Aiee! Statistics!

Homer Simpson: "Aiee! Cobras!"
Edna Krabappel: "What's the matter with him now?"
Bart Simpson: "Night terrors, ma'am."

Taking POLS836: Public Policy Analysis Methods and Models has me screaming, "Aiee! Statistics!" Unfortunately for me, these terrors come by day.

Reveal Your Stupidity Openly

"To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom."

-- Captain Dimak, Ender's Shadow
Words to live by, especially when you do something lamebrained like pointing to a "new" outside story concerning a topic you've been blogging and commenting about ... then later find out that the "new" story was the one, linked to on your friend's blog, that started the whole discussion.
That's right, the self-refilling soup bowl story I pointed to in this post on January 12th is the very same one Andrei pointed to in this post on January 4th, which started the whole obesity discussion in the first place.
I must have soup for brains.

Why the Delay, O Funky Fresh Food Reporter?

My seven or so loyal readers (up from four!) may wonder about the fate of my promised "Funky Fresh Food Report." I'll demonstrate my penchant for painfully stretched metaphors thusly: It's simmering on the back burner, having been bumped off the 15,000-BTU Power Burner by a mountain of textbooks.

That's right, valued audience, your humble correspondent is out to improve himself. I'm taking nine, count 'em, nine graduate credit hours at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Motto: Perfecting Bureaucracy Since 1869).

So if you don't see any blog posts from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, despair not. I'm either rock climbing to get the blood flowing for each night's three-hour class, attending said class, or rock climbing afterward to get the old gluteal muscles de-flattened. All three activities are sure to generate stories all of us can relish. Together.

My Cat's Head's Gonna Explode

So I have the ultimate lap cat. Anytime I'm sitting at my computer, he wants to jump in my lap and then occupy his time (and mine) finding a comfortable position.

Today my sit bones are sore from overuse, so I'm kneeling in front of the keyboard. Tucker can't figure out what to do. He's actually walking in circles around me, looking up plaintively.

UPDATE: Tucker figured out what to do. If he can't have my lap, he'll take my keyboard. Right now. sdhiysejklhjfasdlasdfhuafasuelkfhasefelasefuilrgdarghukl

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now he's pulling on the mouse cord, keeping Movable Type's "Save" button just out of reach of the pointer.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Now my knees hurt. :-)

Obesity: It's Those Self-Refilling Soup Bowls!

Andrei Zmievski, Ryan Norris and I have been going back and forth about America's obesity epidemic, offering up various reasons why our collective waistline threatens to slow the Earth's rotation and make long days even longer. Turns out all three of us missed what should have been the obvious culprit: Self-refilling soup bowls.

The University of Illinois researcher has set up several food experiments that show the more people are given, the more they will eat ? regardless of whether they are full or think the food tastes good.

... In the soup experiment, participants come to the lab expecting a taste test. Some bowls are rigged with hidden tubes that keep them full, while others are not.

Over two years of the experiment, students with bottomless bowls tended to eat 40 percent more than test subjects with regular bowls.

"I wasn't aware of it," said Nina Huesgen, one of the students who got a trick bowl in a recent experiment. "That's why I feel so filled up, I guess."

We all knew this intuitively, didn't we? Kudos to the researcher (Brian Wansink) for proving it.

Some might jump to the conclusion that it's only we (allegedly) greedy and spoiled Americans who get such huge portions at home. But my trip last spring to Germany and Italy revealed dishes sagging under the weight of fried meats and potatoes, "personal" pizzas the size of dinner plates and lots and lots (and lots) of pasta. And we shied away from the tourist areas that might presumably cater more to the American appetite. Germans men can have some impressive round beer bellies, and German women can be stocky. But they're not morbidly obese in the classic American sense. Italian men and women -- well, they pretty much all look good.

So what are the key factors here? Absent other information, I'm going to have to blame inactivity, our public spaces' hostility to walking, and bottomless bowls of soup.

Via Rebecca Blood.

Getting to Know You Through Blog Comments

I used to work at the same company with PHP guy Andrei Zmievski, but never took the time to get to know him. I should have, because it turns out he's great at Mr. T jokes, which of course is a key sign of good character.

Andrei blogged about how he'd be unlikely to hire Merry Maids to clean his pad because of his desire for privacy: "... it all comes down to evaluating how much of a crimp this might put into my lifestyle versus the benefits I gain from not having to clean the place myself."

Me: "So a key part of your lifestyle is leaving your credit-card bills and Mr. T gold chain collection in plain view? :-)"

Andrei: "I pity the fool who takes the chains."

Ha!

Did Loyalty and Decency Ever Exist?

Were it not for evidence I've seen with my own eyes, I might descend into wondering whether loyalty and decency ever really existed. Or were they just mist, mere vapors thought to have had real form at a point in time roughly adjacent to an idyllic period (the 1950s, etc.) when all was green and good in America?

Heavily greasing my slide into cynicism would be the treatment of all the assistant football coaches at the University of Nebraska, who twisted in the wind for just about exactly 40 Days and 40 Nights (seriously!) while their athletic director looked for a new head coach. After more than a month of wondering where they'd have to move their wives and children if the new coach didn't like them, they learn on a Friday the new coach's name.

Whereupon they're told, "You don't look quite done yet. Take the weekend to stew in your juices a bit more."

The new guy tells them it'll be Monday before he even gets to talking with them about their futures with the program. Decency and loyalty have both failed these assistants, who labor in relative obscurity to generate the kind of show that's sold out Memorial Stadium for something like one kazillion consecutive games.

Decency would have had the new coach working all weekend to talk with each assistant as quickly as possible. Loyalty would have had the athletic director ordering the new coach to do just that. But increasingly, it seems that when people make decisions about other people's lives -- in athletics or in business -- decency and loyalty have left the building.

Small Media Market Blues

Heard at 2:30 p.m. today on a Lincoln radio station:

"Good afternoon. The University of Nebraska has a news conference scheduled for 1 p.m. today at which officials are expected to announce the new NU head football coach. Speculation is that it will be former Oakland Raiders Coach Bill Callahan, but there is a possibility that will not be the case."

This exciting news came after the same station ran live coverage of a 1 p.m. news conference at which officials announced the new NU head football coach -- Bill Callahan.

This is the same station that sometime almost every day runs two commercials at once, creating quite the sonic storm for the ears. Ah, the small media market blues.

Best Line in Literature?

Candidate for the best line in literature: Sister Carlotta in Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card.

Sister Carlotta is trying to get a military man to admit one of her young charges to a training program, but the boy has a bad leg.

Sister Carlotta: "If he passes your exacting intellectual and personality requirements, it is quite possible that for a minuscule portion of the brass button or toilet paper budget of the I.F., his physical limitations might be repaired."

Military Man: "I never knew nuns could be sarcastic."

Sister Carlotta: "I can't reach you with a ruler. Sarcasm is my last resort."

Funky-Fresh Food Report in Progress

I did some cogitating and some price-inspecting today in preparation for putting together the Funky-Fresh Food Report, which I hope will prove my hypothesis that unhealthy processed food is cheaper than healthy fresh food. It's all in response to a discussion begun by Andrei in this post about America's obesity problem.

Might as well get some full disclosure out of the way now: I was fat, fat, fat as a kid. (I grew out of my weight.) Knowing that, take a look at my last name and see how long it takes you to find a way to tease me with it. Won't be long. Go ahead and post your guess as a comment; I'm way (twitch) past (snarl) all (growl) that (twitch) now.

Time for Some Funky-Fresh Food Reporting

Ryan Norris offers what I'll take to be gentle criticism of my post about the high price of fresh fruits and vegetables, and how that relates to America's obesity problem. Ryan proposes less-expensive frozen vegetables as an alternative to the acute myocardial infarction awaiting the frequent consumer of just about anything on the 99 Cent Value Menu.

I presented an incomplete argument. I was trying to get across a point about the choices faced by American working people of low to moderate income as they think about feeding their families. Specifically, I was envisioning the stop for dinner, or dinner fixings, on the way home from work. I presented three options: the cheap and ready Value Menu meal, the less-cheap but quick to prepare processed food meal from the grocery store, and the expensive and slow to prepare meal made from fresh fruit, vegetables, grains and meats. When my argument is as complete as I can make it, I hope to show how American work habits, culture, food pricing and availability, and other factors combine to create a significant risk factor for obesity that is not entirely controllable by the individual. I may surprise those of my friends who, aware of my conservative political leanings, would doubt I could ever produce an essay that did not bow down before the altar of Personal Responsibility.

To make this happen, I'm going to have to do some Funky-Fresh Food Reporting, comparing the prices of fresh and funky (processed) foods. I may even whip out one of the freebie reporter's notebooks I got from the 2000 Republican National Convention, back in the salad days of my employment as a political reporter for the once-defunct, now semi-defunct Nebraska StatePaper. (Woefully un-clever pun intended. I'll never top the guy at church youth group who, upon hearing a peer's complaint about working at Donutland, exclaimed, "How can you not like working at such a holey place?)

In any event, thanks, Ryan, for giving me my first-ever Trackback ping. This whole having an audience (of more than four) thing could get addictive.

Pricey Fresh Food Fosters "Fat of the Land," Too

My distant acquaintance Andrei Zmievski blames America's fat problem on "[o]versized portions, lack of exercise and general activity, foods high in sugar and fructose [and] obnoxious advertisement of junk food." Agreed -- but add in high-priced fresh food.

Imagine a busy mother or father in the middle class or lower faced with preparing dinner for the family after a typically grueling day spent in the Sisyphean struggle against the twin boulders of inflation and taxation. Money's tight. Mom or Dad could:

1. Buy a hot and tasty ready-to-eat meal from the 99 Cent Value Menu of his or her choice, which while convenient is laden with fat, calories and possibly teenage acne drippings. Price: Cheap. Time Investment: Little.


2. Go to the grocery store and buy one of those "all in one box" complete dinners, which give the illusion of freshness by requiring assembly and cooking but are just as laden with fat and calories. Price: Fairly cheap. Time Investment: Moderate.


3. Go to the grocery store and purchase fresh fruits vegetables, meats and grains to make a meal that looks a bit more like the wide end of the USDA's Food Pyramid. Price: Shockingly high. Time Investment: Depends on whether you're Rachael Ray. If you're not, heavy.

When two incomes supported operations at One Fulwider Plaza, we used to wonder why our monthly grocery bills regularly topped $400. After one income "just blew away" like Mike Wazowski wishes his paperwork could, we figured it out. No more oranges, apples, grapes, green beans, snow peas, zucchini, squash and salad greens means a grocery bill cut in half.

It's all about comparative prices; the processed stuff is cheaper and easier. We've got to make the mortgage, so we've written off the healthy foods we used to enjoy. What choice would you make?

Tough Words About Christianity

One author's list of history's 100 most influential people puts Jesus Christ at #3 and Muhammad at #1. Writers at adherents.com, which republished the list, explain why:

Hart said that he himself would have ranked Jesus first, if all the people who today identify themselves as Christians actually followed Jesus's teachings more substantially. He considers contemporary Muslims more influenced by Muhammad than contemporary Christians are by Jesus.

When I consider the prevalence -- or the lack thereof -- of people following Jesus' greatest commandments ("love God, love your neighbor"), I find it uncomfortably difficult to disagree with Hart. (Michael H. Hart, author of "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History.")