Lift Up Your Hearts!

I can rarely resist passing on good news like this.  Most reports of the benefits of chocolate, especially dark chocolate, come with all sorts of caveats that the harm done by the fat and sugar might negate the benefits of the polyphenols.  This German study, however, showed that a mere 6.3 gram daily dose of dark chocolate (another article said it was 50% cacao) had no negative effects yet resulted in a clinically significant drop in blood pressure among patients with blood pressures in the range of 130/85 to 160/100.

It's good to know my daughter is looking after my health, having given me for my birthday a 100 gram bar of 72% cacao "extra dunkle Schokolade" Swiss chocolate.  Let's see, at that dosage it should last me about 15 days....   Right!

First a confession:  We have recently gone over to the Dark Side.  That is, we joined Netflix.

Despite our firm convictions that television and movies on the whole are an assault on the mind and spirit, as well as a waste of time, we are not total Luddites and appreciate that the video medium has its good purposes.  One of which might occasionally be simply relaxing with one's family.  :) (More)

A new study indicates that a combination of high fat, high sugar, and high stress is what piles on dangerous abdominal fat.  A high-stress life with a good diet is not a problem, as far as belly fat goes, and a a bad diet is not as much of a problem if stress levels are low.  At least if you're a mouse.

This should be good news, since both diet and our response to stress can be controlled.  However, the tone of the article bothers me, as it focuses on the medical and pharmaceutical possibilities the study raises.  Not that these are necessarily wrong, but it misses the big picture.

I've also noticed a fad among dentists lately:  selling mouth guards to protect the teeth of those whose stress response includes grinding their teeth at night.  Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms.

However, treating symptoms while ignoring the disease itself can be irresponsible.  It's true there's been a lot of hot air spilled on the subject of our bad diets, but a high level of stress still seems to be considered inevitable, even a badge of courage and a mark of success.  Why aren't we paying more attention to preventing unnecessary stress in the first place, and to ways of controlling and moderating our response to unavoidable stress?

I don't have enough data yet from my comics survey to make any permanent changes, but I've added a couple of new ones on a trial basis to my comics page.  Sherman's Lagoon was recommended by DSTB, and Stone Soup I just discovered.  I'm reserving judgement on both, but Stone Soup makes it because the currently-pregnant heroine is planning a home birth.  I can't read the archives far enough back to know the beginning, but I need to read the strip at least long enough to see how the idea is handled.

I've also moved Baby Blues to the bottom of the list, which will inconvenience some of you.  The order is not permanant, but for some reason I haven't figured out, going to the Baby Blues site now causes all subsequent comics to open annoyingly in a new tab or window instead of in the frame.

Here are a couple of Stone Soups I especially liked: (More)

I hope this Weather Underground data is inaccurate!  Are there any readers from the Downingtown, Pennsylvania area who can confirm or deny this reading?

We ventured further last weekend, driving to Clermont and the General James. A. Van Fleet State Trail.  Porter was all for doing the whole 30 miles from one end to the other, but I voted for going in stages.  This time we biked about a third of the way, 19+ miles, from the Mabel Trailhead to the Bay Lake Trailhead and back.

The Van Fleet Trail is straight and flat, and apparently popular with those who want to race and time their biking, so it is well marked in miles and tenths, much more reliably than any other trail we've been on.  Thus I was able to check the calibration of my odometer, and was pleased that it appears to be off by less than half a percent.

This is one of Florida's most rural trails, and thus a pleasant ride.  We were not there at the best time of day to see wildlife, but the sights did get better after the dead rat in the parking lot.  A rabbit bounded across the trail in front of us, we saw a few tortoises, and heard innumerable birds.

That's the subtitle of a Wired article by Edward Tufte.  My brother sent me the link.  I prefer to believe he didn't know I was in the middle of working on a PowerPoint presentation of pictures from our recent trip to Europe.

Tufte is not speaking primarily about education, but he makes this perceptive observation: 

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

PowerPoint isn't really the villain here, however. (More)

One of our nephews is a Boy Scout.

My father was for many years a Boy Scout leader, so when I joined the Girl Scouts I was mightily disappointed that we did so little of the camping, hiking, mountain climbing, knot-tying, fire-building, and survival skills work he did with his boys.  Thanks to some amazing (and somewhat rebellious) leaders and dedicated parents, we still had a good time, but the national program left me less than impressed. (More)

We were exhausted after our return from Switzerland, and our trip was a lot shorter and easier than Janet's will be, so I'm sure she'll appreciate your prayers.  She has four flights, ground transportation between two airports in New York, long wait times, and about 24 hours of travel—if all goes well—to look forward to.  Good thing she's younger than we are.  :)

It sure will be good to see her!

Last year's small garden yielded only half a dozen tomatoes, some chives, and a good supply of basil, largely because it got no water during a critical dry spell when we were attending to a much more important affair:  Noah's birth.

This year we were late in planting, but have already eaten better with promise of more to come. (More)

The May 21, 2007 issue of Computerworld has an interview with Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.  Talk about RETHINKING—who would have thought industry had a good use for slush?

You advocate using, of all things, slush to cool data centers. Can you explain that? We recently did a design for a high-tech facility in a temperate climate that was originally going to have over 20,000 tons of chillers, and by the time we got through, the number was zero.

We found we could meet about 70% of the load with the coolness or dryness of the outside air using either air-side or water-side economizers, depending on the time of year. The rest [came from] a mountain of slush sprayed out of snow-making machines into a hole in the ground on a few cold nights and used to provide 32-degree Fahrenheit meltwater all year.

Twenty thousand tons of chillers originally planned; zero used.  They use snow-making machines to generate the slush; perhaps the next step should be finding a way to use the mountains of snow urban areas are always struggling to dispose of in the winter. (More)

The July issue of Reader's Digest has an advice column called "Ask Laskas."  Here is the first question:

Q,  It was my idea to have a family reunion, and I called my younger sister.  She loved the idea and then, without consulting me, ran with it.  The next thing I knew, the party was planned down to the napkins.  I asked why she didn't include me.   She said if I don't like it, I don't have to come.  I'm fuming.  Should I stay away or go?

A. Oh, go and have a good time, secure in the knowledge that you had a great idea.  Getting credit is nice, but a united family is worth a little swallowed pride.  The next time you have a brainstorm, however, think twice before you share it with Sis, who seems to be suffering from younger sibling syndrome.

Huh?  My younger sister knows that if a family get-together is going to happen, she's probably going to have to organize it—and the rest of us are exceedingly grateful when she does.  This lady has a good idea and then is upset when someone else does all the work?  Whatever "younger sibling syndrome" is, I'm glad my sister has it!

Each family has its own Thanksgiving traditions.  Friendly swordfighting is part of ours.  Here Noah and Jonathan demonstrate their eagerness to carry on the custom.

       

Every once in a while the Orlando Sentinel publishes a comics survey, in which they ask readers to rate the comics they read and suggest new ones for the paper to run.  Not a bad idea.  I've been considering revamping the Morning Coffee section of my Sursum Corda home page.  Since I know that several of you visit it regularly, it seems only fair to get your input.  In fact, one person already suggested a new comic—which was the inspiration for this post.

So...what do you like?  Not like?  Do you use any of the other links on the page besides the comics?  What else would you like to see?

Thanks, all!

Round Ireland with a Fridge, by Tony Hawks (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2000)

This is Janet's book, given to her by a friend when she graduated from college.  I try to treat other people's books with greater respect than I do my own—and that's saying a lot.  Nevertheless, I must confess the damage done to Round Ireland with a Fridge when I spewed a fresh mouthful of iced tea all over one of its pages.  It's the kind of book where one loses control of the laugh reflex. (More)