"Dieting Is For The Birds...

...if you don't like birds."

--Ancel Benjamin Keys (of K-rations fame).



Sandy, over at Junkfood Science has a great post with the details of the Minnesota Starvation Study, done during World War II.



The study was undertaken in order to learn as much about the effects of starvation and refeeding, which was a pressing concern, given the starvation of victims of the war in Europe. The study de-bunked everything that we've 'known' about eating, obesity, and dieting ever since Galen.



Sandy writes:

"...This past week while the country went into a furor over that discriminatory legislation targeting obese people — and countless interests proposed their own solutions for eradicating obesity, from banning all-you-can eat buffets, fast food or sodas; to mandating vegan or macrobiotic diets or compulsory exercise; to more funding for diets or bariatric surgeries — very few people got just how scientifically insupportable any of it really was."



If you read nothing else about the "science" of weight loss, this is the summary to read.



And enjoy--really enjoy--your dinner tonight.

For Annemarie: Every Dog Has Her Day

Today, I was going to grouse about New Mexico's 'Banana Republic' caucus. You know, how many people didn't get to vote because the polling places ran out of ballots. Or the five hour wait at the one polling place for the entire City of Rio Rancho--the fastest growing city in the United States. But others have covered the Democractic 'train wreck' better. Like Albuquerque Journal cartoonist John Trever. Check out the Trever cartoon for 02/07/08.

Anyway, Annemarie saved me, by a comment she made here. Instead of grousing helplessly, I am going to talk about something warm and fuzzy, loyal and domestic. Yep, I am going to talk about our dogs.



We have two dogs, one old and one young. They are both rescue dogs, but we got them in very different ways. The dog on the left in the picture is Zoey. She is probably nine or ten years old. She has some arthritis in the hips, and cataracts in the eyes.

The dog on the right is Lily. The pound said she was about seven months old when we got her, three years ago this March. So she's about three years old now. She has enough energy for the entire household and then some.

Zoey is my dog, and Lily is N.'s dog, although she is enthusiastic about anyone who will pet her, love her, or take her for a walk or run. Zoey, on the other hand is quieter and more particular and elegant, a princess to Lily's tomgirl.


Lily was advertised as a Harrier cross, but since there are very few Harriers in the Western US, the vet thinks she is a hound/shepherd/collie mix. Although she has some features of a boxer, she is not brachycephalic--her nose is long, and somewhat narrow, even by hound standards. She has a sturdy build, with a wide chest, and strong legs, but they are not as short in proportion as a boxer's. She has the white flagged tail of a hound, but a thick ruff on her neck, and shorter ears--both features of anything but a hound. She is also more protective than a hound, though she chases rabbits like a beagle. We just tell people that she's all "dawg."

Lily was found at about 5 months old, roaming the streets in the 'war zone' of southeast Albuquerque. I had gone on the pound list everyday, trying to help a neighbor find a lost pet, and everyday, there was Lily, looking sad and lost, in an adoption picture. After two weeks, it was clear that she was nearing zero hour, so on a Saturday near the end of March, 2005, we went to the pound "just to see." She had a frantic, scared energy about her, and when we took her out of her run, she licked and licked our chins, while jumping between us. She couldn't walk on a leash. I wanted an older dog. I was outvoted. We paid the fee, but could not bring her home until she was spayed. When we did bring her home, Zoey was less than thrilled by this bundle of fearful energy. And we had a long way to go with her. There were several times when I contemplated re-homing her, especially in the first weeks, when she cut her feet bloody on her crate and ploughed a furrow into N.'s carpet. But we perservered. And she's now incontrovertibly ours. A rough-and-tumble, tomgirl of a dog, who still get's so excited that she slides past us trying to stop on the wood floors when we come home.

Zoey is a cipher. Most people look at her spots and think 'dalmatian.' The vet thinks that she is greyhound-Aussie cattle-dog cross. She has the hips, gracile speed, and couch-potato personality of a greyhound. She has a very thin coat, too, which makes her good for only about 15 minutes in the snow. Zoey is definitely more robust than a greyhound, and has a strong herding tendency. She is the only one in the household that can authoritatively herd the cats. (Lily thinks they are rabbits and chases them. They respond by ganging up on her and stalking her). She is very protective, too, especially of me, but she is friendly and well behaved with guests.

Zoey was abandoned at a pet store adopt-a-thon when she was between one and two years old, in January 2000. A neighbor's teen daughter was there to get a cat, but brought Zoey home, too. She had a collar, no tags, and a leash. The neighbors already had the maximum number of dogs allowed by the county, so the girl was told to find a home in 24 hours or Zoey would go to the pound. We happened to be walking across a neighborhood park in Rio Rancho--where we lived at the time--and we were talking about getting a dog. The girl heard us and came up and said, "Do you want this one?" The rest is history.
Zoey fit easily into our household, and decided that I was her person. That was that. She used to get loose every once and while and run and run. So I'd take her down to the river or out to the mesa and let her run for hours. Now, as her dog-days become fewer, she is content to go for walks--as long as it's not too hot or too cold or too rocky--and then snooze on the dedicated canine daybed in my office in the sun.


Lily and Zoey are a study in togetherness.
They play together everyday, with fetch toys, and run together to the windows to bark at any other mammal that has the temerity to enter their yard.

I think Lily keeps Zoey young. And Zoey, good dog mama that she is--she raised the cats from kittenhood--keeps Lily in her place.

Zoey is the undisputed queen canine of the household, though she is very deferential and submissive to the humans. Lily, on the other hand, never heard of decorum or grace. Zoey is reserved and friendly and Lily is a bundle of joy and enthusiasm.

Both are very protective of the house and property. When we leave the dogs in charge, we do not worry about intruders. "The girls" as Bruce calls them, sound much bigger and more threatening than they are, when you hear them growling and barking behind the door. And neither are the type to take a bone from strangers.

What is amazing is how both of them, who are so wildly different from one another, have completely and utterly stolen our hearts.

As I am sure other dog lovers can tell you, when you have dogs, you face a sense of the shortness and yet the complete preciousness of life.

Clouds on the Mountain

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Wave after wave of storms from the Pacific have been sweeping across New Mexico, and some parts of the state have gotten endless snow over the past week. We have had patterned waves of warm front, low pressure, snow, cold front, high pressure, wind. It has snowed every few days, with bitter cold, sunny and windy days in between. Although this weather has made planning and driving difficult, it has also brought us great beauty.

Today, I am featuring the clouds that have been forming over the Sandia Fault Block a.k.a. the Sandia Mountain Front.

On Sunday morning, following a
light snow-fall,
thin clouds topped the mountains,
like a beret,
and the mountain front held
a lake of fog in the valley like a dam.

Picture by Elisheva Levin, Sunday morning, February 3, 2008.

Dark clouds, heavy with moisture,
roll over the Sandias,
and towering white cumulonimbus clouds
build above Sandia Peak.

Picture by Elisheva Levin, Sunday afternoon, February 3, 2008.

Pink and gold cumulus clouds shadow the hills as the sun rises on new-fallen snow.

The air is still, and bitterly cold, as the sun rises above the ridges behind the photographer.

Picture by Elisheva Levin, Tuesday morning, February 5, 2008.

Cumulus clouds spill over the Sandia Mountain front, as strong winds ahead of a cold front blow snow from the trees on the mountainsides.

Picture by Elisheva Levin, Tuesday noon, February 5, 2008.

Lowering clouds over the Sandia mountain front, as a front passes through. Strong winds whipped up snow across San Pedro in the distant right.

A few minutes later, the mountains were totally obscured as the snow began to fall across the valley.

Picture by Elisheva Levin, Tuesday afternoon, February 5, 2008.

Carnival of Homeschooling: The Acrostic Edition

Amazing for

Bibliophiles, an

Out-of-Sight and

Utterly fun with

Topics over at

.

Carnival

Of Homeschooling,

Mmmmmmm!

So get a cup of your favorite reading beverage and go over to the Acrostic Edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling, soonest!

Have Fun!

Scientific Notation: You'd Think It Grows on Trees

Today's number is:

3.1 x 10ee12 in scientific notation.

Three-point-one-times-ten-to-the-twelvth-power

In England, they'd call that 3.1 million million.

In US terms, it is 3.1 trillion.

In plain numeric notation, it is $3,100,000,000,000.00

I have to express it in scientific notation just to get a handle on it. Very large numbers are hard to read, so scientists developed a way to deal with them called scientific notation. You count up the number of zeros to the left of the decimal point, and any number but the largest. This makes the exponent. There are twelve places to the left of the decimal point and to the right of the three, so we place the decimal point just to right of the three and then express all those places as an exponent.

Scientific notation is good for very small numbers, too. You just count the places to the right of the decimal point and express those places as a negative decimal.

I wish this number were very small.

It is the proposed amount for the US Federal Budget. With substantial cuts to programming.

Wars are expensive indeed.

Thanks to Judy Aron over at Consent of the Governed for providing the number.

Even politics can be used in the service of teaching math.

Politics is also good for teaching math concepts.

Promises, Promises! The Election Comes to New Mexico

The candidates are coming and going.
Well, actually only two have been here--and their spouses and spokespeople.

Although New Mexico holds it the state-run primary in June, when our little voice is quite meaningless, the Democrats are having a party-run presidential nominating caucus tomorrow.
So we have had just a little bit of very last-minute politicking going on here, just to remind us that we are really and truly a bona fide state in the United States, something that the rest of the country tends to forget during the quiet times of the election cycle.

And we have been getting the e-mails and the phone calls, too.
Billary has many gifts to give us: gun control, border reform, universal health care, pre-kindergarten, foreign policy rearrangements, tax the rich and give to the poor.
Obama has made the same promises, differing only in the particulars. But he is young and hopeful and not as shrill.

Which led to a discussion in our house about gifts and strings attached.
My mother always used to say that when you accept a gift, you also accept the strings attached to it. Nothing is free, she'd say, except what you earn with your own two hands.

Quaint. And damn straight.

Most politician's promises become 'as cold as a witch's tit in a brass bra' on the day after the election.
But those they keep can end up costing us a fair amount.
Most of what we are being promised is not theirs to give in the first place.
For those of us voting on Tsunami Tuesday, it behooves us to remember that what they are promising is not a gift to us at all. It is something that they will buy with our money.

And it behooves us to remember that the federal government is flat broke. Actually, it is more than flat broke--it is in the red. So if we buy these things, either our taxes will go up or the value of our currency will go down. If we tax the rich, then they will make fewer investments and fewer charitable contributions, so our economy will suffer, as will the general wealth of our local communities.

Our vocabulary word for the day is:
TANSTAAFL.
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

That vocabulary word has led to lessons in economics, the rights of man, and the duplicity of politicians.

We've learned a few colorful phrases, too.

It's all part of the process.

Six More Weeks of Winter...

Two astronomical events occured today.
And both were worth getting up for, and were worth running around outside on a cold February morning in various outfits of indoor clothing, in order to capture these special moments on sandisc.*

*Who uses film these days?

The first, was another look at the Jupiter-Venus conjunction.

Very early this morning, Bruce woke me by saying dreamily, "Look, I can see Jupiter and Venus from my pillow. I'm Jupiter and you're Venus."
I couldn't see anything except a blur. But after putting on glasses--great invention!--I looked, I saw, and I ran for the camera. I had to actually go outside to get the picture. But here they are, about 1 degree apart, just above the right end of the dawn-colored clouds. Venus is to the left of Jupiter.

When I slipped back in bed, Bruce murmured that perhaps he'd warm me up by bringing Jupiter even closer to Mars.


After a decent interval, as the sun was actually rising, I got up again, to take a picture of the sun rising on this day, February 2, 2008, also known as Candlemas, Ground Hog's Day, and the Winter-Spring Cross-Quarter Day.

Astronomically speaking, the earth is now half-way between the solstice and the equinox. In the northern hemisphere, we are moving from winter to spring. We are six weeks out from the longest night of the year, and still six-weeks shy of equal day and night. Today is the first day of spring according to the Old Calendar, but Punxsutawny Phil in Pennsylvania, did see his shadow, so officially there are six more weeks of winter.

The new calendar agrees with Phil, but encouraged by the noticably increasing length of daylight, I am going with the old calendar this year.

So, since it was the first day of spring, I sprinted out into the meadow in nightgown and slippers to get a picture of the sun rising over the house on this lovely, clear cross-quarter day. So what if the temperature was 20 degrees, Farenheit, mind you--it's spring!

But Phil had spoken--or at least moved quickly back into his den--so, officially we are doomed to six more weeks of winter. And I suspect that those living in the midwest and northeast can understand that today!



But of course, there was the minority report:

Zoey and Lily did not budge, nor were they afraid of their own shadows. They snoozed comfortably on the dedicated canine daybed in my office.

They are definitely predicting an early spring.

I hope they're right!