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It’s the plucky ones that surprise you most

Just eat real food

Just eat real food

2016-01-23

I still hear most people demonize fat (especially saturated fat), salt, and cholesterol (especially eggs) despite a significant amount of research that says otherwise. Perhaps many decades of having it pounded into everyone will take some undoing.

I thought I’d collect some references to recent research that covers these maligned nutrients.…

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New tennis face for 2016

New tennis face for 2016

2016-01-01

I did this for 2011 but I thought it would be fun to put my pick or picks for the next hot player in writing and see how I do.

I was watching a match on Court 5 at the US Open in 2015, which shares seating with Court 4 so you can watch two matches at once.…

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10 things I learned by visiting Costa Rica

10 things I learned by visiting Costa Rica

2012-11-29
  1. Hanging things on a clothes line is not for drying them; it’s for conducting mildew and mold growing experiments. 
  2. Wearing seat belts while driving on rough gravel roads can cause more injury than not wearing them.
  3. Too warm? Underwear is optional.
  4. Stop signs are for aesthetic purposes only. Who doesn’t love a splash of red?
…

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Shop small, shop local, shop normal

Shop small, shop local, shop normal

2011-11-29

You know a store is too big when you need Google Maps to navigate it:

Some of the big-box stores such as IKEA, Macy’s, Bloomingdales and Home Depot have already been mapped, but not Target. Not Wal-Mart. And not nearly as many malls as you’d like to see, especially in this holiday season.

…

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How homeopathy “works”

How homeopathy “works”

2011-10-28

(Note that in 2018 an article was published that supports what I’m saying here)

What if the placebo effect isn’t a trick?

For a long time, I put homeopathy in the same category as organized religion. I felt both were based primarily on faith with little science to back them up.…

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21st century philanthropy

21st century philanthropy

2011-09-02

I babbled about philanthropy in an earlier posting called “Wealth now, philanthropy later”, so I was thrilled to see this blog posting on the Harvard Business Review website:

Steve Jobs, World’s Greatest Philanthropist

Try to ignore the hyperbolic title of the article and just absorb the content.

Making the world a better place means making decisions your whole life that either incrementally or substantially make people’s lives better. People…

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The perils of watching time-shifted tennis

The perils of watching time-shifted tennis

2011-08-31

First world problem.

I record a lot of tennis on TiVo partly because it’s usually inconvenient to watch it live (time zone differences) and if I time-shift it, I can zap the commercials or skim matches I don’t have time to watch all of.

It’s gotten increasingly difficult to not have the outcomes of matches I’ve queued up be spoiled before I’ve gotten a chance to see them.…

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Did I provide you with excellent service?

Did I provide you with excellent service?

2011-08-15

It seems like every time I make a phone call to the customer service department of a big company, I get an email, a return phone call, or a postal mail survey asking how my customer experience was. They always say I was randomly chosen but that defies the laws of probability.…

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New tennis faces for 2011

New tennis faces for 2011

2011-01-29

The highlight of the Australian Open this year for me was seeing three very promising players that I’ve never seen before, two of which I’ve never even heard of:

  1. Bernard Tomic, who has a very unconventional style that really messes with people’s minds. You never know quite what he’s going to do.
…

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How Jimmy Carter saved beer

How Jimmy Carter saved beer

2010-11-14

I was on one of these meandering trips around the internet, hopping from link to link and found this great story.

How Jimmy Carter Saved Beer

…

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About Me


I’ve been a bird breeder, a bicycle mechanic, bookseller, and a Software Engineer at Apple for 20 years.

Friends tell me I have interesting things to say.

You be the judge.

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