is it possible to draw real-world conclusions from playing GT5?

i recently picked up Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for PS3, which is a great bit of fun. lovely graphics, good gameplay, boatloads of depth and addictive -- what's not to like? you race, you get money, you buy new cars for your garage. and then race those (complete car list here).

you can pit your mini cooper against other hot hatches, like the Ford Focus ST, or you can be a dick and race your Ferrari against them.

i like that the cars are pretty distinct, though given my lack of real-world experience, i can't say how close of an analogue they are.

still, i'm happy to pretend that these are valid impressions and will state some.

Biggest disappointment: the 4WD Audi TT Coupe. it's just too underpowered. That's followed closely by the Alfa Romeo Brera 4WD. Really sluggish in the low gears for a 6 cylinder.

Biggest surprise: the Fords! i'm not at all surprised that the Ford ST does well (i get better times in it than i do in the Mini Cooper S). The Mustang doesn't suck! My times in it are similar to those I get with the 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STI. And I must say I like the Ford GT a lot. It's ridiculously over-powered, and I initially thought it didn't corner well. Then I realized I was taking those corners > 100 mph, much faster than I had tried previously.

The GT compares favorably to the Ferrari F430. Not in every way, but the Ferrari is a good bit twitchier. Also, the Audi R8 makes up for the TT, my times in it are nearly as fast as the GT and F430.

Other nice surprises are the Renault Clio Sport V6 and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX. I get consistently better times in the Lancer vs the Impreza, the latter feeling a little too heavy and weak in the low gears.

other impressions: the BMW M3 is heavy but handles well for its weight. The Lotus Elise 111R is one of my favorites -- tough but rewarding. The Honda Integra is fast and undramatic. And the 2001 VW GTI is slow, predictable and boring.

regarding my original question, after playing this game, is it fair to say i'm no longer interested in the Audi TT?

more n-3/n-6 ratio data

i *finally* found that chart i'd recalled seeing but couldn't recall where. it was part of this Whole Health Source post. here's the chart and some accompanying verbiage:

The ideal ratio is probably very roughly 2:1 omega-6:omega-3. Leaf lard is 6.8, beef tallow is 2.4, good quality butter is 1.4, corn oil is 45, cottonseed oil is 260. It's clear that a large qualitative change in our fat consumption occurred over the course of the 20th century.

National Automatic Garage Door Awareness Week

I'm declaring it such after spending a week opening/closing the damn thing myself. having a working automatic garage door is a minor thing in the overall scheme of things, but damn is it a nice daily convenience.

props to the gf for calling around for estimates ($300-400 to replace an opener?!?) until she got someone on the phone who not only correctly diagnosed the issue over the phone, but charged a fraction of the other estimates to do the repair (worn gears, plus they replaced bushings, lubed everything, and did a bunch of other stuff i can't recall).

Here's hoping my 14 year-old opener goes another 14 years. and kudos to Liftmaster for making an easily-repairable product with a long MTBF, even if that failure was during the middle of winter.

even more cooking fat data

i created a new table with the data from the last two cooking fat posts, plus, per pyker's suggestion, data indicating the total mg amounts of n3 and n6 fatty acids in a sample (here, 100g). This does reveal more than the simple ratio.

i've added a PUFA% column and color-coded it against the "not to exceed 12%" standard. i've not bothered color-coding the mg/100 g column. i have color-coded the fat names themselves, which at this point is just my personal opinion of the fat, taking into account the other columns.

	n3:n6 ratio	mg n3/100g	mg n6/100g	PUFA tot%
butter	1:6.9* / 1:1.6**	802	1244	4
lard	1:10.2*	1000	10199	10
coconut	n/a	0	1800	3
olive	1:11.7	761	9763	10
flaxseed	1:0.2	53304	12701	73
canola	1:2.2	9138	18645	32
soybean	1:7.5	6789	50422	62
palm	1:45.5	200	9100	10
corn	1:46.1	1161	53510	58
sesame	1:137.7	300	41304	no data
sunflower	1:18.8	192	3606	72
cottonseed	1:258	200	51503	54
grapeseed	1:696	100	69591	no data

* for butter and lard, i suspect these ratios are actually a little more favorable in my household, since we source these from pasture-fed animals.

** the second calc'ed ratio is from the two non-colored columns, which was different enough from the other value for me to include both. the first ratio is from the Corbain data, the second is calc'ed from the data i retrieved from nutritiondata.com. I believe the source of the data is the same (that USDA database), but I reckon we used two different butter entries.

more cooking fat data

i pulled this image from a pdf i found online (linked to from the comments section of this Mark's Daily Apple post on cooking oils).

for better or worse, this datasheet was put together by Monsanto. funnily enough, it's meant to extol the virtues of Canola oil. if we look at this data as suggested by the original commenter, we should avoid the fats where the red and green percentages add up to anything > 12%. So the canola oil is OUT.

good ol' butter, lard, coconut oil and EVOO are IN.

food, inc.

i watched this film today. there's lots to love here: some amazing characters, lovingly shot (even the horrific images), expertly assembled and edited, plus i agree with a lot of the viewpoints of the filmmakers.

but...

there are some missteps. Given the message and those bringing it to us, i guess i shouldn't be surprised the filmmakers' viewpoints are so obvious. i think they overdid it, and an example occurred near the end, in the segment called "the veil." Did they really have to put up the word "evil" first, then re-arrange the letters? So late in the film, i think even the most jaded of viewers will either be disgusted or have convinced themselves the filmmakers are grossly exaggerating. In either case, I don't think it serves any constructive purpose.

my other main complaint was, though they alluded to the health dangers to the public, they never really went after it. The best they did was make the case that, because it's cheaper to eat fast food than buy fresh produce and prepare your own meals, that's unhealthy. But what about establishing a link between consumers' health and the processes used by factory farms, such as GMO, contamination, lack of variety, and nutrient content?

I don't understand the inclusion of the poor Latino family who spends more on diabetes medicine than they do on food, apparently stopping at Burger King twice a day to feed the family. Sad? yes. Sympathetic? certainly. Supporting a point? Not so sure here. This family claims they eat this way because of the low cost of the fast food, but wouldn't it be more compelling to profile a middle-class family that has a choice, and still chooses to eat fast food? I think so.

And again, all that was illustrated here is that cheap fast food is: cheap. Big deal. I say make an effort to tie the factory farming practices to an epidemic of ill health, and you'll make a much bigger, and much more necessary, point.

n-3:n-6 ratios of cooking fats

damn, this info is kind of hard to come by. I had found a chart somewhere online that included pasture butter, lard and others, but for the life of me I can't find it. I did see this page today, which is from Cordain's site. they link back to the USDA site for where they got their data, which is a horribly organized site with a terrible search engine. so i'm grateful for Cordain's summary data, which i've re-represented here for convenience.

if anyone has similar data for butter, lard, bacon fat, red palm oil, or the like, i'd be happy to update the table to include them. until then:

I went to the USDA site and, based on the Cordain methodolgy, calc'ed values for butter, lard, and "Meat drippings (lard, beef tallow, mutton tallow)". These values aren't exactly in line with what I'd seen before, which makes the USDA values a bit suspect. Then again, their butter values are probably for corn-fed cows, not pastured ones, etc etc.

	n-3:n-6 ratio
flaxseed	1:0.2
canola	1:2.2
mustard	1:2.6
Meat drippings (lard, beef tallow, mutton tallow)	1:4.8
walnut	1:5.1
butter	1:6.9
soybean	1:7.5
wheat germ	1:7.9
lard	1:10.2
olive	1:11.7
avocado	1:13.1
rice bran	1:20.9
oat	1:21.8
palm	1:45.5
corn	1:46.1
sesame	1:137.7
cottonseed	1:258
grapeseed	1:696

in the household here, we shoot for cooking fats no worse than 1:4 n-3:n-6 ratio. i've used a fairly obvious green/yellow/red color scheme to indicate what i think of the desirability of the ratios, though that's not to say that we're using canola oil just because it's "in the green." And we do use olive oil, but pretty much for salads exclusively and not for cooking.

Mark's Daily Apple did a piece today on oils, though it didn't include all the info i would have liked. Still, it's a decent reference.

One final note: hazelnut, peanut, safflower, sunflower, almond and coconut oil all rated zero n-3 fatty acids, so i left them off the chart.