Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in willtaran's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
6:48 am	health insurance owns us This struck me the other day: Health insurance companies are supposed to depend on people, their customers. The companies should be working hard to provide us with a product that we are willing to pay for. If companies don't sell us a good enough product, they don't survive. In reality, it's reversed. We have become completely dependent on the health insurance companies. The companies offer whatever product they think will generate the most profit for them, and if we don't buy it, we're screwed when we have a health problem. I'm with galactic_dev. It's long past time to stop defending the private insurance system. It's time to unelect the legislators who do so. Current Mood: Friday (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
11:28 am	(deep) inside the financial collapse Great article here about the heart of the Wall Street mess. Gets into all the gory details of mortgage-backed securities, etc. I had to stop and think often, but I now understand a lot more than I did yesterday. Signal boost from http://toofairforhawaii.wordpress.com/ Even though the article doesn't say this, there's an obvious message between the lines: We can do whatever we want with stimulus packages, car buy-backs, job creation, etc., but it doesn't matter. A bunch of profit-hungry managers on Wall Street can piss everything away in a few weeks. Without a serious boost in regulation (which really means reality-checking) in financial trading, all of this will happen again. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
12:00 am	Concert review: Coldplay, 8/3/09 I have to say, I had a great time. Some things about this show were pretty easy to predict. Chris Martin (lead singer) galloped all over the stage when he wasn’t sitting at his keyboard. He’s a rock star and clearly loving it. Will Champion (drummer) was steady and strong, pounding out their signature heavy beats. “Viva La Vida”, “Fix You”, “Yellow”, and “Clocks” were massive sing-alongs. The last album, Viva La Vida was a new musical step for Coldplay -- actually, several steps, since they experimented with several new ideas and sounds. The previous two albums had a lot of stadium-ready rock anthems. Viva, while still bombastic at times, is softer and quite a bit more layered, with a lot of different sounds. The new approach has translated into the live show as well: some straight ahead on-stage sets, but also a variety of change-ups. They dropped over a hundred beach ball-sized yellow balloons into the crowd during “Yellow”, launched fountains of butterfly-shaped confetti during “Lovers in Japan”, and ran an intricate and effective light show throughout. Chris Martin played lots of short piano interludes, including one that I’m pretty sure was Chopin. The entire band left the stage twice -- once to play a three-song set on a little stage behind the first section, with an upright piano and electronic drum pad, and once near the back of the amphitheater, where Martin sang and the other three all played acoustic guitar. This last set included “Billie Jean”, no joke. Coldplay was clearly intent on promoting their newer stuff. They played only one song from their first album, Parachutes, and only three from the previous album, X & Y (which somehow did not include “Speed of Sound”). By contrast, they played all but one song from Viva, and several from the two EPs they’ve released since then. The best part was that, even though they varied the sound on some of their songs -- a solo piano version of “The Hardest Part”, for example -- they kept things simple. A lot of the synth sounds from Viva were condensed into the guitar parts, and effectively so. There were gimmicks in the show, but never to the extent of distraction. Chris Martin pranced around a lot, but stopped when he actually needed to sing (I think he only learned that in the last year). The focus of the concert was always clearly on emotions felt through music, which has always been Coldplay’s stock in trade. Overall, this was a really good show. Coldplay played their songs cleanly, stuck to the job of entertainment, and everyone had a good time. I think it’s fair to say that Coldplay’s ambition still outreaches its ability, but by now they have a solid group of great songs, and they are growing musically. More importantly for concerts, they have figured out how to perform their music well, and it’s good fun. Seeing them outdoors was a definite plus -- their sound does well in the open air. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 13th, 2009
9:43 am	My Plan B paper (for my M.Ed.) From www.wordle.net: (Comment on this)
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
4:57 pm	Wolfram Alpha In case you haven't seen this yet, here's the Wolfram Alpha computational search engine. Here's the introductory webcast. I haven't had a chance to dig into it much, but the design looks inspiring. Has anyone tried it out in depth? Current Mood: Friday (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
10:59 pm	Movie review: The Class Saw this film a few weeks ago and kept meaning to write about it. This is a fantastic, thought-provoking, challenging movie. It is refreshing in its straightforwardness, and remarkably realistic. Nothing in the lengthy classroom scenes ever seems scripted or rehearsed.  It is very much based on a true story; in fact, the the main teacher role is played by the same man whose autobiographical book was the basis for the film. But this is not a documentary, and doesn't really feel like one. Somehow, the director was able to capture the spontaneity of a reall classroom. You definitely feel like the camerapeople just planted themselves in a real classroom and stayed there for a year. The film's central focus is a classroom that is unhealthy in some ways right from the beginning, and yet has real people who care and grow and try to do well, sometimes in spite of themselves. The movie could easily be explained as a treatise on what is wrong with western education, or schools in multicultural western cities.  But I believe the film more specifically explores the failure of adults and teens to respect each other -- how that comes about, the myriad ways in which it manifests, and what happens as a result.  And these are teens and adults who are essentially good, sympathetic people. Why someone picked the distractingly bland "The Class" for a title is a mystery to me. The original French title, "Entre Les Murs", translates as "Between the Walls", which is much better. But no matter. This is categorically the best movie about schools and teaching that I have ever seen. Current Mood: peaceful (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
12:59 pm	last day Last day of the refined sugar fast! I have a more complete picture now about what kinds of sugar is in what foods, both inherently and commercially. In terms of healthiness, my big lesson is that the natural sweeteners all have pretty similar effects on your body; for example, honey and high fructose corn syrup are pretty much the same, health-wise. In that sense, the worthy goal is just to eat them sparingly. There are definitely environmental, economic, and other reasons to choose some forms of sugar over others. I'm going to stay away from corn syrup for the time being. Anyone know a brand of ketchup that doesn't have corn syrup in it? Some good websites: Great primer on glycemix index and glycemic load. Good reading about GI, GL, and different kinds of carbs. Super-long table of GI and GL for different foods Current Mood: relaxed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 8th, 2009
5:41 pm	Malted barley The last of the suspiciously-possibly-sugary ingredients I needed to look up... Malted barley (or other malted grain) is barley that has germinated, but was stopped at a certain point. This grows the starchy part of the barley, but the real aim is to maximize the amount of natural enzymes in the grain that break down its starches into sugars. This also develops enzymes that make the starch more useful to yeast. This must be why it's a primary ingredient in many kinds of beer. Is it "sugar"? -- I can't get a clear answer. The carbs are somewhere in between the original starch and simple sugars. Case study: Grape Nuts has no added sugar, but it does have malted barley. It doesn't taste sweet, but the side panel says it has 4g of sugar, which is more than Cheerios and Chex cereals. In any case, malted barley is definitely not refined sugar. Current Mood: relaxed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
11:48 pm	Movie review: Star Trek It was astoundingly good! For a film that was hyped so much, and could have failed in so many ways, it succeeded; and it succeeded with style, with flair, with swagger. It looked fabulous, the sound was dazzling, and the action was crisp, even with the deliberately shaking cameras in some scenes. The casting was really superb, top to bottom, but especially for Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The story, which was fairly predictable but not obvious, unfolded at a nice pace. It was heavy on action, moderate on quipping, and light on serious thought, so it won't be to everyone's taste, but for this kind of modern sci-fi genre, this is as good as it gets. Probably the biggest surprise for me was that Star Trek worked not just as entertainment, but as an honest-to-goodness Star Trek movie. I was amazed by how many details from the history of the original series (TOS) were woven in, accurately. This movie leaned heavily on the seat-of-your-pants, frontier ethos of TOS, and did so quite faithfully; it only dipped a little into the values and thoughtfulness of TOS, but they were present. It remains to be seen if they'll be more prominent in future movies (which were all but verbally promised by the ending). As for the loyalty to the "canon", the Star Trek history as laid out in TOS and other series, I'll just say that this movie does respect that, in a freshly clever and devious way. 9/10 for me. Job well done, folks. Current Mood: jazzed (Comment on this)
Friday, May 1st, 2009
12:40 pm	More "what is that sweet stuff?" I'm researching these to the extent that I'm interested -- not pretending that that is comprehensive! Agave nectar is mostly fructose, i.e. sugar. It does have a few advantages over table sugar: 1) The high fructose content makes it a lot sweeter than sugar, so you need less of it to achieve the same sweetness. 2) The agave plant is a succulent, requiring much much less water, fertilizer, and land to grow than sugarcane. 3) It's much less refined than table sugar, and if you buy it in the store, it's unlikely there are any processing chemicals in it. Marketers of agave syrup like to trumpet that since it has more fructose (and less glucose), it has a lower glycemic index, so it's a bit less stressful on bodies. But fructose has its own health issues, too. Basically, although agave syrup is much less refined that table sugar, it's still a concentrated form of sugar with little nutritional benefit. Stevia is an herb (well, family of herbs) with a naturally sweet taste. It contains no sugar and hardly any calories. It was difficult to find authoritative-looking information about it, but my sense is that there are unresolved questions about its safety when used in large amounts (as Americans are wont to do). The Japanese have been producing it commercially and using it for 30 years without any emerging stories of health problems, but it remains unapproved by the FDA (you can still get it under the "supplement" label). Anyone tried it? What does it taste like? Sucanat is sugar. It's the trade name for pure, dried sugar can juice. The main difference with brown sugar is that Sucanat hasn't been crystallized to extract the sugar, so it still has the molasses content, and tastes that way. It's grainy instead of crystalline. Turbinado sugar is sugar. It's just crystalline brown sugar that's been spun in a turbine to extract the moisture. The brown Sugar In The Raw packets in coffee shops are turbinado. Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol that occurs naturally in some berries and stone fruits, and that our bodies produce naturally in small amounts. It tastes sweet, and is used in chewing gum and some diet foods. It has 3/4 the calories of glucose, but is absorbed much more slowly, so you don't get a sharp blood sugar spike from eating it. It's also used for all kinds of things besides food, like cosmetics toothpaste, for properties other than its taste (it's a humectant and thickener). It's considered safe to eat, but consuming large amounts can give you diarrhea and gas, as well as cause some cellular damage. You can easily reach these levels by chewing gum or eating candy with sorbitol. Sucralose: sugar-derived chemical; developed in England in the 1970s; zero-calorie; sweeter than sugar, aspartame, and even saccharin; no blood glucose spike; stable under heat. Splenda (the yellow packets) is sucralose bulked with dextrose and maltodextrin. There's a raging debate about its safety going on. It's been thoroughly shown to be safe (several websites cite 100 studies), and it's approved in over 80 countries. It's also under massive attack from some doctors, scientists, and food groups, and they cite lots of studies showing nasty effects on animals, as well as a mountain of anecdotal evidence. My quick read tells me that the nasty side effects mostly show up when you eat lots and lots of sucralose. Not much surprise there. So it may be safe... but it is absolutely, completely artificial. Current Mood: distracted Current Music: the sound of my hard drive backing up (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
9:51 pm	high fructose corn syrup Here's a really interesting article on high fructose corn syrup, which compares it in several ways to other common forms of sugar. Basic verdict: they're not very different from each other. One of the main reasons I'll probably keep avoiding HFCS is that its ubiquity is a by-product of the horrible American farm policies that subsidize a few crops (corn, soy, etc) that are easily grown on large scales, at the expense of crops requiring more intensive farming, like healthy vegetables. I'd rather not have my money contributing to the appearance of corn in EVERYTHING. But truth be told, sugar cane is not exactly a wonderful environmental alternative. It takes a lot of acreage and a ton of water to grow cane. Current Mood: hungry Current Music: it is quiet (Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
5:40 pm	two weeks in So far, two weeks of no refined sugar. It has not been that bad. Two main challenges that I've exoerienced come to mind: 1) most desserts I would have eaten in the past are out, and I do miss chocolate. 2) I mostly can't eat bread that I didn't pick out myself, and that gets inconvenient. Otherwise the restrictions haven't bothered me much. I don't miss sweeter cereal. I wouldn't say I notice my body feeling healthier, or my energy up, at least not yet. FOr the first week I did feel hungrier, probably because I was consuming fewer calories overall. That has subsided. I've definitely noticed that some food, fruits in particular, tastes a lot sweeter to me than it used to. I'm not sure how much I'd want to eat something sweeter than a banana right now. I've also learned that why you pan-fry apples with a little butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg, they taste really yummy (duh). They get sweeter, and if you stop the frying right when they start to caramelize, they're awesome. Braeburns are very sweet this way; Granny Smiths are more balanced. I'm thinking that after this is all over, I won't want to eliminate all sugar from my diet, but I may well continue to avoid high fructose corn syrup. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
5:08 pm	Strange ingredients in my sweet-tasting food What's that strange ingredient in my sweet-tasting food? As previously posted, I've been learning a ton in the couple weeks we've sworn off refined sugar. I've been reading the ingredients of everything (which I suppose we should always do). I needed to look up some things to find out what they are -- always a bad sign. Here are a few common ones: Evaporated Cane Juice = sugar water with most of the water removed. It's a fancy name for "sugar". (See my previous post.) ECJ may be less refined, but it's still sugar . Dextrose, Dextrin = industry names for a form of glucose, i.e. sugar. Maltodextrin = short chains of glucose molecules. May not be sweet, but easily is broken down during digestion into glucose, and is definitely a refined product. Vivian and I won't be eating it this month. Glycerol (pure form), also called Glycerin (impure commercial product) = a sugar alcohol. It has calories, and tastes sweet, but doesn't raise blood sugar. Used as a filler in low-fat, low-carb, and other processed foods, although there's disagreement about its overall health benefit. Glycerol is most definitely a refined product -- it's a by-product of biodiesel production. It's also used to make soap, toothpaste (it's in Tom's of Maine), pharmaceuticals and body care products. I'm thinking it's not just an excuse for sugar, but it sure fails the refined test! I'll pass, except for the toothpaste which I'm not swallowing. Current Mood: nerdy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
7:08 pm	sugar and molasses I never knew exactly what molasses is. Vivian and I agreed it was "in" for the month, so I went web-searching to find out. It was actually more difficult to find a good explanation than I expected, and Wikipedia's semi-verified page was the most comprehensive. To make sugar, the juice is extracted (by crushing, mashing, etc.) from sugarcane, beets, sorghum, or whatever the vegetable source is. The juice is boiled down, then cooled. Stirring while cooling crystallizes sugar out of the liquid. At this point, the crystals are basically light brown raw sugar, although more treatment is usually done before it goes to market. White sugar is bleached and further refined from this. Molasses is the liquid left over when the sugar crystals are removed. More accuately, this is light molasses. It can be boiled a second time, removing more water, and re-cooled to crystallize more (darker) sugar. The remaining liquid is dark molasses. A third boiling yields ever darker sugar, and blackstrap molasses. So, molasses is basically a by-product of sugar production. Blackstrap has less than half of the sugar content of the original cane juice, but it's still mostly sugar and water. It does contain a decent amount of calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron. It doesn't taste nearly as sweet as other syrups, but it's still pretty sweet. So,should we allow molasses this month? It's not refined, in the sense that it hasn't been processed to concentrate or enhance its sugar content -- in fact, it's had half its sugar content removed from its original form. But it's still pretty empty calories, and it produces blood sugar spikes. I'm thinking no, not this month. Crap, that means grocery store bread is pretty much completely out. Final note: in a lovely ironic industrial twist, it turns out that some brown sugar is actually white sugar that's been re-coated with light molasses. Gotta love that. Current Mood: kinda stressed (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
10:03 pm	sugar rush Today for snack, I ate a Hawaiian Chef energy bar that I picked up at the farmer's market last weekend. No refined sugar, I promise! It did have organic honey, but otherwise was puffed rice, oats, a couple of seeds, and dried fruit. I must definitely got a sugar rush from it, and it wasn't comfrotable. I felt jittery, like caffeine but without the improved focus. So I have officially noticed the effect: after 10 days of no refined sugar -- which has definitely reduced my overall sugar intake -- I'm now noticing the effect of something sweet that definitely would not have felt that way before. No more energy bars, even ones with virtuous ingredients. Current Mood: pre-sleep (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 20th, 2009
2:30 pm	yup, that's got sugar in it So far in this no-refined-sugar month, my favorite thing is that I've learned a ton, and it's only been 10 days. One big thing I'm learning is exactly how many common foods (as well as edible fake food, e.g. twinkies) have sugar added to them. I knew this in general already, and I suspect most of you did, but now I've got a lot more details. Some foods with added sugar: most pasta sauce in jars (Prego, Newman's Own, etc. Mama Coco's does not.) wheat thins potato chips (as if they weren't bad enough already) sun chips mass-produced sandwich bread hamburger and hot dog buns some packaged sushi Foods with added high fructose corn syrup: ketchup whole wheat bread from Costco Kellogg's cereals, including Raisin Bran (since coating the raisins with sugar is apparently not enough sweetening) I am told triscuits have no added sugar. Must check that out. And as far as I can tell, many breads from bakeries don't have added sugar, although they may add molasses. Last Friday I was up at Punahou's ropes course, running an event for Spring Camp. Lunch time came, and I figured out there were exactly two things there I could eat: apples and oranges. galactic_dev, you will be pained to know that the only type of apple present was red delicious. So I had an orange. All the other stuff was granola bars, chips, crackers, and sandwiches with mass-produced bread. Good thing I had brought my own sandwich and carrots with me. Current Mood: giggly Current Music: Principles Of Lust-Enigma-MCMXC A.D. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
5:00 pm	No refined sugar Vivian and I have taken on a challenge of eating no refined sugar for a month -- April 10 to May 10. Things like honey and dark molasses are OK, but anything just called "sugar", brown sugar, and the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup are all out. Why do it? Multiple health reasons, of course. I've already learned a lot about different kinds of sugars, and how much sugar food companies add to various foods. I'm hoping to learn a ton more. I'm also hoping to break my addiction to eating whatever sweets are available in the lounge at work. And eating less sugar in the USA almost certainly means I'm consuming less refined corn -- and those companies are getting less of my money -- so that's good. Vivian has done something similar before, and remembers feeling more healthy and energetic after a couple of weeks, and she's looking forward to that. So far it's been fine, really. It's not hard to come up with a lot of foods that don't have any refined sugar. It's also stunning how many do. I'll post what I'm learning soon. It does mean that it's basically going to be impossible to go out to eat for the month, unless we want to ask every restaurant for their ingredient list, since sugar sneaks unnecessarily into so many things. I don't, and likely won't, believe that sugar is fundamentally evil. But the really refined versions might be, and I'm sure I've been eating too much of it. Current Mood: good Current Music: Sabhyata-Karmix-Asian Groove (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
5:14 pm	Writer's Block: Looking Back LiveJournal is turning 10 and we're feeling nostalgic. What was your first LJ post about? View 503 Answers Without looking, I'm pretty sure my first post was titled "health day". It was August 2004, and I was back home in Hawaii after an excellent road trip with galactic_dev. He'd started using LJ on that trip, and enjoyed it, and I enjoyed reading his entries. So I decided to jump on the bandwagon. I think that entry was just about my having a good day taking care of myself -- exercise, good food, etc. Not exactly a riveting debut, but it got me rolling. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
5:09 pm	Weak Nations Pose Greatest Threat Good op-ed piece here on the threat of smaller, less stable countries. Pertinent quote: "Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently testified to Congress that the leading threat to America is no longer terrorism but rather the economic crisis, which is leading to unrest, violence and instability in a number of countries." ...which suggests that he doesn't see how terrorism always has been closely linked to economic conditions. That's frightening. Current Mood: awake (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
7:53 pm	Word Cloud for Obama's acceptance speech http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tag_clouds_of_obamas_inaugural_speech_compared_to_bushs.php What doesn't show up is how few times Obama used the word "I", contrasted by how many times he used the words "we" and "our". Nice to have a president who may realize the moment is larger than he is. Current Mood: inspired (2 Comments |Comment on this)