Category: General

We are told that we need to bring up our children to be citizens who can be critical of stories in the news and call bullshit on things that are bullshit. Most of the bullshit you see are stories that deal with new “scientific finding”, which are really just a press release by some organization who did a half baked epidemiological study on some small group.

Today gives us the winner headline “US Cancer Deaths Drop for the First Time”.

I don’t doubt that deaths due to cancer may have been less in 2005 than they were in 2004. However, if you read further into the story, I think it’s a huge leap to assume that this trend will continue.

In fact, if you understand why cancer deaths have been increasing the first place, you’ll understand why it’s almost impossible for them to decrease in the coming years.

If you were asked the question, “Why have cancer rates been going up in the 20th Century?” you might say it had something to do with smoking, nutrition, or chemicals in the environment. All of those things may have played a part, but it was a minor part. The real reason cancer deaths have been going up for 70 years is that we are living longer. Human beings are mortal. We have to die. If we aren’t dying of the cholera, or the typhus, or a battle axe in the face, we have to be dying of something else. While cancer deaths have gone up, life expectancy has gone up with it. Cancer is predominately a disease of the old. If people live longer, they are more apt to get cancer than if they died at a young age.

It’s as simple as that.

We certainly are making big strides in our ability to fight cancer. These efforts, the fewer people smoking, and other trends may offset cancer deaths. However, until a real “cure” is discovered, demographics will overwhelm anything done by science or lifestyle. The baby boomers are now hitting 60 and they will be dying at a faster and faster rate every year. They will be getting cancer at faster rates and dying from it. It can’t really be avoided.

If we should ever find a cure for cancer, then we will probably see an increase in people dying from heart disease or other ailments. Mortality always wins. We have to die from something.

Today’s news is welcome, but it’s not a long term trend. A far better measure of our ability to treat cancer is survival rates (ala Lance Armstrong) rather than counting cancer deaths.

My health regimen is going well. Very well.

The solution is pretty simple and there are no tricks. I’m eating less and hitting the gym more. I’m only eating when I’m hungry and then I’m eating just enough to take care of my hunger. I’ve placed no real restrictions on what I can eat. If I’m hungry, I might get a small bag of chips or an apple. I’ve been to McDonalds once, and then I couldn’t even eat everything. Save for a glass of wine, I have nothing to eat at night.

The change in eating habits has really been the biggest change. My eating habits were horrible. I’d eat just to eat. I’d order more than I’d need, I’d eat when I wasn’t hungry, and eat things which probably weren’t the best for me. Believe it or not, one of the biggest helps has been chewing gum.

The length at which I can run a decent pace has increased substantitally. I’m not ready for a marathon, but the improvements are obvious.

From a weight standpoint, I’m entering areas I haven’t been at in almost a decade. I can feel some small changes every day.

I’ve lost about 13 pounds now and I have another 12 to go before I start doing weight training. I’m being pretty wide eyed about what I’m doing and what is going to happen to my body. As I lose weight (good), I’ll also be losing some muscle mass in the process (bad). If I continue my current way of doing things forever, it could lead to problems where I’m losing weight, but doing it at the expense of muscle mass and not really reducing my fat/muscle ratio.

Once I hit the goal I’ve set, I’m going to begin to try and reverse any muscle mass I’ve lost. This will be through lifting weights and consuming more protein. While I’m doing this, I will probably stop losing weight and possible even gain it as my body is producing denser muscle mass.

Also, as I lose weight, the calories I expend every day just going about life will decrease as I am carrying around less. This will require an increase in my energy expenditures at the gym, which shouldn’t be much easier than it has been, because I’ll be carrying less around.

I’m hoping to hit my intermediate goal in about 2-3 weeks. I’ll let you know how its going at that time.

I’m taking a class on X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). We get to use a very cool XRD machine that can be used to identify minerals in samples (and other things). For next week we have to bring in some common household product and find out what minerals are in it. Most of the suggested items are things like makeup, abrasive cleaners, and toothpaste.

I’m interested in two things.

The first are McDonald Milkshakes. There is a legend amongst geologists (which isn’t too far fetched) that McDonald’s put Kaolinite (clay) in their shakes as a thickening agent. If you look on the list of ingredients for a milkshake, you will not find Kaolinite listed. This is because kaolinite is an inorganic compound which is considered by the FDA to be a “Generally Regarded As Safe” (GARS) product. This classification of food additives do not have to be listed on the list of ingredients for food. In a previous class, someone tried to find kaolinite in a shake, but it took an extremely long time to filter the shake, and they didn’t find anything. It could be that they filtered all the kaolnite out.

You can’t just analyze the raw shake because the sugar can crystalize and give you messy data. I’m planning to just bake or burn the shake, turn the sugar to an amorphus solid, and then test to see if kaolinite or some other silicate which was created from the baking is still there.

The internet needs to know this.

The other thing I’m interested in is Sea Salt. People who love organic food fawn all over sea salt. I guess because its “natural” (like any other form of NaCl isn’t). Anyway, there is a lot of crap in sea water. Natural crap like sulfides. It would be interesting to find out what else is in sea salt and what else people who buy it are eating. I’m sure its not enough to be at any harmful level, but it still would be interesting.

Science marches forward. The Internet needs to know.

*Edit*
After doing some preliminary research into this, the actual stuff they put in a shake is far better, from a sensationalism stand point, than just plain old clay 🙂

is of course Disney World.

I’ve been there three previous times and I love it. I think its a great litmus test for people. Either they love it or they hate it. If they hate it, then i think it says something about them, but I’m not sure what.

I’m going again over spring break with my family. Its the trip my parents always wanted to take when me and my brother were kids, but never were able to do.

We’ll be there almost a full week and stay at the Wilderness Lodge, which is really an amazing hotel. Two things I’m going to do while I’m there: 1) get a back stage tour, 2) get the play list of music they play in the Wilderness Lodge lobby.

I leave on March 11 and should have lots of photos when I return.

I feel like a guy who just had to shoot the dog he’s had for 15 years.

I’m not going to get into details, but I got myself in a lose/lose situation and I saw only one way out that let me keep my sanity and dignity. Doing it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to do, and I had to hurt someone I really care about in the process.

I feel like crap on so many different levels, I can’t even keep track of them all.

Enough negativity. Tomorrow something fun.