Salocin

A couple of studies have found that an Atkins-style low carbohydrate diet is more effective than a low fat diet to lose weight. They also found that cholesterol levels also seem to improve under the Atkins regime - this reported on BBC NEWS. Oh and by the way, the research was undertaken by the Robert C Atkins foundation, but don't let that concern you. In a complete lapse of journalistic editorial skill, the last two paragraphs manage to contradict each other :

He said the best diet was still a healthy, balanced diet cutting out excessive fat.
 
"One thing the Atkins isn't is balanced. It's not what the body expects and that's why we don't know the long term changes," he said.

Odd Todd let's you know what it's like to be Laid-Off: A No Nothing Production.

I have to admit, I love the writing of Kurt Vonnegut. Perhaps his opinions are slightly more to one side of the scale than mine, but how I wish I could write like that. Here is one of the latest pieces : Cold Turkey.

Brutally honest personals to make you feel better. Via metafilter.

Wharton went to Beach Week in Miami - 400+ soon-to-be-ex-students descended on two hotels on South Beach and we had a great time - I'll write about it one day.

But on the plane back from Miami, I was served what will remain indelibly etched on my memory as the worst cup of coffee of my entire life (American Airlines, in case you were wondering). It came in a styrofoam cup, which is a bad sign to start with, was sort of see-through and had clearly remained on a hot plate for hours.

What really ruined the coffee, however, was the milk substitute it came with. N'Joy Brand Non-Dairy Creamer. With a cute heart instead of an apostrophe - marketing 101, bring it on.

Ingredients: Corn Syrup solids, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or canola oils, sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), dipotassium phosphate, sodium silicoaliminate, artificial colors, mono- and di-glycerides, soy lecithin, artifical flavors.

This thin white powder turns your coffee white, and then all those funky little chemicals do heaven-only-knows-what to your digestion.

You might wonder why they don't just use milk, but then you read the hidden advantages of N'Joy Brand Non-Dairy Creamer on the Sugar Foods Corporation website :

Holding: Liquefied, it holds for hours at room temperature, and for days under refrigeration. Storage: Stores dry without spoilage, waste or leakage. Cost: Costs a fraction of dairy products.

So when you next see an advertisement with a couple of cute girls sporting white smudges above their upper lips, and the question "Got Milk" hanging in the air somewhere, remember that in American Airlines, and probably most other major carriers, the milk is about as real as the white makeup they're wearing to create the smudge.

Funny also was the warning below : Caution: List all powedered products this product should not be stored or uesde near an open flame or high heat source. So it's flammable or explosive, artificial, full of preservatives, costs almost nothing, and found in abundance on aircraft. Delightful.

A Canadian student was accidentally sent a handgun after buying an MP3 player on eBay.

Tom Cruise stars in this beautifully put together piece that follows the adventure of an American military advisor who travels to Japan to train an army so as to put down a small rebellion by "savages", captured by the Samurai warriors he confronts, he is shown a way of life and a code of honour that he finds easy to attach himself to, and which provides him with the calm and balance he needs to free himself from the demons of his past. The Last Samurai is a great movie in the action genre which will seduce you through its grandeur, its heart, and its illustration of nobility and strength.

The Last Samurai has received mixed reviews from around the world. I think I sense in some of the more negative commentary a certain anti-Tom Cruise vein which is fair only if you restrict your viewing to Days of Thunder and one or two other lapses. It is not for nothing that Mr. Cruise carries the flag of Hollywood, he has the clout to get the roles, and the acting prowess to carry them off.

While I'm sure words like "epic" and "majestic" can be fairly used to describe a film like this, I'd like to stay away from such words as they get overused, and then no longer mean what they should when The Lord of the Rings comes along and truly deserves them. The Last Samurai is a great film for other reasons. The one I will pick on - although it is certainly not the only one - is the depiction of the lifestyle of the Samurai.

While I am sure that it is filled with historical inaccuracies that the more pedantic among us will have a field day pointing out, the Samurai as they are depicted - fact or fiction - are awe-inspiring; for their morals, their absolutism, their compassion, their unwillingness to compromise those things that lie at the heart of their way of life. I found that the use of Lieutenant Commander Nathan Algren's captivity as a device works brilliantly to depict the balanced, noble and humble way of life followed by the Samurai of the movie, and that we are affected by his gradual conversion until, when he finally does it, we are also ready to embrace that way of life as our own - if only for the duration of the movie.

In the west, we live in contradictory times : In our modern, tolerant society, our boundaries shift and change as quickly as we can redefine them so as to always accept everyone's behaviour, dress and treatment of others as normal. Apart from those rules that are essential to society - anything goes. Simultaneously, at the other end of the scale, a proliferation of largely pointless contradictory rules make our lives a test of constant compliance and partial infringement. It is therefore incredibly refreshing to see a society where the rules of conduct and behaviour are coherent, consistent, understood and in support of a way of life. Where nobility and honour can co-exist with humility and service. It is not hard to see why a troubled soldier like Algren is so quick to embrace them. They seem to maintain with every breath they take, everything we've lost.

Watch this film, and you too will wish you had been there, swords at your waist, standing tall, with so much to defend.

Defendant attacks witness after disabling shock belt with ham sandwich.

"Cover me" does not mean the same thing to marines and police officers.

Australians seek to squirm out of traffic fines.

US government declares 14 million new secrets, including Pinochet liquor preferences.

The Smoking Gun has received, after a petition through the freedom of information act, a number of complaints received by the FCC regarding an Oprah Winfrey show that described in detail some sexual acts. I didn't see the show, but I found the letters to be very entertaining, and many probably more offensive that the show itself. I was particularly tickled by the first one, which purported to be from the action group, "Citizens against Unclean Network Trash". Somehow, that just has to be a hoax.

The United States of America is the great consumer society. Nowhere else in the world are so many people willing to buy so many things with so much debt and so little of their own cash. Commenting on this with some of my american friends, I am told that I should be grateful, because it is thanks to this rampant consumerism that the world economy keeps on crawling ever skyward, and while I would stop short of labeling the US as the saviour of all economies, I'll grant that there's some truth to that. There's something wrong, however, with the implication that the US consumer does this for the good of all.

The US consumer spends far more than he earns. An obscure website quotes the following statistics.

...the buying power of U.S. households (self-employed, hourly workers and retirees) comes in growing part from borrowed money. U.S. household borrowing increased $539 billion versus the $96 billion increase in personal income during January-March 2001, according to Jane D’Arista of the Financial Markets Center. For every dollar of personal income earned by U.S. households in this year’s first-quarter, they accumulated five dollars of debt.

One wonders where all of this borrowed money comes from, and why Americans feel so able and willing to spend so much money and dig so deep a hole for themselves. This is especially curious given the amount of people suffering from debt-related problems and needing financial counselling as a consequence. Do these people have no restraint?

Well, I'm not particularly well placed to criticise, having borrowed so much for an education myself, but I have a general aversion to certain types of consumer credit that doesn't seem to be shared by the majority of the US population. For example, it makes me feel nauseous to carry a balance over on my credit card from month to month. It also makes me feel queasy to use borrowed money to pay for consumables: I can understand the purchase of a car, or a washing machine, or a home, or an education; the purchase of a weekend in Atlantic City on a credit card, however, is something that I feel it is both irresponsible to do, and irresponsible to allow if you are the establishment fleecing the custom... I mean providing the paid-for service. Ok - I know - I'll tell my inner socialist to shut up now.

But a clue to the mystery of the great American willingness to borrow arrived in the mail today. I was astounded when the previous record of 4 was broken, but this very morning, I received five, pre-approved, exclusive (boy was I proud), limited-time-only, benefit-laced credit card applications. At first, I thought there were six, but the sixth envelope was my current American Express statement. I also received a bill, an advertisement for Comcast digital cable and two mail-order catalogs. This is great, I thought. I can buy the cable and the contents of the catalog and pay with the credit cards.

1) Providian Visa Platinum
Everything seems to be platinum these days. They've so cheapened the brand that I would be offended were I to be offered anything Gold or Silver ever again. In fact, to differentiate yourself, you're going to have to come up with an even more exotic (and preferably not radioactive) metal to lace my credit cards with.

So at the top of the letter, there are a few things. The first is a name that has a passing resemblance to mine, but the letter only made it to my home because they know more about my zip code and my address than I do. Then there are two "value statements". The first is, Exclusive Pre-Approved* Offer For: followed by the aformentioned random collection of letters. The second is 0% FIXED APR on Purchases until June 2005*.

Being a real cynic (as opposed to those fake ones who are just trying to be cool), my attention is immediately drawn to the little star in both of those statements. I unfold the paper to check what they buried at the bottom of the page and discover that I can only have the 0% if I transfer at least $100 now, but that the 0% (as implied by the statement above) only applies to purchases, so the company will make 13.99% on at least $100. Not such an amazing deal after all, but they write an entire paragraph to tell me how lucky I am that they're not charging me for the privilege of transferring a balance. Somehow that's not quite enough to rekindle the warm glow from all those positive statements about how credit-worthy I am - they now have the allure of one of those mosquito electrocuters they hang in butcher shops to zap dumb insects. I get a flashback from A Bug's Life : "Stay away from the light..."

Another worrying thing is a comment in 2-point type, in a tiny box on the back of the letter, that states...

You received this offer because a credit report obtained from a consumer reporting agency showed that you met our credit requirements for a Visa Platinum account. You have the right to notify the consumer reporting agencies not to use your credit report in connection with a credit transaction you did not initiate.

Hang on. So someone gave this company my credit report, which they then used to send me an unsolicited application, and that's the status quo. Were I to object to complete strangers reading my credit history without my knowledge, I would have to inform the credit reporting agency? I find it hard to dignify that with a reaction, it turns my stomach to think that somewhere, someone has come up with a justification for this blatant breach of privacy, and that they're capable of delivering it to me with a straight face.

2) First Premier Bank Gold Mastercard

Well clearly they're off on the wrong foot - the last offer was a Platinum Card and that one was designed for zappable insects, so how can the First Premier Bank possibly hope to keep my attention for long? Well they've done that neat trick with the fake card made from thick waxy paper that's glued to the letter. That gets me every time, I always think it's real until I notice that my (misspelt) name isn't even on it, and it's not plastic. I pull the card away from the letter to look at the back of it, but they saved on ink, and all I can see are the black block letters : THIS IS NOT A CREDIT CARD. No shit.

Apart from the interesting fact that they've misspelt my name in exactly the same way as the previous application (which is quite an achievement, because it was one hell of a misspelling, but then it occurs to me they probably obtained the same credit report that I've never seen and didn't know existed until now, which I never gave my approval for), there's not much to this application, although there are couple of quaint touches.

First of all, I've got my own confirmation number. It's 281 421, but don't tell anyone because it's bound to be extremely unique and private. Then next to that is a box with an approval signature by the "officer" in it. The signature looks authentic because it crosses the box boundary as though it were written after the box had been printed, but closer inspection indicates that this is not the case. Cunning, how can the American populace possibly resist such incredible marketing?

The rate is 9.9% on all purchases, which clearly doesn't compare to the 0% of the previous card, apart from the fact that they don't want an initial transfer. I figure these are bottom-trawlers looking for the customers who can't get credit from other card providers, and so charge a higher rate to compensate them for the risks they take. Next.

3) Blue Cash from American Express

I'm already a customer of American Express, so it really is quite remarkable that they've managed to get my name even more wrong than the previous two imbeciles. My surname is 17 characters long, in their letter they've generously afforded me all of 3 letters. My middle initial is also wrong, but at least they got the Mr. right.

So I can get cash back from American Express - up to 5% of everything I spend. Let's see how that breaks down.

You annual cash reward is based on how much you spend, where you spend and wheter or not you revolve your purchases. Your annual cash reward for everyday purchases at stand-alone U.S. supermarkets, gas stations ... is up to 3% (emphasis added). [These] do no include the departments of superstores or warehouse clubs where the standard rebate of up to 1.5% applies. Your annual reward for all other cash purchases is 1.5%. You will receive an additional rebate of up to 2% (emphasis added) in months in which your account carries a balance. Your annual cash rewards are limited to $50000 of eligible spending. Balance transfers [don't count].

Well damn. The "up to" in the cash reward thing clearly indicates that if I carry $1 over each month, which would already be a break with tradition for me, that won't get me the extra 2% cash back. Clearly they're out to train people who don't like to borrow and pay interest to get used to it so that they can grow their revenues. Smart business but it stinks if you're me. At least the rate 8.99% is competitive, with 0% for the first 6 months, but further reading indicates that they're going to review my credit and application afterwards, and the rate could jump to 10.99% or 13.99%, based on criteria they don't feel like sharing at this point. Doesn't really matter, they lost my attention when they butchered my name.

4) Shell Credit Card

This was a new one for me - a gas station offering me a "gasoline" credit card. To give you some context : I don't own a car, do not hold a US drivers license, and we call it "petrol" where I'm from, gas is an antisocial thing that happens when someone in the car overeats.

On the upside, it's the "only gasoline card I'll ever need", and we're back to the comparatively less offensive mauling of my name. The annual percentage rate, however, is 18.99%. But if you fail to make a payment to any creditor (not just Shell), then the rate goes to 23.99%. That's $24 per year for every $100 I have on my balance. I can get a better deal from Tony Soprano.

Another advantage is that I can pay at the pump with this card. We've been able to do that with any domestic bank card back in Belgium for the last 10 years. I feel like I've regressed to the stone age and have to pay to be brought back into the present.

Moving on.

5) United Mileage Plus Visa

The marketing here was slick, and I wouldn't have seen it coming if this hadn't been the third time they've sent me the application. First, it looks just like my United Plus mileage statement, except for a cool official-looking sticker that is artistically askew on the front of the envelope (at exactly the same angle as the previous two), which reads, "Dated Materials Enclosed, return before 6/14/04, tracking code : 000 000".

That tracking code really gave the game away don't you think? But the bar code was a nice touch. Once again, this is an organization that has my name on file, which I typed into their system over the internet, so one would assume they knew how to spell it. One would be assuming far too much. The first part of my surname has migrated into middle initial position, interspersed with periods, and the last couple of letters of my surname have been truncated for the sake of brevity.

But they're offering me 15,000 miles if I get the card and make a single purchase. Ooh the temptation. I can either not answer this letter, or I could pay a $60 annual fee, 3% on every balance transfer, 19.99% on cash advances, 13.99% on purchases, a 25% default rate (even worse than the Shell card) and receive 15000 miles in the frequent flyer programme of a bankrupt airline. Remember : "Keep away from the light..."

The cool thing is that their letter paper is square, which is really good for making paper aeroplanes, but the United jinx is still there, and it takes me longer to fold than I thought (technical difficulties). It then misses the wastepaper basket and lands somewhere else (diversion due to unforseen atmospheric conditions). I can't be bothered to throw it away (Chapter 11).

India has a secret army of banner-ad and popup clickers. No wonder advertisers think they get traffic.

Boat passes nude beach, all aboard move to one side for better view. bad idea, on a boat.

I found out via the Fulbright discussion mailing list about a new website called mediamatters.org in which David Brock, a conservative-journalist-turned-liberal and author of a book on his conversion, sets out to counter the actions of those who now do what he once did - sling semi-truths at the liberals. Should make for some good reading although it's detail-oriented and somewhat heavy.

I couldn't help but think how appropriate it was for the Daily Mirror to run a front page article claiming to be a world exclusive on this particular subject. They're the only ones to know it, and it's the first time ever, so it's extremely noteworthy : they actually told the truth.

Of course that's not what they meant - the "exclusive" in question actually refers to the previous story regarding UK troops and the torture in Iraq debacle, but the Freudian formatting seemed inspired by divine irony.

It still nauseates me when the fact that this is an exclusive, and the fact that their paper is printing the story, are facts that rank (as far as they're concerned) alongside the story facts themselves. The horror of our troops sinking so low is terribly undermining to the reconstruction efforts, is likely to get in the way of Iraqi development and self-government, and is far more important than their pathetic rag, and they would be doing the world a favour if they could pass the story on to papers capable of writing a thoughtful, insightful and comprehensive editorial on the subject as opposed to a paper that wallows in the glory of having been first to press with so unhappy a story.

I have much hesitation writing about 21 grams. Having read the Rotten Tomatoes review summary page, I know that 80% of reviewers loved it and 88% of their featured reviewers loved it. This is intimidating when I do not hold the same opinion. I will, however, stick to my guns, and say that I thought it had huge potential for improvement, because it didn't feel tight or taut or concise, and I think this is a very important feature to a good movie. It's my opinion, take it or leave it.

The lives of three people (more really, but 3 main actors), are intertwined by fate. You can sense that you're not being told everything from the first time you realise that the story is not being told in chronological order, but every time you see the past you get more questions than answers.

These people have lives that are not going anywhere nice anytime soon. In fact, much of the film - despite the comment on the cover of the DVD to the effect that it is about hope and love - is about the steady decline of individuals through their exposure to unfortunate circumstances.

As you witness this descent, this disintegration of humanity in the face of adversity, you are expected to see the redeeming face of our species in the space between the cracks. It's true that people find love, and it's true that characters (Benicio del Toro in particular) are seeking redemption, but no matter how hard they try, no matter how much they sacrifice or lose, they sink nevertheless.

This grimness got in the way of the message of the movie for me. It's not about sadness or loss or disillusionment, but the film uses these to such a huge extent to set the context that I was totally infected by this mood of utter demoralization by the end, that the slightly upbeat and hopeful message that accompanied the climax failed to pull me out of it.

Yes this is a good film. The story is well written and extremely original, and the acting is first class, by all concerned. The point is that I was left in a somewhat demoralized state without feeling that I had learned all that much about the world during the journey. Rent it by all means, you will miss out if you miss out on this film, but don't expect to walk away smiling.

Moreover, don't expect a quick understanding of the content. The deliberate skipping around in time is used to great effect to hide certain facts from the viewer until the last few movements of the piece. You'll have to focus on Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro's varying beard lengths to know where you lie in the timeline, but this is necessary to conceal a true understanding of the emotional states of the different protagonists, and so create suspense. I feel the movie would have been better served using some other method of creating suspense than the artifical maintenance of the audience's ignorance, and this is my second, and probably my more explicit criticism of the script.

You should see this movie. My review would have been more positive if only I didn't feel I was fighting a tide of blind enthusiasm for a movie that is good, but certainly not perfect.

BMW drivers get more sex.

Motorist claims from insurance after running into his own car. While chasing it. On foot.

Australians have a moon rock throwing competition.