Bruner Blog
All Bruner, All the Time
Peter Maass On The Media
My friend Peter Maass will be the subject of an interview on NPR's "On The Media" program this weekend. In the NY area, you can catch it on Sunday at 3pm (? - that's what the site says, but I think it's 4pm) on WNYC (820 AM).
The OTM site says of Peter's segment:
Journalists and the World Court
Former Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal has been subpoenaed at a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Despite Randal’s protests, the court is refusing to grant any journalist a privilege against testifying during trials that do not involve unpublished information or off the record sources. [Co-host] Mike [Pesca] talks to former war correspondent [former? he just got back from Afghanistan a couple of months ago] Peter Maass, who wrote an op-ed on journalists being subpoenaed.
- 7/13/2002
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Blog.Meetup.com
Okay, I just signed up for the Blog Meetup thing. It's still five days away (till Thursday, July 18 @ 7:00PM
), but so far there are only 28 people signed up. That seems pretty lame. I'll bail out if none of the rest of my NYC blog posse shows up. I just don't need more humiliating reminders of how inherently geekly the blog habit is. But, if the numbers pick up by the time of the event, I suppose it could be fun. We shall see. Meetup is an interested idea, but I wonder...
- 7/13/2002
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Fotolog.net
Just discovered Fotolog.net. Got a digital camera and like the idea of blogging but find yourself at a loss for words? Consider fotologging, instead.
- 7/13/2002
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GoogleIT!
Install this in half a second into your Links Toolbar and then you can then highlight phrases on standard web pages and click the toolbar link button and get Google seraches of the prhases. Easier than I make it sound.
- 7/13/2002
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C:\PIRILLO.EXE
I've never actually met Chris Pirillo, but I would enjoy the opportunity. We've exchanged emails a few times, and maybe even a phone call or two, and I enjoyed his book Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing. He's most famous, however, for his technology email newsletter LockerGnome. I just stumbled on his web log, C:\PIRILLO.EXE. I laughed for about two minutes over the blog's slogan, "No match for domain 'CLOWNPENIS.FART'."
- 7/13/2002
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Malaysians Getting High on Cow Dung?
Don't believe everything you read, especially on the Internet. Could this possibly be true, or is it just another example of the media peddling bullshit?
- 7/12/2002
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TonyPierce.com
My favorite new blog. Also check out his homepage. His photo essay on Anna Kournikova is pretty funny, too.
- 7/12/2002
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What Is That Stuff?
This is nice: the American Chemical Society (sounds like a grunge band name) has a page explaining the chemical composition of common products such as tanning creams, baseballs and Cheez Whiz. Mmmm, chemicals.
Source: Jay Niemann
- 7/12/2002
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7,733 Miles per Gallon
Mark Haas points out this news brief from the Kyodo News Agency
Japanese team wins fuel-efficiency car race in London
LONDON July 11 Kyodo - A Japanese motor team won the fuel-efficiency Shell Eco-Marathon race in the northern London suburb Corby on Thursday, completing 15.9 kilometers with just 4.836 cubic centimeters of gasoline. The fuel consumption translates into an astounding 3,294 kilometers per liter of gasoline, but still short of the 3,600-km-per-liter record marked in a similar race in Scotland last year.
According to Mark's calculations (I'll take his word on it), that works out to 7733.456 miles per gallon.
I can't find any other source on this piece but would be interested in more details if anyone finds some. Does anyone besides me believe there is a real political/corporate energy conspiracy going on keeping us addicted to gasoline?
Ever heard of Zero Pollution Motors (aka Motor Development International), a company manufacturing a car that runs solely on compressed air (based on technology created by a former French Formula One engineer)? They got some publicity a couple of years ago (here's a BBC piece), but I haven't heard boo about them lately, and their web site is about the clunkiest, least-informative business sites out there, unfortunately. I suppose they'll probably get acquired by GM, never to be heard from again. Personally, I haven't owned a car in almost 20 years, and I like it that way, but this is the car I would buy if I were to break down (despite its completely retarded design; why must all alternative power cars look so asinine?).
- 7/12/2002
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Scary Science: Synthetic Polio, Just to Prove a Point
"Experts can now download a genetic blueprint from the Internet and use mail-order materials to assemble a deadly virus, say researchers who made a synthetic polio virus in the lab to demonstrate the threat."
Source: New York Times story
- 7/12/2002
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I Must Be Crazy
Per my comment this morning about my most hated conversation these days being "what the hell is blogging," it was unavoidable again tonight and reached new levels of humiliation. Out with a couple of friends, the wife asked the dreaded question, and half way through my tedious answer, she offered her opinion (apparently having missed the point that I myself am a blogger), "I think anyone who would do that must be a little disturbed." That would be bad enough on the face of it, but given that she's a professional psychologist, she was rendering her professional opinion!
- 7/11/2002
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Bush's Nose for $
I can't believe this isn't on DayPop Top 40 yet. Quite amusing. Thanks for the tip from Miki.
- 7/11/2002
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Sarcasm = Terrorism?
We're used to airlines treating comments about bombs and guns as no joking matter, even before Sept. 11. But America West (an airline that has inconvenienced me or worse enough times recently that I don't need to read the newspapers to have a grudge against them) clearly has a stick up its ass. Did you hear this news yet about them hauling a woman off her flight and accusing her of being a security risk because she made a wisecrack about hoping the pilots weren't drunk? My friend Mark is simply fuming, saying he hopes she "sues their wings off." I'd love to hear Jerry Sienfeld's comment.
- 7/11/2002
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Batman vs. Superman
This looks almost as exciting as The Hulk. I notice that BatmanvsSuperman.com is already registered. I wonder if Warner Bros. knows that.
- 7/11/2002
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Meeting Arthur Phillips
I'm still getting the hang of this blogging thing, particularly where it intersects with real life. I just spent a whole evening feeling like I was making apologies for my uncontrollable blogging jones.
As advertised, I attended Arthur Phillips's reading of his new novel Prague at Barnes & Noble tonight, along with many other former Budapest expats. Despite my earlier reservations, I'm a third of the way through the novel by now, and, while I am infatuated perhaps less than some rave reviewers, I'm begrudgingly engaged. I also caught Phillips's interview this afternoon on WYNC's Leonard Lopate show, where he proved himself to be humble, witty and charming, a performance he repeated at tonight's reading.
So I figured I'd give him his proppers and lay off at least until I finished reading the book. After tonight's well-attended reading, there was a long line for book signatures, so I hung back with a group of friends debating whether to bother getting him to sign mine. As things were winding down and we were deciding on a restaurant, a lovely young woman came up to me and said, "Arthur, the author, would like to meet you. I'm his wife, and he asked me to tell you to come speak with him before you go."
"Uh oh," I said, as soon as she left. Of course, I was right. He had Googled his name and found my earlier rant about his book. (Jeez, that was just a few days ago; don't search engines take months to update their databases anymore?) For a guy who set out to write a book about irony (as he explained to Lopate on the radio), he seemed to take the Bruner Blog a bit seriously. (It was satisfying to note, however, that at the same time I'm reading him, he's reading me ;-)
Paraphrasing, our conversation went something like this (bearing in mind I wasn't taking notes, but since I graduated with a degree in creative writing, my "creative license" is actually framed on the wall):
Hi. Your wife said you wanted to see me.
Oh yes, hello.
I take it you saw my little write up on my blog?
Yes, I did.
How did you discover it, out of curiosity?
Typical vainglorious writer, I searched for my name. I didn't expect to find hate mail.
You realize I was just joking, of course? "Sour grapes," and all?
You made fun of my hair.
[Dude, men over 30 with frosted hair. It's just not really done, State-side.]
I was kidding. [Glancing at my copy of his book open on the table] It's "Rick."
I know. [That famous Phillips irony. Despite this, he signed it "Ric." I don't know whether the ironic nod is to me or to him in this case.]
I'm actually enjoying the book. :-)
I'm glad. You know that the editor of BudapesToday is not you, and BudapesToday is not Budapest Week?
Yes. Thanks. And congratulations again on all your success.
To his credit, he was smiling through all this. What I still don't understand is how he recognized me. True, I have a photo on the blog page, but I'm wearing a hat and rubber teeth and was 19 at the time. I think it would be hard to pick me out of a book-signing crowd based on that alone. Maybe it was the New York Bloggers T-shirt I was wearing. Or perhaps, as I suspect, a friend (whose initials might be S.S.) gave me up when she got her book signed. Whatever. Rude shock, though, to have meatspace and blogosphere collide unexpectedly like that.
The rest of the evening was spent over a feast at the Jewish deli across the street explaining to incredulous new friends what the hell blogs are. This has become my least favorite conversation ever since acquiring this strange new addiction. "Who on earth has time for that? Don't these people have any work to do?" Well, no, not really. Heard about the recession? Lots of smart people have more time on their hands these days...
That and having to retell the whole S. debacle. Plus Nick threatening to post to his blog a photo my wife put up on her Yahoo! Photos page of me at a party engaged in activity that let's just say it might be better that my clients not witness. Where the hell does all this crazy blogging lead, I ask you?!
Final note: shame on Daniel Mendelsohn for revealing so much of the plot of Prague in his New Yorker review. I mean, I didn't need to know that Emily was, well, you know. Hadn't gotten to that part yet. Thanks a lot.
- 7/11/2002
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Letterman on Bush and Accounting
Paraphrasing from Letterman's monologue tonight: "So President Bush was on Wall Street today giving a big speech on cracking down on accounting fraud. Wait a minute. Accounting fraud? Isn't that how he got elected?"
- 7/10/2002
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It's the End of the World as We Know It
"Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week. A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life... The report, based on scientific data from across the world, reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades."
Story: UK Guardian
- 7/9/2002
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'Prague' Author, Wednesday Night
Little reminder: tomorrow (i.e., Wednesday) night at 7:30pm all fellow former Budapest expats are encouraged to drop by the 81st & Broadway branch of Barnes & Noble to hear Arthur Philips reading excerpts from his novel Prague, which is set in Budapest in the early '90s.
Turns out we're going to have to refrain from pelting him with vegetables and epithets. We have identified a second degree of separation from him that establishes his legitimacy. Ernest Beck (who promises his blog is coming soon) writes:
Before we start heckling: some late breaking news--
seems this guy is indeed legit. This by way of Doug
Rediker--you might remember him--who called today
(he's in NY) to say he was good buddies with Phillips
in BP, they hung out together, etc. Seems he went to
BP at first to work for Marc Holzman, then just stayed
around, and did stuff like playing sax at the Piaf.
Btw, Peter Magyar (the lawyer) married Phillips'
sister.
Still think we should all turn out en masse. And Doug
will probably be there, too.
- 7/9/2002
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Another Bush Blooper
Oops! He did it again. In President Bush's press conference today defending himself and Corporate America against accusations of funky accounting practices, I distinctly heard him twice use the word "malfeance," which doesn't exist. Obviously, he meant "malfeasance." I find it interesting that on the NYTimes.com transcript of the press conference, they correct his usage to "malfeasance" without any editorial comment on the correction, while the WhiteHouse.gov transcript of the press conference uses the erroneous spelling "malfeance" without any "[sic]" or other editorial note. I wonder if anyone there knows the difference. I guess the better question, though, is why the Times feels the need to gloss over the president's mistakes?
The WhiteHouse site also provides a video link where you can hear it for yourself (though it's about three quarters of the way through the 35-minute conference).
- 7/8/2002
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Rick's Jazz Links
 My good friend Travis Shook has been helping me over the last several months with some java database projects (see his programming resume) on my ExecutiveSummary.com site (see the Vendor Universe section). Travis and his wife Veronica Nunn are also very talented professional jazz musicians. He plays piano and she sings, and both do gigs around NY and beyond. In exchange for Travis's expert programming help, I'm returning the favor with some online and offline marketing assistance, including of Veronica's excellent new solo album, "American Lullaby" -- hear sample tracks and more at VeronicaNunn.com.
As a result of that help, I've been looking at lots of jazz-related sites in recent months (hardly a sacrafice; I'm also a big fan of the genre). So, I figured as long as I'm doing all this online jazz research, I'd do web surfers a favor and create a jazz links section on my site. I think you'll find it extensive but discriminating. I welcome feedback about it and plan to keep it up to date.
Without further ado, dedicated to Travis and Veronica, click here for Rick's Jazz Links.
- 7/8/2002
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Bad Carbs: The Real Dietary Foe
Great piece in the New York Times Magazine yesterday (the cover story) by Gary Taubes titled "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" challenging the National Institute of Health's dietary dogma since the late '70s that fat is bad and that most of our diet should be made up of carbs. Think of the famous nutrition pyramid (put out, oddly, by the Agricultural Department), which recommends that our diet should be based foremost on 6-11 servings per day of pasta, bread, rice and cereal. There are many who now argue that pyramid provides is terrible advice, responsible in large part for America's current obesity epidemic, which coincides with the same period since N.I.H. made that philosophy the official government recommended food policy.
This is a topic around which I am embarrassed to admit I have a fair degree of passion, ever since I read the book the The Zone, by Barry Sears, about five years ago. Although I never followed the diet quite to the letter, it had a big impact on me and I have made adjustments in my diet ever since to limit my intake of starchy carbs and eat more protein and "good fats" (e.g., olive oil, nuts, fish, etc., while still avoiding animal and dairy fats). The Zone diet is also known as the "40-30-30" diet, in that it recommends that 40% of all calories come from "good carbs" (i.e., green veggies and fruit) and 30% each from protein and "good fats." By comparison, the N.I.H. dietary recommendations suggest we get 70% of calories from carbs and only 15% each from fat and protein.
The basic argument of The Zone is that "bad carbs" -- mostly the starchy or sugary stuff we love, like processed wheat products (including bread and pasta), rice, potatoes, sweets and soft drinks (including fruit juice) -- are the real enemy, not fats, as we've been told for 30 years. The argument as to why that should be the case is complex, but at a high level it has to do with how carbs are broken down in the blood into sugar to fuel the brain and how insulin kicks in to convert that sugar to fat. Too much carbs, and carbs that convert too quickly to into sugar in the blood (therein the distinction between good and bad carbs), and we over-activate insulin and thus create fat from blood sugar. We never properly burn that fat off because we're always converting more sugar to fat with every high-carb meal.
All of that food science and more is explained in detail in the article. The really interesting thing about the article, though, is its examination of the controversy surrounding the N.I.H. on this whole question. The article explains that the whole "dietary fat raises cholesterol levels and gives you heart disease" theory was put forth in the '50s by Ancel Keys, but there has been virtually no scientific proof since that time that the theory is correct. Regardless of scant scientific evidence, politicians, including then Senator George McGovern, started pushing for government intervention in the nation's dietary habits in the late '70s, and in 1984, the N.I.H. officially recommended Americans should eat less fat. Quoting from the article:
In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however...concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administration then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same.
That leap of faith, upon which today's whole "anti-fat" movement seems to be based, had its critics even at the time, as the article explains:
Phil Handler, then president of the National Academy of Sciences, testified to Congress...in 1980. "What right," Handler asked, "has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?"
But such critics were ignored and the N.I.H. high-carb, low-fat dietary recommendations have been the official Big Brother position ever since, which has coincided with an average 60-pound-per-person annual increase in the amount of grain Americans consume, and 30-pound-per-person increase in high-fructose corn syrup in the last 25 years. And with the dramatic increase in obesity in that same period. During that time, the N.I.H. has refused to fund virtually any dietary study that challenges the wisdom of the high-carb diet. That may be changing, however, as the article reports from lots of top medical researchers that are beginning to question the fat/carb gospel.
The conclusion a reader comes to, unfortunately, is that medical science really seems no closer than ever to understanding how nutrition affects our health, so they might as well eat the buttered steak and enjoy it because they may not get a straight answer out of the medical community on whether it's good or bad for them in this lifetime. In fact, it seems to me that the field of nutrition is about as scientific and credible as accounting and politics. The N.I.H. certainly comes off in this investigation as being more concerned with covering its own ass on past policies than in leading scientific investigations into these questions, more critical to the health of the nation now than it was 30 years ago when we were in better health concerning weight and heart disease.
- 7/8/2002
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