Chopped Herring

I feel it is time to explain the URL of this blog... chopped herring. Many of you may not know what it is or why a blog is named chopped herring.... I will explain.

First, my blog used to have the URL of my name. After a while, I figured this was probably not the smartest idea. There's always a chance that can get me into trouble one day. So, the task of gererating a new domain name fell upon Rachel, my fiance. After many, many suggestions, I chose Chopped Herring. Here are my reasons why:

First, "Chopped Herring" is a nice sounding phrase. It's the kind of phrase that Dave Barry would say is a good name for a rock band. It rolls right off the tongue.

Second, and this is very important, I LOVE CHOPPED HERRING! I really, really do. It's a wonderful combination of bottled herring, eggs, crackers, and other secret ingredients. If you've never had chopped herring, you really can't consider your existence on this planet a "life". You should get up right now, run to your nearest Jewish deli (or Jewish grandmother) and get some... don't worry... I'll wait.

So, while I've only given two reasons for the URL name, which is clearly not enough for a good grade on my TAAS exam, it will do.

Dieting

I just lost about 50lbs.

I wasn't monstrously obese to begin with, but I was definitely carrying an extra small child around with me everywhere I went. He was fat, sweaty, and I'm glad to be rid of him. When I see people that I haven't seen in a few months, they often ask me how I lost the weight. I respond, "diet and exercise." I have learned that this is the opposite of what people want to hear. What they'd much prefer I say is, "I went to Target and bought this great tasting drink. It costs $0.35. You wake up the day after drinking it 50lbs lighter."

The usual response I get after saying "diet and exercise" is that it was very easy for me (and much easier than it would be for the person talking) because 1) I'm a man, 2) I'm young, 3) I'm lucky, 4) I live at a perfect longitude and latitude for weight loss, etc. Now, I'm not saying that some of those things may not have helped, but it says something when the person accusing you of such things is enjoying a HoHo.

Let me let you all in on a little secret. Being fat is easy... Being skinny is hard. Especially if you like food and laziness. If you are overweight and look really closely at your thinner friends, you'll probably notice that they eat far less than you, snack less than you, and are more active than you. This is not a coincidence.

So, now on to how you, too, can lose a lot of weight in a little time. (I lost my weight in a little under 4 months)

1) NO SNACKING! EVER! 3 meals a day is all you need. If you're really, really hungry just think that in a couple hours, you'll eat again. Drink a whole bunch of water and you'll feel much better.

2) No fried foods... No cheese! I love cheese! I love it a lot. I can eat a block of cheese in a sitting. I also like fried foods. In fact, fried cheese could be the greatest invention ever. The wheel is the only thing that comes close, and that's only because it gets you to the fried cheese faster. Also, cut down on the booze. I know that when you're dieting you want to drown your sorrows in a nice, cold beer, but that's just extra calories you'll have to burn off later (see #5 below).

3) Don't eat what's put in front of you. I eat out a lot. Far more than your average person. While I have a fiance who is a WONDERFUL cook, we like to enjoy other foods as well. When you go out for dinner, you often get a plate that could feed an entire African nation. DO NOT EAT ALL THAT FOOD! You have to get into the mindset that you are not paying for the food, but you're paying for a meal. Stop eating when you're not hungry anymore. You should stop WAY before you're actually full. You can always take the food home and it eat the next day. Also, when you go to a Mexican or Italian restaurant, ask them not to bring you chips or bread. Those are just carbs and fat. -- that means it makes you FAT!

4) Eat sensibly. Fat Flush, Atkins, low-carb, high-protein. These are all a huge waste of time for anyone but the publishing industry. The only way a person can lose weight and keep it off is to change their lifestyle. I've never met a person who did low carb and stayed that way forever. In order to keep the weight off, you have to change the way you eat and look at food -- forever. Instead of fad diets, you can eat sensibly. Eat smaller portions. Eat grilled instead of fried. All common sense things that can really work, but wont sell books.

5) Get your ass on a treadmill --- and I don't mean just once! You have to do it regularly. At least 3-4 times a week... 5-6 times would be much better. It doesn't necessarily have to be a treadmill. Any cardio workout will do... Dance, basketball, racquetball, elliptical trainer, etc. What's important is that you do it for at least 30-45 minutes per day, most days in the week, every week. Every time you're sitting on the couch flipping channels, bored out of your mind, get up and go for a walk or down to the gym.

I know this is not the kind of advice that make me rich (or make me friends), but it really is the best way to do it. I welcome your comments.

P.S. If you're interested in my latitude and longitude for weight loss purposes, I live at:

32° 47' 53" N
96° 47' 49" W

Engaged

I'M ENGAGED!

I LOVE YOU, RACHEL!

Passover

To celebrate Passover starting tonight, please enjoy the musical styling of my good buddy Israel:

Passover The Pain

Post comments with what you think of it!

Voting

I was listening to NPR the other day, and there was a commentary on how bad it is that the turnout for the local primary election in Dallas was less than 10% (I think it was about 6%). The commentator was shocked at how low the turnout was, and felt that we, as Americans, were letting our country down by not voting. This seems to be the conventional wisdom in America. Puff Daddy's (or P. Diddy, or Diddy, or Didgeridoo, or whatever he's calling himself now) "Vote or Die" campaign seems to be the attitude of most people.

This attitude is wrong, and a little stupid. Allow me to explain...

We LOVE democracy. Apparently, we can't get enough of it.

I tried to find my county's ballot for the 2004 general election, but to no avail (If you can find out, please post the link in the comments.). Here is the ballot for Travis County (Austin, TX) for 2004. As you can see, the ballot includes about 39 different races for each person to vote for. There are a lot of jobs on the ballot that most people don't understand in the first place: Constable, Railroad Commissioner, County Commissioner. Unless your full time job is researching those people, there is no way you can intelligently decide on each of those races. This leaves a few options:

1) Straight party vote. I know a lot of people who vote like this. Because a lot of people vote like this, candidates for lesser known positions will often try to become the candidate from a party that gets the most votes in an area (GOP in Texas, for example). They may not follow the party line or care at all about the party, they just know it can be the key to winning a race, especially in a less well-known race.

2) Random Guessing. There are people who vote for candidates with the funniest names, candidates whose names sound nice, candidates who seem to be from a certain race (based on their name) -- Hernandez for Hispanic or Goldstein for Jewish, for example. All of these only hurt our democracy and put Mike Hunt in office regardless of what he believes.

3) Not Voting. While not politically correct, or the ideal option, sometimes this is the right thing to do. I would much rather have 5% of the population vote, and be knowledgeable about the races and issues, than 95% of the population vote ignorantly. Democracy is a great system of government, ignorant democracy is one of the worst!

As a sidebar, I'd like to point out that we do not live in a democracy, but a republic. We elect people who decide issues for us. In a democracy, we'd all vote on every issue. Actually, we live in a plutocracy.

What is the solution to this problem? Well, I see a few. First, we should not be electing so many positions. For example, perhaps instead of electing all those different judges, we could elect a panel to appoint judges, or put that role in the hands of the governor or legislature. We elect them. If they put in bad judges, we shouldn't elect them next time. Second, we are in the 21st century. In this day and age, we should have the ability to have a central repository for information on candidates. The Secretary of State's office already makes sample ballots available online. In addition to that, they should have links to each candidate's website. When the candidate petitions to be on the ballot, they can supply a website where voters can go for more information. Third, there should be a central website for YES/NO answers to policy questions facing the different positions. The candidate can supply a YES/NO answer to a series of questions that are relevant, so voters can EASILY see where they stand on the issues.

So, next time you go to vote, really think about the candidates you're voting for, and decide if you know them well enough to hire them to work for you, because that's what you're actually doing.

And now, some links to more information:

US Voter Turnout
International Voter Turnout
Texas Secretary of State - Offices up for election in 2006

Corn

I LOVE CORN!

(As I mentioned in the "Olive Theory" post below, this is part of the "Idiotic Post Series")

Israel

Check out this photo from Yahoo! News:

Abortion

As you either know, or have figured out by now, I'm a guy. As a guy, I understand that I have far less of a right to talk about "what a woman can/should do with her body" than a woman does. However, as a citizen, I have every right to discuss what our government does about abortion.

I would have to say that in today's lingo, I'm "pro-choice". This is not to say I think abortion is right or just or a good way to prevent unnecessary births. My personal opinions about Abortion are complicated, and as I have no personal experience with it, irrelevant (which does not mean that I wont talk about them here). I am "pro-choice" because I don't like the idea of President Bush becoming Dr. Bush, OB/GYN. There are a million different reasons why women get abortions. They range from horrible situations like incest and rape all the way to ending an accidental pregnancy. I'm sure woman have gotten abortions for reasons I could never fathom or understand. To think that our government should decide when it's right and wrong to get an abortion is crazy. I completely understand (although I don't agree with) the stance that an abortion is killing a living thing, and that if you believe that, you think most, if not all, abortions are wrong. This does not mean, though, that the government should stop people from making such a personal decision. These are personal decisions, and if you believe that it is wrong, you have made that decision for yourself -- you do not have the right to make such a personal decision for everyone else.

This is where the "pro-choice" movement screws up for itself. They focus on statements like "woman's right to choose", and "my body, my decision". These statements make people think (whether it be right or wrong to think so) that pro-choice = pro-abortion. A MUCH better stance for the pro-choice movement would be to say, "Abortion is a very serious, difficult topic. We think it should be a decision between a woman and her doctor after weighing all the issues." I know you can't put that on a billboard or scream it on the steps of the supreme court, but that's exactly the point. I understand people yelling and screaming about gun control (the topic of a later blog, I guarantee), because that is a much less personal issue. It's an issue of personal freedom and whatever. Abortion is a serious issue with serious repercussions for each individual involved. Those people on both sides who scream and rally are not treating this issue with the sensitivity it deserves. This behavior also leads to statements like "All abortion is wrong." Clearly there are cases of the health of the mother that could make an abortion a reasonable choice.

Partial Birth Abortion. Sounds quite horrible, huh? Sounds kinda like parents who wait until the last minute to make the decision if they want to keep the baby? That's what many people want you to think, but this is obviously not the case. Partial birth abortion is used mostly to save the life of the mother. The fact that this is now illegal is scary. There is a good article on this here.

Basically, we need to sit down, as a nation, and realize that being pro-choice does not mean that you support abortion, it means that you support the medical community and understand that a doctor who has been practicing medicine for 20 years knows more about health issues than all 535 congressmen (that's 100 senators and 435 representatives, for those of you confused) put together. We need to start realizing that life is complex. Things are not usually RIGHT and WRONG.

Olive Theory

I have a new theory. The theory is based on surveys of people I know. It is about as unscientific as a theory can be. So, on to the theory...

I believe that a person's opinion about olives can tell a lot about them. More specifically, two people should only date, get romantic, and get married if they have the same opinion on olives. Most people have extreme opinions about olives. People that do not like them (like me) REALLY don't like them and will never eat them. People like that should only be with other people who don't like olives. In fact, I think it should be a question asked on online dating services.

This post has been in what may be a series of not-as-serious posts on my blog. I'll try to post idiotic posts like this from time to time for levity.

AIDS and Poverty

We, as Americans, love thing simple... we also love when a single problem has a single solution. This is the case with both AIDS and poverty. It seems to me that most Americans think of these problems in America and world-wide as the same epidemics. Let me explain why they're not:

AIDS:
If you live in America, you know (or damn well should know) that using condoms helps reduce the spread of AIDS. If you don't know this, perhaps you might want to consider coming out from behind the rock you've been living under. Obviously condoms don't work 100% of the time, but they sure do work most of the time. Now, if you're living in America, and you want to be careful, you can go to your neighborhood CVS and buy a box of condoms and use them on your next "night out". In fact, it's even easier than that... if you can't afford to buy the condoms, there are places you can go to get them FOR FREE. Now, let's say you live in rural Swaziland, Africa. Unfortunately for you, CVS does not have an African Bush location, so you're kinda screwed there. Also, there's a good chance you don't have electricity, running water, an independant media, plumbing, etc. Your only contact with the outside world might just be the crazy guy from the Discovery Channel. There is probably no way that you know what a condom is, let alone that one might save your life. In fact, you might not know the nature or cause of what is killing you.

Poverty:
In America, we have things like Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, homeless shelters, work assistance, etc. If you are poor in America, you have the resources to lift yourself up from you crummy situation and better youself. I'm not saying it's easy or that everyone can do it, but it is possible. There are jobs available, and there is assistance if you pursue it. Now, I'm not saying every homeless person will be a CEO some day, but I think most homeless people of reasonable mental ability (mentally disabled homelessness is a different problem) have the ability to improve their situation, either by themselves or with the help of charities and the government (for commentary on if the govnerment should be spending money on social welfare, see the approximately 1 billion blogs on the topic). I'm also not saying that this will be easy or that people who are homeless all somehow want to be, but there is hope and a good chance for these people to life a better life. Now, lets say you live in Darfur, Sudan. You have spent most of your life enduring a genocidal, civil war. You probably live in a refugee camp on the border between Sudan and Chad. Your life expentancy is quite low because there is a good chance you will die of malnutrition, starvation, disease, rape, murder, or a genocial mass killing. There is probably a 0% chance you will ever see a full plate of food, and you will surely never eat at anything as nice as a soup kitchen. You spend you entire life hoping that a helicopter gunship doesn't fly overhead and shoot you and your family down with a spray of machine gun fire. No matter how hard you work, you will never be able to better your situation. There is no transportation to get you out of the area, and even if there was, no one would take you in. You can't even try to walk away from the refugee camp, for fear of being killed and your wife and children raped. Your only hope is that the civil war ends or that African Aid workers come and that life may be better for your children.

Now, I'm sure our government recognizes the distinction here, but I don't believe most Americans do. It's time that we recognize that there is a monumental difference between the problems here and in African, and the solutions are quite different as well. In fact, it is almost incorrect to call these the same epidemics. In America, the AIDS rate is 0.6%. In Swaziland, the rate is 38.8%. That's 65 TIMES greater! In America, the unemployment rate is about 5.5%, in Zimbabwe it's 70%. With an unemployment rate that high, how could you ever find a job?! We need to understand how different problems are around the world and start forcing our government to help these people in resonsible, ethical ways.