is Half the Battle

    I was cruising TechDirt and saw a neat post on “Is The Federal Government The Most Interesting Tech Startup For 2009?”  The idea is that the recent data.gov initiative has led to an outpouring of with-it and effective apps allowing anyone to get a handle on the vast trove of information compiled by the federal government.  If you haven’t checked out data.gov, give it a whirl — it’s pretty astounding.  After a week of hearing about ludicrous claims of “death panels” and “keeping government’s hands off my (government-run) Medicare”, it was nice to be reminded that good people working hard can produce tremendous work — that government can serve a positive purpose and isn’t intrinsically evil, corrupt, or incompetent.

    Some of the nifty apps I saw (via the techdirt link) were

    This isn’t quite the level of Star Trek (“Computer, rearrange known data into a new theory of physics”) but it’s a step in the right direction.  🙂  And if the survival of democracy requires the active participation of an educated and engaged citizenry, then cataloging what is actually known can help secure the health of our republic.  For all the noise and thunder of the 24-hour news cycle, this is where the action really is.

  • Week 34 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    259.8 | ? | -113.2

    OK, I should have posted this nearly a week ago.  But it’s been a whirlwind and I just couldn’t get to it.  Surprisingly still on track, despite my trip to California.  I had thought I’d gain some, since my exercise was irregular and my attention to the plan spotty at best.  But in fact I continued a weight loss, albeit a small one.  We’ll see if the weeklong roadtrip to DE and MD had any different effect…
    Weight 2009_0804

  • Week 32 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    260.8 | -4.0 | -112.2

    I’m maintaining my 2 lb/wk rate, more or less, though it’s been a little erratic — for example, almost no loss last week, four pounds this one. That’s odd. The next month will be a challenge because I’ll be doing a lot of traveling and I won’t actually get to class more than once or twice. I’m relatively confident I can keep on the straight-and-narrow but we’ll see.
    Weight 2009_0723

  • Media Idiocy

    {Edited to spell Mr. Fineman’s name correctly.}

    Here’s one reason why political discourse in this country is so messed up. I watched the Presidential press conference on MSNBC. (Normally, I would not, but the remote wasn’t working and I hit MSNBC before any of the other news channels.) I found it to be above average, with President Obama tackling important questions about the administration’s health care plan and the looming political struggles over it. The questions were not bad, surprisingly, and President Obama was his usual erudite self. I think that, while little in the way of breaking news happened, he did capture the essence of the debate and make it meaningful for the average citizens.

    Because I couldn’t switch the TV off fast enough (remember, no remote), I accidentally watched a brief exchange between Chris Matthews and his trained expert (Howard Feinman? Fineman).  Mr. Matthews led off with something like “Didn’t the president just step on his own headline with that final remark about Prof. Gates’ arrest in Cambridge?  Isn’t his taking the side of the professor going to be the story tomorrow?”  And Mr. Fineman nodded sagely and offered up the idiotic sentiment (again paraphrased), “It will dominate the discussion because it was news while little of the health care part was.”

    Get it?  A citizen who watched the press conference — someone, we might assume, who tuned in because he or she is concerned about, maybe even a bit worried about about the state of their health care and the future of their family’s health treament — watched the President expound for 50 minutes in a solid, understandable way … this same citizen will apparently forget all of that and be seduced by the flash of a (notably pedestrian) discussion of the role of race in America.  Apparently that wipes out everything that went before, even though the citizen just spent an hour hearing it.

    Of course, that’s just stupid.  Anyone who watched the conference will walk away thinking about health care.  Of course, very many Americans did not watch the conference.  More than likely, Messrs. Matthews and Fineman are correct:  Those Americans will mostly discuss the race question.  Why?  Because the media — including Matthews and Fineman — will spend the next few days telling America that the race question was the important part!  Why will that message be pushed?  Because it’s “self-evident” that it will be.  And my main anger flows towards the media pinheads (such as Matthews and Fineman) who will bemoan the circus and will complain that President Obama blew his opportunity, without even once noticing that the circus results from the actions of the clowns … that is, the very same media pinheads.

    Political discourse is dying in thie country — indeed, if health care reform stalls, actual Americans will be dying in this country — because we have a media establishment that incentives flash and sizzle over substance and which actively discourages paying attention to serious issues by offering up tempests in teapots.

  • Annie-versary

    This is the one-year mark for Annie and me — one year ago we started going out officially.  It’s been an adventure, one I wouldn’t have missed for the world.  I have never felt the kind of love I feel for her, and I have never received the love she gives to me.  I don’t have much as a standard of comparision but I think our first year has been pretty awesome, one of the best in the history of first years.  I’m hoping for many many more.

    Annie and I at Valentine's Day Dinner