Trans(cending by City regulation)-Fats

Press Release received today on the NYC.gov-News list-serv:

New York City restaurants will be safer for the hearts of New Yorkers. The final phase of the City's trans fat regulation takes effect July 1, requiring restaurants to clear artificial trans fat from all their menu items. As of tomorrow, all foods served, including baked goods, oils, shortenings and margarines used for baking, and pre-prepared items that contain artificial trans fat, must have less that 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving.

For more information, please go to http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2008/pr047-08.shtml

I know this offends the libertarians, good for you. You sure love that Freedom. I think private businesses should be barred from using low-quality industrial food substitutes when doing so is known to be harmful to public health. Beyond the loss of life and detriment to health this causes, the economic effect of this "protection of freedom" is the transfer of wealth from the health-care system to the food industry, and disproportionately for the more profitable and politically-connected sectors of it. We need to keep our health care dollars in the health care system.

Also, sorry, but I am also not so simple-minded as to believe that this is going to change everyone's behavior or slip heart disease from it's top spot on the mortality and morbidity tables, so go on to your next talking point. I simply think it is piss-poor public policy to worship perfection as some counter-balance to the good. It helps. It benefits everyone. It's good government.

Reason # 1308 that Apple is Awesome

A doctor I work with (who I have a little crush on) calls me today and tells me her new home printer won't print. I sold her on getting an iMac when she decided to replace her aged PC so I also had my reputation for good technical advice on the line. She lives out on Long Island (for those of you not familiar with New York City, that's an island, and a long one, that serves as a huge suburban community for New York City) so stopping by her house really wasn't practical. Going to see someone in Long Island, particularly without a car, is a day trip.

Sam and I had discussed a feature in iChat that mimics the Apple Remote Support app in many important ways, allowing you to "share your screen" with another iChat user. I was interested in it to solicit *his* help when I needed it, but today it dawned on me I might could use it to score points with this favored colleague of mine. I have no idea what I would do with those points, but that's not the point of points, is it?

So, I interrupted Sam's breakfast to check it out and I learned that it won't work over my corporate network (I was at work today). My corporate overlords block all the fun ports. But, it did work over a data connection with my (EvDO-enabled) Palm Treo 755p, and acceptably well. Once I established that it was "See ya Sam, have a great day" and I started e-mailing my favored colleague.

So, after introducing her to iChat and getting her .mac address, I connected my iBook to her iMac using my cell phone as an ISP. This absolutely blew her mind. She kept saying "I can't fucking believe this" until I turned up her volume so she could hear me talking and she realized that I could hear her. I tested the printer, the iMac couldn't detect the printer's presence for some reason, so I decided to delete the driver she had and install a new one.

I asked her to put in the CD that came with the machine. That installer was broken. When it asked you if you wanted to participate in the customer feedback program it stopped after you answered yes or no. Clicking "continue" would get you back to the feedback question. A buggy programming loop. Great.

I downloaded a driver disk image from HP. It worked. I printed a test page and she started screaming joyfully. She said "I have to buy you something."

I said "take me to lunch."

She said "How about Monday?" I checked my schedule and told her that was okay. "It's a date! You pick the place." she says, music to my ears even though I know well it's all professional and stuff.

So, here's the amazing part to me. The very first time that I ever used the iChat screen-sharing capability myself, I was able to remotely diagnose a problem, download and install a driver, over a mobile broadband connection (connected by bluetooth to the phone, no less), using native tools (just MacOSX, no third-party utilities) for a novice iMac user. And I scored a lunch date that I thought would never happen.

That's awesome.

The last group therapy session.

My group had 7 members join and 4 leave. We started with 5, 2 joined in the middle, one each year, and we ended the group tonight with 3. The group was never larger than 5, and it was only at that size for a few months. I think that is too small, it's too hard for me to step back from taking things personally in a small group, there's too much pressure to perform, the silences are too frequent and too big.

My group started in September of 2005 and continued until June of 2008. It ultimately broke up because of me, I could no longer afford it, and two group members was too few. However, four people left the group before I did, so I was not alone in my judgement that the costs outweighed the benefits. Of course, for me, it was actual costs in my case, cold hard cash, but other people also made the judgment that it wasn't worth some sacrifice. I was not alone.

This group was not as successful as I wanted it to be. I derived benefit from being there, but it came at a high cost, and in the end my decision to leave was just like everyone else's. I do think that if I had not thrown in the towel someone else would have at about the same time.

I had a wide range of relationships in the group from a deeply connected relatiosnhip with someone as significant to me as almost anyone I've ever known, to a more polite and measured association, something more than an acquaintance that exists in and because of the context, like a co-worker with whom one has worked closely for a long time.

Like I've said elsewhere, there was a group member who targeted me with a lot of anger and frustration. I was not happy with her either for a long period of time, but we sort of resolved that tonight, as much as we could at a parting of ways. If we were remaining in our relationship we would still have a lot to work out, a lot, but I think we would, eventually, but it would require some purpose, like a therapy group, in order to sustain the effort. There's a lot in her that frustrates me about myself. Also, I think our mothers are a lot alike and that just means we'd get into well-worn grooves with old pain, each of us stepping on the other's triggers, and it hurt. A lot. I'm glad that's over.

The other member still in the group was the one who joined last September. It takes a while to get to know someone in this context and we were on our way to doing that, but because we were still just on the way there wasn't a lot of deep feelings to process there. We are a lot alike in our exterior world, similar jobs and ages, and we recognized that and were both very careful to not just fall into roles as we discovered each other. I appreciated that about her.

The other member, the one there with me since the beginning, finally got something off her chest she had been holding for some time. "Stop with the first sentence" she said, voice trembling. She was telling me that I have a tendency to get wordy and explain things too much, and this detracts from genuine communication.

She's right.

[Apple] Dude

Taking Sam's advice I got a appointment at the genius bar for my busted iBook keyboard.

About 10 minutes before my appointment time I realize such and bolt from my office and catch a cab to get over to the Fifth Avenue store so I don't lose it. I register with the guy and he sends me to the group W bench to wait. I wait, thinking I'm stupid for dashing over here, many minutes pass. I look at my watch and notice that I showed up a full hour early. I still have another 40 minutes to wait.

So, I ask the guy about this and he says "well, we'll take you early if we can, but I can't guarantee that."

I see something in his eye, so I say "that's not going to happen, is it?"

"No," he says, "it's not."

So, I did bring a book with me, Obama's "Dreams From My Father" and I start reading it. Men, listen up. Four fabulously gorgeous women walked right up to me in 15 minutes and asked how I was enjoying the book. I am never going to finish reading this thing.

So, I get called to the genius bar about 15 minutes after my appointment time and the genius asks me what is wrong. I point at my absent enter key. He pops off the keyboard and scans the serial number, while he is waiting on the look-up I tell him it is not under warranty

My genius, a nice surfer-looking guy in a black apple t-shirt and cargo shorts with hair he has to keep flipping out of face, says "Well, it will be about $120 or so parts and labor to get it fixed."

"Labor?" I ask "you have to plug in a ribbon connector."

Surfer genius flips his hair out of his face and admits "yeah, that's it. It's $40 for the keyboard, $85 for the labor to install it."

"Can I just buy the part and do it myself?"

"No," he says, looking around "we don't do that."

So, I summon up a lot of emotion, nothing angry or over-the-top, just genuine emotion that I put behind a single utterance as I look directly into what I can see of his eyes: "Dude."

"You're right, I'll be right back." He walks down the bar and leans in to speak to a colleague. He comes back and says "I got a manual override here, I'll just install it myself." He takes my machine and disappears.

He's gone a long time, almost half a hour. I like to think he went out back to catch a buzz. I didn't mind because I had a gorgeous Asian D.O. sitting next to me who was getting her data migrated from an iBook like mine to a new macbook. I converted her to GMail while my genius was doing whatever he was doing. He could take as much time as he wanted as far as I cared.

He comes back, finally, apologizes for the wait, and not only do I have a new keyboard, he has also cleaned up the entire machine. It looks new. "What do you think?" he asks.

"Dude!"

He smiles. $43 (and two hours) later I have my IBook looking like it did when I first took it out of the box.

Customer Service, FTW.

Watching rhe pond-sprite.

I have to do this everyday?

Yesterday went pretty well. What (and the amounts that) I ate will support my goals, I got in a solid hour of exercise which I also enjoyed (walking almost 4 miles from work to therapy and then from therapy to home), and I managed to endure a feeling of hunger and emptiness at the appropriate times during the day. I am noticing and remembering now that there is a definite physical sensation that goes along with losing weight—something not quite full-on emptiness and hunger, but something quite different than the satisfied and disinterested in food feeling that I usually pursue.

I also noticed that what I have been unconsciously in pursuit of when I eat is not satiety. It is a mark on the other side of satiety—a disinterest in food. I really crave and enjoy being in a state where I am not interested in food or eating, and I have noticed that this state is achieved by eating more than just what it takes to satisfy my hunger. It is a subtle difference and I am happy that I now notice it. I am hopeful about this.

But, back to this sensation that is present when I am in a negative nitrogen balance (losing weight). I associate it with feeling sick, though it is definitely not the same as being sick, but I naturally categorize it that way (which may end up being very revealing). It is hard to put words to it, the image that keeps coming to mind is of a wooden plank being scraped clean. It is a sensation at the core of my body, vertical in nature, and the thought I associate with it is that I should eat, though it is definitely not hunger. If it were a flavor it would be wheat bran, if it were a fragrance it would be smoke from good tobacco, if it were a texture it would be the surface of that wood plank after a good scraping with a putty knife, if it were a sound it would be the high, thin, pitch of an Oboe.

It is strongest before meals and most prominent in the morning when I wake up. If I eat only to the point of satiety it just fades to the background, still present but only very faintly, when I eat to this point of being disinterested in food it vanishes completely. For some reason I am actively investigating it is threatening to me in some subtle way, I want to rid myself of it.

In NYC the City health department is trying to require that chain restaurants post the caloric content of servings of food items right on the menu, next to the price. There's been a huge uproar over this, but a number of chains like Starbucks and Chipotle have gone ahead and done it. It matters. It has changed what I do at Starbucks and Chipotle.

Now at Chipotle I get the “bowl,” the meal sans tortilla(s), and I am not getting the bag of tostaditas I used to enjoy (570 kcals!) with my meal. I don't miss it really. I miss the habit of picking up that huge cylinder of food (when I ordered what they call a burrito) and devising a strategy to eat it while preserving it's structural integrity.

At Starbucks I have just about given up ordering any food completely, which is no doubt the reason why other retailers are resisting this, because almost everything in the display case is just short of 500 kcals a serving. The actually do have 300 kcal options (the bagels are 280 plain) but they aren't the things I thought would be on the lo-cal end. For example, the apple tart is 280 and the rice crispy treat is 270.

Of course, if I had given it much thought I could have figured that out, the tart is mostly apple and the rice crispy treat is mostly air (in volume), but I had this notion that a slice of pound cake was in the same caloric range. It is not. And muffins? Forget about it.

So, this is a public health issue and it is right for government to intervene. Seeing the caloric totals has changed my eating/buying habits, as it will no doubt do for others, and it is government's rightful role to enforce this kind of measure because it is in direct conflict with the interests of the retailers, i.e., it is going to hurt their sales. But, we will see the difference in reduction of health-care costs, and the non-monetary payoff of happier healthier people. I support this initiative and if it comes up in any of your cities you should support it as well.

Thank goodness that iced tea/coffee are almost calorie-free. I'm no angel.

I frequently find my mind wandering to thoughts like “Am I going to have to put up with this feeling every day?” “This feeling” can be anything from the feeling I discussed above to something else I find difficult or unfamiliar. Then I realize that I've been caught by the illusion of escape. I'm deluded by the notion that there is some other place than here and some other time than now.

Similarly, I find my mind turned to thoughts of being happy and satisfied at other times. I am reluctant to question the reality of these notions, but when I take a look I find that I am clinging to this time and place as if I could keep it by sheer effort or purity of motive.

I have never been anywhere but here, never lived at any time other than now. That's my real experience. But my mind gets caught like an “ooh shiny” Mercurial pond-sprite by that notion that there's something “out there” and people “other” than me.

Don't misunderstand me, as you well know, I operate in that context just like everyone does, I handle transactions as if there is someone else there and somewhere else to go, but my observations of direct experience don't line up with that at all. I don't find a place where I stop and everything else begins when I just look at it. The distinction requires that I believe something I can't see, and once you've done that the pond-sprite is back at the wheel.

Analogously, when I feel strong emotions, like in therapy, there are times when I take a backwards step in perception and see that wow, I'm really angry. The observer, the commenter, is not angry, it is just watching. My direct experience is that of observing myself being angry. I am sure that is happening.

But, when my mind turns to dominance, retaliation, and targeting others, then I enter this role and I begin to read from the script. I know how this goes, what will happen, under what conditions I will persist and under what conditions I will desist. I'm not observing anything at this level, I'm deeply embroiled in physical sensations and some construct of keeping score, protecting turf, and/or controlling another's behavior. That script is played out in my thoughts. I'm not observing anything, so why be so convinced that something is happening?

So, every day my direct experience is the same. There's no “every day.” This is what is going on. Watching the pond-sprite.

Feeling Empty

One of the things I am going to do is write when I am hungry. I am hungry right now, I have lunch in 15 minutes with a friend in Central Park, but normally I would have gone for a pre-lunch snack, the justification being that will keep me from over-eating at lunch.

I know, get your over-eating in ahead of time, I know.

Anyway, as I was leaving the house this morning, not having time for breakfast (until I got to work), I noticed that I felt empty. Not emotionally empty, but physically empty. I noticed how that feels. It's a good feeling, really. I had this notion in my mind that I need to eat and there's a whole line-up of emotions there, but that was a separate things from just feeling empty. The emptiness felt good.

Do you notice it when you feel physically empty? What's your experience like

I'm onto McCain

He doesn't believe a word of what he is saying.

DIsclaimer: This is pure fiction, written poorly. Any resemblance between this and any actual event is amazing, and unlikely, and what are you smoking?

I think there was a day back in February when John McCain sat down with his family and had this discussion:

-----

Roberta: John, this country needs you to be President more than ever.

John: I know that, Mom, I really do, but I don't like what I'm having to say and do to get the nomination. I can't actually do these things.

Cindy: Oh John...

Roberta: I've been around a long time, John, I've seen everyone since FDR get elected, none of them ever did anything in office that they didn't want to do. No matter what they promised in the campaign, they only kept the promises that were on their personal wish list and forgot the rest. You will too.

Cindy: John, you have to win first. You have to win to do anything. Bush still has a 30% approval rating, you need all of those people to come to the polls, then you only need another 15-20% to win it.

Roberta: Then you can be the man we all know you can be. Then you can help the country. If your performance is not enough to win re-election then you aren't going to want the job anyway.

John: Yeah, you're both right. This is just like a mission, I have to do my duty, as distasteful as that may be, in order to reach my objective. I have to.

-----

Just playing around here, it's nice to be able to write about the things I thought about during past elections but couldn't.

Time, Humidity and Temperature

8:04pm Dusk
53% indoors
84.3 F indoors
90.3 F outdoors

Take care of this very moment.

Over and over for the last few days I have gotten the best results in many situations by just pausing for a moment, scanning the area for what needs attention and giving the attention needed.

That works really well. I can get things done without ever feeling like I'm doing anything other than just whatever I'm doing. No dread of chores ahead, no pride in things accomplished, no goal execpt that next thing that needs attention.

Sometimes, rest is the thing to do.

Oh Hillary, we hardly knew ye.

That speech on Saturday was awesome. I kept thinking "Wow, you ought to run for President!"

At the end of her campaign she may have finally caught on to the mood of the country.

I still look at her policy positions and I have no trouble with the notion of her as the leader of the executive branch. I just didn't like her campaign.

There's an underlying debate going on about two theories of government, The first is that government is always a problem and should do as little as it can get away with while being as little of a burden to the governed as possible. The second is that the government is our collective wisdom that guides us to a more perfect union, the ongoing evolution of a community as expressed in laws, a theory of justice and executive policies.

There's not really a contradiction there. You can do both if you carefully define "as little as it can get away with" and "a more perfect union." The problem I see is when one of these values is sacrificed for the other one. For me, that's the central problem of American government. How much governmental guidance to we need in [$particular_situation] to continue to evolve to a more perfect union?

Hillary actually does struggle with that question, she comes up with different answers at different times.

That what I noticed in the campaign, she would work really hard at crafting a campaign image, e.g., Ms Ready on Day One, Ms. Balls like Prize Bull, Ms. Working Class Hero, etc etc. I saw this as phony and alarming. Who does she really believe she is?

I actually have personal experience with people who worked with her daily and were around her constantly. They liked and respected her. They did not have uniformly pleasant experiences with her, it was a very high-stakes environment, but they liked and respected her. I've never forgotten that. I was never with her in a setting more personal than a public campaign event, but I knew a number of people well who were.

She did what she had to do on Saturday, she did it well, she did it convincingly, it came off as genuine even to those not particularly favorably disposed towards her at the moment, like myself. I think the Media Beatification has been a bit overwrought, though. She doesn't deserve a medal.

She seemed relaxed, and content to give that speech, like a part of her was somehow admitting that she had been wanting to get this over with for a while herself. She seemed to genuinely like Obama and it seemed as if she was glad she could start giving rein to that. It was quite a skillful communication, I'll give her that.

But who is she?

Well, who am I? I certainly don't find any constant unchanging thing that is me when I look for it. I am who I am at the time I look. There's no way to point to something and say "this is rdewald, these are the things that wouldn't be if he didn't exist." I'd like to believe that's just because of my feeble ability to see such things, but the truth is that who I am is so constantly changing that there's nothing to put in the box that stays in the box.

I live by a certain set of values, assumptions really, things that inform choices, that collection of values looks like a something that can be identified as a person, but I share these values with millions of other people. I adopted them one I saw their utility. In that way they are "mine," but others often express them more eloquently than I: don't kill, don't steal, don't rape, don't lie, don't get drunk. Where's that unique individual again?

So, I ask myself why I want a static, graspable, Hillary Clinton when I am perfectly down with Obama as free to be who he is at this time.

There's something there.

Passing Strange

This is the best musical I have ever seen in my life, and as a rule, I do not like Broadway musicals.



After the show, I wanted to give them some more money for my seat.