It's Funny, But I Wish It Wasn't So True

John Stewart skewers American foreign policy in the Middle East in this clip from the Daily Show:



While he was playing a bit to Barack Obama's crowd with these jokes, I think these clips do a better job of highlighting the logic in Ron Paul's arguments on foreign policy, especially as it pertains to the Middle East.

IF Update

I was glancing over site traffic statistics for Hap's Dustbin, and even though they are pathetic as expected, I did notice traffic continues to come here from Dr. Eades' intermittent fasting blog post. As such, I thought it would be good to update folks on where I am today with IF. My last couple of posts weren't so positive, and I thought I should set the record straight.

I do continue to fast albeit much more randomly and usually only in response to digestive or allergy problems. The odd thing about not fasting on a schedule is that, for me, it's much harder than the MWF schedule I was keeping last winter. For reasons I cannot explain, the hunger makes me a bit crazy if I'm not on a schedule. On a schedule, the fast is simple.

As to my back problems, it was probably a combination of factors, but the central problem turned out to be our bed. I'm on a Tempurpedic mattress now and very rarely experience back problems. My tennis elbow is still there, unfortunately, but it's much better. The likely culprits were computer mousing, lifting my 4 year old son with one arm, and getting my laptop bag in and out of the car. Once I changed those behaviors, it began to improve.

One thing I learned doing IF is that you don't have to eat on a schedule. It's amazing to me how hard it is to deprogram your body from 3 meals a day. I still relapse occasionally and eat out of habit, but I'm often quite happy to eat breakfast followed by little to no lunch.

The main reason I'm not on a scheduled fast today is strength training. I could not seem to build strength or muscle on a regular IF schedule, but I was able to maintain muscle. As such, I hope to return to IF once I reach my fitness goals so I can feel better overall.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. I've created a Topics section to the right so my IF posts can be accessed more easily if you're just wondering how it worked in my case. I'll also be doing some new posts on what I've done since IF to extend my fat loss.

Thougth I've been as low as 183, my weight is currently around 186 with 10.8% bodyfat fully hydrated on my Tanita BIA scale. Even though some of my recent improvement did not happen under consistent IF, I still attribute my success to IF. Without IF, I wouldn't have learned to control my eating.

Movie Review: The Bourne Ultimatum

For the 3rd straight time, the Bourne franchise brought a nauseating ride on the shakey cam train. Why the director chooses to do this is beyond me, and it brings a truly great movie down to average status. Not only are the fights shakey in this one, but the director seems so obsessed with the hurl inducing effect that he even gives it to us on standard fare like sitting at a table talking.

In this episode, we catch up with Bourne digging further into Treadstone accompanied by some of the usual suspects along with a few new faces. Pamela Landy returns to inject some sanity into the chase, and Nicky Parsons manages to get tangled up in the story as usual. Ezra Kramer and Noah Vosen assume the mantle as Bourne's foils, and a new crop of agents work under their direction in this new pursuit.

Except for the shakey cam, this is a great movie, far better than the 2nd movie and equal to the first. Through a clever series of events, the movie manages to make you believe every character is fair game when the bullets are flying. It even throws some surprise twists and turns and ultimately brings the franchise to a satisfying conclusion. My only caution is that you should sit as far from the screen as possible.

Is it iPhone Time?

This site claims an ssh client on the iPhone. I'll give it a few more weeks to see if Apple tries to attack the 3rd party applications, but things are looking up for mobile admin duties. Now if only the keyboard weren't so darn tiny...

Consistency in Accountability

The AP through Yahoo News brings the story of a 5 year old boy killed by a stray bullet from a police officer. The police officer was helping a nearby resident get rid of a snake in a tree, and apparently decided to kill it by shooting it. Nearby, a boy and his grandfather were fishing on a lake when the second of two shots struck the boy in the head. Recognizing this was a careless accident, the boy's grandfather makes this observation:

"I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose," he said. "But let me tell you — if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that."

Let that sink in for a bit.

Java Generic Question

Being a C++ programmer, I naturally gravitated quickly toward Java 1.5 for generics. I've never been very good at remembering exact syntax and potential compiler errors so maybe I'm missing something, but given this scenario:

interface A

class B implements A
class C implements A

interface D

class E implements D

Now, why can't I cast E< B > or E< C > to D< A >? Is there a massive bug hiding in that cast that I'm not noticing, or does the compiler jut not want to figure out that it's legal? Or, have I missed some sort of special casting method in Java?