Updatery

Well, thus far the diet is going well, meaning that I'm still on it. I feel that I've lost some weight (still no scale, so I'm not sure), but my various ailments are much reduced. I was taking vitamins daily for a while, but I've stopped because they were making me sick to my stomach. I don't seem to digest solid vitamin pills well and after a few days of taking them I get all kinds of unpleasant digestive symptoms.

I've been reading Tom Naughton's Fat Head blog and watching his various videos. from the "Fat Head" movie (which you can watch free on Hulu) to "Science for Smart People" (which you can watch free on YouTube) and "Big Fat Fiasco" (which you can watch free on YouTube). I find these to be both amusing and (somewhat) informative. I'm not sure how much science there is behind the explanation of how insulin resistance causes you to get fat, though. It sounds sensible, but so does the lipid hypothesis, you know.

However, that being said, the biggest recent change I've noticed is that I now get hungry in a reasonable sort of way (and I want reasonable amounts of food). Today I had some beef liver pate and celery sticks for lunch, and now I'm hungry and making chili (no beans) for dinner. I was hungry around 5pm and it's almost 10 now. If I'd gotten hungry around 5 before, by 10 I would be an absolute wreck, shaky, feeling half-frozen, possibly even passed out in bed. I feel fine. I'm not tired, (I am hungry), but I don't feel wasted and shaky.

So that's good, at least. I'm going to track down a scale so I can weigh myself. It's been approx. 2 months since I started so I figure the water weight loss has mostly ceased and now I can actually get an idea of how much I weigh and what/if I'm losing.

Really? Really?!

I saw what has got to be the dumbest commercial ever to exist last night. Well, okay, maybe not, but still. It was a spot advertising MSNBC, which apparently is some sort of leftist propaganda channel or show (not sure about that, but I caught less than a minute of it and they used the term "plutocrat" to describe wealthy Republicans THREE TIMES. IN LESS THAN A MINUTE.). Anyway, this advertising spot consisted of a woman standing in a canyon with a rather large bridge behind her. She said, self-righteously, that "we need government leadership because there aren't enough profits out there for any private enterprise to build something like this on spec".

Um, what?

There's just so much wrong with that idea that I decided to make a list. Note that this doesn't even *approach* being a comprehensive list.

1. Enormous things get built by private enterprise all the time. On spec. Even with our enormous bloated government draining the economy. So money is not the problem.

2. If there is money to be made but not enough for your grandiose bridge project, private enterprise will come up with SOME kind of solution. Maybe not as scenic.

3. The government (via tons of building and environmental regulations, among other things) is generally the force *preventing* huge undertakings from going forward. See: nuclear power or gas pipelines or oil drilling. So looking to government "leadership" probably means that you didn't want that bridge built in the first place.

4. Said government "leadership" has no incentive to provide infrastructure that is actually well-designed and well-placed. As such it is generally inefficient and wastes most of the money it uses.

5. Government money is taken by force from the very people you claim can't make enough profits to do this on their own. Huh, I wonder if a crushing tax burden coupled with rising inflation has anything to do with that.

Yeesh.

But I Don't Believe That!

Here's something I'm never going to understand:

Radical members of X group expressly believe some outrageous bit of stupidity, like that video games are "corrupting youth" or that having sex is somehow "sinful" or that non-believers ought to be viciously murdered or that humans are "destroying the planet" or whatever. Then, when some better person says "you X's are idiots for believing this bit of outrageous stupidity" some marginally-less-radical X comes along and says "I'm an X, and I don't believe that, therefore X is perfectly fine!"

WRONG.

The correct interpretation of the statement "I'm an X, and I don't believe that!" is not "X is perfectly fine!" it is "But I self-identify with X regardless of the fact that I don't actually believe in X thus granting sanction to the outrageous bit of stupidity and encouraging the people who do believe it".

Bottom line: if you disagree with the actual tenets of a belief system, don't identify yourself as a follower of that belief system. If you go ahead and call yourself an X anyway, guess what, you *deserve* to be tarred with the same brush. Heck, you're WORSE than the radicals--they at least have the courage of their convictions. Or the courage to HAVE convictions. YOU are a disgraceful milquetoast hypocrite parlor pink.

Hmph.