Where’s the beef?

The New Neo Posted on by

One by one they’re trying to take away our gustatory pleasures.

Salt. Sugar. Fat. Red meat—not just a lot of red meat, but any amount of red meat. According to this Harvard study, any red meat at all increases the chances of dying somewhat.

Of course, we’re all gonna go some time, so in fact our “chances” of dying are 100%. The question is when and how. Most of us who are not profoundly depressed would prefer it be later rather than sooner, and quicker rather than slower. We’d also like to remain in really good health, vigorous and pain-free, until that time comes.

My quarrels with the study are numerous, which is not to say it doesn’t have some validity. The pluses are that the number of subjects is vast and the time-frame long. The negatives are that it relies on self-reports about diet: people were asked to estimate how many times a week they usually ate meat within the past year. That seems pretty shaky to me, although I suppose it’s a very rough guide.

Another problem is that all unprocessed red meat was lumped in together: beef, pork, and lamb. I’ve read that lamb has a different kind of fat than the other meats, and is better for you as a result:

Lamb is not marbled (fat in the meat) as is beef. Over half of the fat in lamb is unsaturated. Only 36% of the fat in lamb is saturated. Most of the unsaturated fat is monounsaturated, commonly found in a healthy Mediterranean-type diet.

Lamb contains the fat that is good for you, consumed directly as part of the essential omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA), a liquid unsaturated acid. Lamb is one of the richest sources of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), part of the omega-6, possessing unique and potent antioxidant activity . CLA cannot be manufactured in the human body. Most of the lamb’s fat is on the outside edges and is easily trimmed.

I don’t eat red meat all that often; I’m probably in the “once or twice a week” group, and it’s a small portion at that. But when I do, it’s often lamb. In that respect I’m probably atypical of American meat-eaters, and I would have liked the researchers to have separated out the different types of meat from each other.

Naturally, meat-eaters are not a random bunch of people. It stands to reason they have other health habits that might make them more prone to earlier death. And in fact, that’s true, according to the study, which tried to separate out these factors through multivariate analysis and found meat to be a separate risk factor.

So, what do you think? Do these results make it harder to settle down with a big juicy steak and down it with gusto? Or does it bring out the rebel in you?

I was planning to end this post with an image of King Henry XIII eating a hunk of meat. Instead, I found a lot of pictures depicting him as gnawing on a leg of poultry, found in this study to be unrelated to an increase in death rates. Hmmm. Then I got distracted by this video of Henry’s kitchens and the food they used to make there:

[NOTE: Here’s the full text of the research.]

Illiberal liberals

The New Neo Posted on by

To someone such as me, who’s experienced a certain amount of liberal shunning and/or anger because of my political “change,” this report comes as no surprise whatsoever:

[The Pew Research Center] found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That’s double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.

Note that it’s still a small minority who do this. But still, it’s a much bigger minority than the percentage of conservatives who act that way.

But if you were to ask liberals who’s more tolerant—liberals or conservatives—I have little doubt their answer would be “liberals.” And if confronted with the evidence otherwise from this poll, my guess is that a not insignificant number of liberals would justify it by saying some version of, “Well, it’s not intolerant when liberals block conservatives, because conservatives are evil/racist/intolerant people. Q.E.D.”

Another Tuesday, another set of primaries

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s most-watched primaries—Alabama and Mississippi—are in the deep South, and they are toss-ups in the polls. So tonight it may take quite a while for the networks to declare the winner.

Today’s primaries are the first time that Romney doesn’t have a state that’s labeled “absolutely-must-win” for him. Rather, it’s Santorum and/or Gingrich who desperately need at least one of these two southern states, since any successful nomination strategy for either would almost certainly rely on winning much of the South.

Today I noticed that this year’s Republican field is odd in a way I hadn’t thought about before (we all know it’s odd in other ways): the two leading candidates are from the Northeast. One of them is even from New England, an area of the country that hasn’t provided a credible Republican candidate on the national level since George H.W. Bush, who was from New England only in the same way that Romney is “from” Michigan: that is, he was born and raised there but left early to make his political career in a far-away and very different place (Texas). Before that, the only one I can think of is Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and that goes back to the early 60s.

Santorum is from Pennsylvania, another state not known for nurturing a crop of Republican presidential hopefuls. Santorum has the advantage of not having had to win on a statewide level there, and of course we know that he lost in 2006 and hasn’t held office since. But the fact that both men are from blue or blueish states indicates that they know how to appeal to independents and democrats. You may think it’s a bug, but I think it’s a feature.

The other somewhat odd demographic fact about the leading Republican candidates (and here I’ll include Gingrich) is that all of them are adherents of religions that have never or seldom provided a US president. There’s never been a Mormon, and there has only been one Catholic—JFK—elected to the office. Whether this will matter in November I don’t know, but I don’t think it will be a huge factor.

One wonders what would be happening in today’s primaries if either Santorum or Gingrich had dropped out already, and there was only Romney vs. the Last Non-Romney Standing. Conventional wisdom is that Romney would lose the contest, but I’ve seen nothing that indicates the dropout’s vote wouldn’t be split rather evenly between the remaining candidate and Romney. After all, Gingrich and Santorum are very different people who appeal to voters in very different ways. But the question is moot, because neither man seems to be dropping out any time soon.

I’m rooting for Romney for a number of reasons. First, as any regular reader of this blog knows, I think he’s the best candidate. Second, I think at this point the internecine battles for the nomination are hurting the Republican chances of winning the whole thing in the fall, and the sooner a candidate becomes truly inevitable, the better.

Afghanistan massacre

The New Neo Posted on by

By now everyone who pays attention to the news knows that a US Army sergeant went on a killing spree in southern Afghanistan on Sunday and murdered 16 civilians in cold blood, many of them women and children.

But even those paying close attention know little more about the man’s identity except that he was a veteran of the Iraqi conflict. The army says it will release more information about the killer as its investigation proceeds, and especially after he is charged. And there seems to be little doubt that he will be charged with the military equivalent of multiple murder.

His heinous actions have further complicated our mission in Afghanistan, which has gotten murkier and murkier as the years have ground on. What would be the conditions there which would ever allow us to leave? Even though this man seems to have been the proverbial crazed lone gunman, the damage he’s done to what’s left of our reputation there appear to be immeasurable. People have a hard time separating out official policy and the actions of a group from the actions of a single aberrant member, if those latter actions are dreadful enough.

Those of us who are of a certain age probably thought “My Lai” when we heard the news. But this is quite different, and not just in scope (the My Lai victims numbered in the many hundreds). My Lai was a group action that followed from some poorly-defined and incendiary orders from a leader, and it occurred in the middle of a very hot and active guerilla war. That’s not an excuse of any kind, merely a description (I’ve written at great length about My Lai here and here, and anyone who wants further in-depth study can go here).

I wonder whether there are any characteristics of the sergeant in the present case that are especially sensitive, and whether that’s why the army has been so hush-hush about his identity. Maybe so, maybe not; maybe it’s just the way the military handles such things.

The case reminds us—as though we needed any reminding—how one much damage one person can do, both in killing other innocent human beings without reason or warning (which the facts released so far appear to indicate was the horrific situation here), and in damaging the reputation of other fine men and women and the work they’ve done over the years.

The larger question is what our mission in Afghanistan is accomplishing at this point, or is even meant to accomplish. Initially it was obvious: defeat the Taliban. Help set up an alternative government. But it was clear that anything more would require a societal, economic, and cultural transformation that might be beyond our powers, especially with the resources we were willing to commit to the project, and even if we were willing to do more and become a de facto colonial power there. It’s the dilemma we face in many countries around the world, Iraq being one of them: how to foster the growth of liberal democracies in places that seem unready for them (and may never be ready for them), and what to do in the meantime if their present-day governments threaten us?

Happy Birthday Romney

The New Neo Posted on by

Mitt Romney turns 65 today (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Whatever you think of his politics, a better-looking 65-year-old you’d be hard-pressed to find.

Rick Santorum wished him a happy birthday. Sweet.

And this Mother Jones editorial fellow’s got a birthday playlist for him that’s only somewhat nasty. Sweeter.

But according to Romney, what would be sweetest of all would be a winning March 13 (Alabama, Mississippi):

Thanks so much for giving me this birthday present. Hopefully, I can unwrap it tomorrow.

And I read through half of this article about Romney’s great sense of humor before I decided it wasn’t a spoof. Come to think of it, though, when I saw Romney in person, he got a few good quips in, as did his wife Ann, who was the more relaxed speaker.

[NOTE: I’m giving in and adding a “Romney” category to the right sidebar.]

Making music: on playing the cello

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of an older post. Thought you might enjoy it.]

I used to play the cello.

Well, perhaps “play” is too strong a word. I was chosen for the instrument (no, that’s not a typo; I was chosen for it, rather than the reverse) in fifth grade, at the public elementary school I attended in New York back when all such schools had numbers instead of names.

They tested us to see who had some musical aptitude, and for what instrument. Some of these tests were pretty simple. For example, one was as simple as “Are you a boy or are you a girl?” Stringed instruments went only to girls (Jascha Heifetz, eat your heart out), and cellos went only to tall girls.

I was a tall girl back then, although I’m not anymore (no, I haven’t shrunk; it’s the pictures that got small.) I reached my full height around fourth grade, and so in fifth I was still much taller than average, considered a good candidate for a big instrument like the cello.

And I could differentiate between on key and off, an absolute prerequisite for any stringed instrument. After all, on a cello, you create the notes; they’re not ready-made.

A few drawbacks to the cello: carrying it back and forth to school twice a week was an arduous task, especially when I had to carry hefty books as well (this was in that punishing interval before backpacks became standard but when bookbags after first grade were only for nerds.)

And, of course, as with all musical instruments, you had to practice.

I understood practicing in principle. I even liked the gorgeous rich mellow sound a cello makes, and wanted to emulate it. But the gap between that sound and the one I managed to create was too immense to be bridged, even in my imagination. In other words, I wasn’t motivated enough to put in the hours required.

Although I never really managed to make a truly pleasant sound, I did learn just enough to saw away at that cello in the junior high school orchestra, and even put in a couple of years with the high school group, where our repertoire leaned heavily towards Sousa marches that had no cello part (we were supposed to play from the trombone sheet music). I didn’t make much progress in all that time, and I quit in mid-high school, with no regrets. Listening to the cello was fine, but playing it held no special interest for me, and I haven’t really thought about it since.

Until the other evening, that is. I was at a meeting of my book group (great book, by the way: Cry the Beloved Country). A gleaming cello was leaning against the wall in the hostess’s dining room, and she told us she was just starting to take lessons, a lifelong dream. She gave a demonstration of what she’d learned so far—basic scales.

Afterwards, the cello was passed around so we all could have a go at it. And as it came close to me I felt a strange sensation, a certain feeling in my arms and hands of being about to start something familiar—and yet almost from a previous life, it seemed so long ago.

My friend who’d taken a couple of lessons had to prompt me even to remember the fingering for a simple scale. I took the cello from her, positioned my left hand on its neck and my right on the bow, placed the bow on the strings, pressed down, and began.

It didn’t sound like Yo Yo Ma, but it didn’t sound half bad. It sounded as though I’d actually played a cello before, once upon a time. My body memory had kicked in, and all these little habits sprang forth as though they’d only been hibernating all that time: how hard to press, how to move my right wrist back and forth in a wave motion, how to lean slightly on the inside edge of the bow with the downstroke and the outside with the upstroke, and even how to create a bit of tentative vibrato with the left hand.

Probably the sound was better than my old cello for the simple reason that this was a better cello: richer, fuller, more resonant. I’d forgotten what it was like to create music with my own hands, and to feel it vibrate in every cell of my body and every corner of the room. Writing is wonderfully creative, but there’s nothing physical about it except the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

The creation of music is very physical. The most personal and direct form of that physicality, of course, is singing; there, one’s body is the instrument (dance, the art I know best, is even more so in that respect). In playing a stringed instrument the body is the medium that evokes and releases the music, but ultimately the creation of the sound depends on the interaction between the two.

I’d forgotten, but it was wonderful to remember.

FIDDLER JONES
—-Edgar Lee Masters

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off to ‘Toor-a-Loor.’
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill–only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle–
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

Fun with Comcast

The New Neo Posted on by

Today my internet connection went down.

I tried all the usual things: asking Comcast to refresh the signal, disconnecting and reconnecting the modem, calling and speaking to customer service.

It was the latter that really got my goat. First the usual—being put on hold. Then, the robotic person on the other end with the requisite accent that made her hard to understand, who read from a script and could only be pried from it with great difficulty.

“Go to the modem and unplug the thing under the black thing,” she said (or something to that effect; she didn’t actually use the word “thing”).

“But there’s no ‘under’,” I protested. “They’re in a horizontal row.”

And on and on and on, where her standard map was not my particular territory, and every little thing had to be explained and explained and explained—and then explained some more. And then repeated.

My favorite part was when she asked me when I’d gotten this modem. “But doesn’t Comcast know?” I asked. “After all, I got it from you guys. I brought in my old one to the Comcast center and they exchanged it for this one.”

It turns out (and here I am condensing and clarifying a rather lengthy and convoluted discourse on her part) that the people at the actual real-life Comcast center, the one where you go to exchange modems in the physical rather than virtual world, have their own system of recording such transactions. But alas, Ms. Customer Service does not have access to that arcane and highly confidential information.

Nor could she figure out what was wrong. So now I’m going to journey back to the Comcast center and exchange this modem for another.

As her final interaction with me, she helpfully said she’d tell me where the nearest center was. But of course she insisted that it was in a town 40 minutes away. I know this is not true; I’ve been there before (although I forget the exact street address, but I remember the town), and it’s only 15 minutes away. But she wasn’t having any of that.

I called Comcast again, got someone else (after the obligatory hold), and ascertained that the nearby center is still functioning—but on Saturdays it closes at 1:00 PM. And of course by this time it was 1:30 PM. So till Monday, to use my computer, I’ll either visit a friend’s place or a public place with wifi. And all for you, my beloved readers!

Dana Milbank tells Republicans…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to accept their fate. It’s Romney.

Actually, his article is a pretty good indictment of the MSM’s propensity to move the goalposts where Romney is concerned, the better to have an exciting primary season:

The fact that Romney is still viewed to be in danger of losing the nomination says less about him than it does about the media. We have turned him into Candidate Sisyphus, providing him with a plentiful supply of boulders to push uphill. First it was make-or-break New Hampshire, then must-win Florida, then do-or-die Michigan and game-changing Ohio. Each time Romney prevails, we assign him a new test.

Part of this is our bias in favor of conflict. I’ve been as guilty as the rest in attempting to extend this primary season, even pleading with Newt Gingrich to fight on, strictly for my personal enjoyment. But the reluctance to acknowledge Romney’s inevitability also reflects media antipathy toward this boring candidate ”” the flip side of 2008, when journalists brayed for Hillary Clinton to abandon her fight against Barack Obama, the media’s preferred candidate.

I wonder if it’s time for a “Romney” category to be added to this blog? I don’t think so, because although I think his nomination is likely I still don’t think it’s literally inevitable. I’ll wait to assign a tag to the nominee until there really is a nominee.

Andrew McCarthy: on Obama the radical

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew McCarthy speculates on Obama’s actions as president, what they might say about his belief system, and what a second Obama term might look like.

Summary version: he’s an Alinsky radical. Here’s McCarthy’s definition:

In Alinsky’s view, the only radicalism that had a chance to succeed was the one that could bore inside bourgeois institutions, co-opt the language, and move the mainstream in the radical direction ”” but only as fast as political conditions would allow. Remaining radical but being coldly pragmatic kept the Alinskyite both effective and viable, allowing him to keep coming back for more.

No one can argue that Obama’s not familiar with the Alinsky program, since he not only studied it but taught it as well. This was one of the many facts that were ignored and/or suppressed during the 2008 campaign.

Friend or pho?

The New Neo Posted on by

I had some pho last night. You know, that Vietnamese noodle soup that everybody seems to love.

While talking with a friend of mine, though, she told me that my pronunciation—as in “foe”—was incorrect, and that it’s actually pronounced more like “fuh.”

So of course I raced to trusty Google and found this rather complex explication, which I now pass on to you so that you don’t commit the same terrible faux pas I did.

The authentic Vietnamese pronunciation at the link sounds a bit to me like that venerable and nearly-all-purpose Yiddish expression “feh.” But you wouldn’t want to say “feh” to pho.

And here’s the history of pho, which is a more recent invention than I’d previously thought. The origin of the name “pho” is a bit of a mystery, it seems:

The origin of the word was one subject of a seminar on phở held in Hanoi in 2003. One theory advanced was that the name is from French feu (fire), as in the dish pot-au-feu, which, like phở, uses the French method of adding charred o­nion to the broth for color and flavor, one of the techniques that distinguishes it from other Asian noodle soups. Some believe the origin of the word to be Chinese fen (粉)…

Anyway, whatever you want to call it, it was very yummy.

Spanx: spanking new?

The New Neo Posted on by

Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx, is a billionaire.

My goodness. I knew Spanx were (was?) big, but I had no idea. No idea!

In case you don’t know what Spanx are (is?), one picture is worth at least 500 words:

I said “one picture,” but that doesn’t mean there’s one type of Spanx. The original has proliferated into high ones, extra-strong ones, extra-long ones, strategically reinforced ones, and more.

But let me clue you in, folks: it’s all girdles by another name.

I grew up in an era when the girdle was almost as requisite a female undergarment as the bra. It was a rite of passage for little girls, a sort of “now you are a woman” thing. Whether slim or chunky, we teens and even preteens were required to wear them, not just in order to be a mite thinner, but for propriety’s sake (no jiggle, you see).

I was incredibly happy when the 60s liberated us from their terribly confining (actually, stifling) embrace. Simply put, they were painful. At least, they were to me.

What’s more, they didn’t really make anyone look much thinner. They just smoothed the adipose around and compressed it in a different way, creating an artificial container for the very same stuff, and pushing the unfettered remainder around in a way that—well, I’ll stop here, and leave the rest to the imagination.

Spanx—which I have actually tried on, but have never bought—are way too similar. Yes, they’re made out of thinner fabric, and they look more like pantyhose so they don’t have that old-lady-girdle look. They’re probably a bit easier to get into and out of, and a trifle more comfy, which is a plus. But that doesn’t make them either easy or comfy, and it puzzles me that so many women buy them. I can’t figure it out.

But that’s what makes Sara Blakely a billionaire, and me—not.

It’s that time again, again

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Bumped up once more.]

passhat.jpg

Yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Time passes so quickly when we’re enjoying ourselves.

But yes, it’s been a while since I asked you to donate to a semi-worthy cause: this blog. And so I’m going to ask you again to use the “donate” button on the right sidebar beside the photo of the hat, and give whatever you see fit.

Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. Comments are a very big part of what makes this blog work.

I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.