"i would not trust him with my left shoe"

Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, running against Mark Kirk for an Illinois US Senate seat, has an approved vox pop commercial. The people-on-the-street are all saying negative things about Mark Kirk. Pretty typical stuff, "he's out of touch," "how can he vote against middle class tax cuts," and so on.

but the last person says, "i would not trust him with my left shoe."

i'm not sure what she means, and i'm not certain under what circumstances i personally would trust Mr Kirk with my own left shoe. have i removed this shoe for his inspection, such that if he were to abscond with it, i'd be trying to find a way home with only one shoe? is it cold? is there snow? am i driving or taking the el?

serious issues, indeed.

"half the distance"

i'm tired of "half the distance to the goal line."

a penalty is a penalty. does it put you into your own endzone? too bad. more safeties!

joke of the day, UK style

Q: what are you eating under there?
A: pants.

25th percentile

for the 2nd time, i had my doctor order an NMR lipo profile to ensure that my small LDL particles were indeed increasing in size (they are).

the results of the 2nd test, which i received today (and from a different lab than the first), had a summary measure of all the other numbers they measured. this overall rating put me in the 25th percentile on the scale of "insulin sensitive" to "insulin resistant" (where i was closer to sensitive).

i don't know if it's age-adjusted, but regardless, i'm pleased with the position. i'll chalk it up to eating more fat and less sugar, wheat and other grains.

i feel comfortable not getting my cholesterol measured for a long while.

extra clicks = extra good

i receive a junk email to my inbox in Outlook. the following quick steps are all i need to deal with it:
1. select the email
2. right-click and select Junk email/Add sender to block list
3. observe that a new, unread email is now in my junk drawer
4. select the junk drawer
5. re-select the email
6. right-click and select Mark as Read
7. right-click and select Delete

simple and straightforward. good.

now what about that nightmare known as Apple's Mail?
1. select the email
2. press the Junk button

what? how can that be it? what is this magic? how did it know to automatically add that address to a block list? WHAT IS APPLE TRYING TO PULL HERE?

Army of Carters

my first exposure to Nell Carter was in 1979, when I saw her in Milos Forman's Hair. i then remember her becoming a household name a few years later, in Gimme A Break. while certainly not the first overweight/obese TV performer, i do recall her weight being a frequent topic, and kind of a big deal.

i'm looking at NHANES weight statistics, that i found here.

now, i don't know Ms. Carter's weight in the early 80's, but after some googling I found reference to her admitting her doctors labeling her obese. at 4'11", which at 150 lbs. would put her BMI just north of 25.

at 200 lbs, she would have a BMI > 40, technically "extreme obesity".

back to the NHANES data (page 5, table 2)...

from the 1976-80 data, to the 2007-2008 data, the increase of extreme obesity is alarming, from 1.4% to 6% of the sampled population. percentage of overweight barely increased, from 32.1% to 33.6%. But look at obesity, more than doubling from 15% to 34.3%.

Sure, my memories of Ms. Carter were that of a large woman, and photos from the era confirm that. But looking around me now, she's actually somewhat modest in comparison to people i see on a daily basis.

i see nothing coming from federal agencies anytime soon that will address this. it's still a litany of eat-less/exercise-more, eat low-fat and prefer soy products and corn oil to meat and butter.

oh, and the giant sugar-filled coffee treats are huge in Chicago. it's almost a rule: the larger the container, the larger the person drinking it.

slowwwwwww

why can't escalators in the US haul ass, like they do in Hong Kong? i'd like to save time *and* my knees.