This book has made more sense to me than anything I’ve read before about diet. Although the author doesn’t use this analogy, it makes the large-scale food processing industry look a lot like the tobacco industry: huge corporations in the business of finding out how to make a product that sells, not one that is healthy.

Michael Pollan writes descriptively of how these corporations shaped the public’s perception of what food is from whole things like rice, apples and spinach, to nutrients, like Vitamin C, anti-oxidants, and Omega-3 oils. When people’s idea of what food is changed, they started eating to fill what they thought their bodies needed, like less oils and more carbohydrates, or more Vitamin C to stave off colds. These dietary fads continue, and often fade as they are seen to not have the advertised effect.

The trouble with this kind of thinking is that, while we might have an idea as how certain nutrients might be good or bad for us, real food doesn’t just deliver single nutrients; it’s instead comprised of hundreds of micro-nutrients that possibly interact with each other and our bodies.

This book is a must-read; it’s changing the way we look at food and how we choose what we eat. Haven’t been able to give up ice cream, though.

We just got our renewal to our State Farm homeowner’s policy, and like every year, there’s a rider with new exclusions of coverage.

I thought this one was ominous:

“This policy is revised to exclude coverage for loss arising out of nuclear reaction, radiation or radioactive contamination from any source, or any detonation of, or release of radiation from, any nuclear or radioactive device.”

So . . . we were covered for that up until now? If so, what has changed to make them decide to revise our policy?

I notice we also are now not covered for any loss due to the locomotive we (or anyone else) owns.

Notwithstanding the shameful performance by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, who took more than 45 minutes to pose a question of any import, when they jumped on Obama because of his associations or lack of flag pin on his lapel, Hillary joined right in with the attack.

I simply don’t understand why Obama didn’t take the opportunity to ignore the stupid questions, and ask the moderators what their motivations were in asking them. Why didn’t he ask them why it was taking more than 45 mintues to get to one question about Iraq? Is this his "inexperience"? By the time he did ask those questions, the debate was over and he was safely inside his circle.

This campaign is lasting too long.

I love living in Sebastopol.

That’s completely amazing, and I’ll believe it when I see it, but it looks to be great news for those of us spending too much extra time trying to make things work across the board.

I find it unsettling on many levels. First, the fact that they know my birthday, and second that they thought it was good marketing to use it to try to get another sale out of me. In case any future marketers are reading this, both Fred (who got the same call on his birthday) and I now have the incentive to never buy anything from Hansel Toyota in the future. Fred got a birthday postcard yesterday from a restaurant in Occidental offering a “Birthday Dinner Discount.” How did they get his birthday, and why did they think it was appropriate to try to sell to us that way.

I think the most disquieting thing for me is that if I were 20 years younger, this probably wouldn’t bother me at all; I’d think it was fun and cute.

They’ve actually had the nerve recently to state that their standard is the standard, not getting that corporations don’t set standards; independent international groups do. What Microsoft wants is for everyone to use Active X to do tricky things on web pages, not JavaScript, CSS or Java, because then the web page will work only on a Windows system. They’ve gone as far as to give Active X development tools to many groups, such as those companies who develop the Multiple Listings databases across the country, ensuring that real estate agents must use Windows to access the MLS.

It’s sad that people who aren’t so savvy about computers will buy a Windows system, and use what comes with it for web browsing, when there are better computers (Macs especially) and better browsers (Firefox, Opera, etc.), that will render web content correctly.

The answer to the title of this post: Microsoft, by not following standards, causes web developers to spend two or three times the effort to make a web page that will show correctly on IE6, IE7, and all of the rest of the browsers. So first you get your page to work with Firefox, Opera, Safari (1 hour), and next spend 2 or 3 hours trying to figure out why it doesn’t work on IE.

It’s obvious that this is a strategy taken deliberately. Instead of fixing the bugs, they provide a way for you to include an if/then statement in your code that says “if this browser is IE6, load this style sheet, if it’s IE7 load this one, and if it’s neither load a third one.

They are despicable.