An Eclectic Mind

Why should I listen to you, anyway?

Since being interviewed for an NPR piece about diet books (read/listen to “Diet Books: Fat On Profits, Skinny On Results?“), I’ve received numerous e-mails and other contacts from folks offering me advice on my diet. Here’s one from today’s e-mail:

I caught the interview you gave on NPR about dieting books.

If you want to learn about health and nutrition read “The China Study”, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD.

All diet books are wrong, because they are about eating less of the same, unhealthy food. If we base our diet on whole, plant-foods, we will drastically reduce our risk of chronic diseases and as a side effect, lose weight. This book shows the huge amount of science available, and it’s really, really interesting!!

Ironically, he recommends a diet book and then says that “all diet books are wrong.” I guess he means all of them except the one he’s recommending. How many other people are saying the same thing with another book? All of them.

I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by this. I began to write the guy a response, but I figured it might be better to just post it here, so everyone can read it:

My friend Tom gave me a copy of The China Study. I gave it away. I am not interested in diet books at all. Period.

And frankly, I’m pretty sick of strangers telling me what I should and shouldn’t eat. You don’t know a damn thing about me. Why do you assume that I eat “unhealthy food”?

I eat fresh vegetables, both raw and cooked simply. I eat fresh fruit, plain yogurt, whole grains. I eat grilled meats and fish. I don’t fry, I don’t eat much processed food, I don’t eat ANY fast food. I don’t drink soda or energy drinks and I don’t use artificial sweeteners. I minimize salt usage and season with fresh herbs whenever I can.

I eat healthier than 90% of the people I know. The other 10% are either vegetarians or misguided fools who follow the advice of books like The China Study and give up the foods they love, hoping to extend their lives by a few years through that sacrifice. All you have to do is eat a nicely marbled grilled steak in front of them to see how they’re suffering.

Life is short. Why shouldn’t I eat what I want to eat — especially when there’s nothing really wrong with it? I don’t want to live forever and I want to enjoy my life. Eating is one of my simple pleasures.

My weight problem — which isn’t even serious, according to my doctor — is due to inactivity and midlife metabolism change. Simply said, I need to eat less and exercise more. But don’t most Americans?

Sorry if I seem angry, but I’m really bothered by strangers trying to advise me when they know absolutely nothing about me.

This is what I wrote, but I didn’t send it. In fact, I didn’t answer the e-mail at all. Maybe he’ll see the response here. Maybe he won’t. I don’t really care.

I guess my point is, you’re wasting your time if you try to advise me on issues relating to diet, weight loss, or eating habits. Enough said.

And Tom, if you’re reading this, do treat yourself to a good steak once in a while. It really won’t hurt you. I’m sure the person I gave the book to will get a lot more out of it than I would.

Days in My Life, I Cook, Too advice, books, diet, fat, food, interview, NPR

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Scott McNulty and I talk to Chuck Joiner about WordPress.

One of the things I like to do — but don’t get a chance to do very often these days — is talk to podcasters and other media people about the projects I’ve worked on.

Earlier this month, I got a chance to do just that with Chuck Joiner, the host of the MacVoices podcast. For the first time ever, Chuck did a double interview, killing two birds with one stone as he spoke to author Scott McNulty and I about WordPress. During the Interview, we talked about our separate WordPress-related projects and how they might be used together to help someone learn the ins and outs of using WordPress.

Here’s the blurb on the MacVoices Web site:

Thinking of starting a blog with WordPress? Maria Langer, the author of Self-Hosting a WordPress Site and WordPress.Com 2.7 Essential Training on Lynda.com and Scott McNulty, the author of Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read, share some tips from their respective projects to help you make the right choices. Maria and Scott talk about deciding on using WordPress.com or selecting your own host, one-click vs. user installs, why permalink structure is one of the first things you should think about, and finding and customizing a theme for your blog and more. Backup options, favorite plug-ins and why their video and book compliment each other are discussed.

If you’d like to hear the podcast, you can download it directly from its page on the MacVoices Web site.

On Blogging, Podcast Episodes interview, podcast, WordPress

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This was so funny, I had to blog it.

In surfing around the Web this evening, I stumbled upon a comment from Tom Wright on a Talking Points Memo reader post regarding tomorrow night’s vice presidential debate:

Beware, Palin’s infuriating verbal squirming may cause Biden’s head to explode.

People making the mistake of trying to understand her unparseable constructions suffer greatly. Only by matching her smile and blank cheerfulness can one withstand the sucking black hole of unreason that is Palin attempting to communicate with words.

He was referring, of course, to all interviews done so far — yes, all three of them — in which Palin has proven again and again that she is completely clueless.

Deep Thoughts debate, interview, politics

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Maria Speaks Episode 37: KBSZ Interview.

I was interviewed yet again by local radio station KBSZ 1250-AM. Pete’s a great interviewer and always makes his guests feel comfortable. We talked for about 40 minutes, mostly about the Internet and flying. You’ll hear my layman’s explanation of my recent experience getting seriously Dugg. Keep in mind that the station’s audience isn’t exactly computer savvy, so I do a lot of explaining and simplifying when discussing some computer topics.

This podcast starts in the middle of a commercial; the interview starts about a minute in.

February 17, 2010 Update: KBSZ went under back in 2009. The Web site was taken down and all podcasts removed. As a result, the podcast of this episode is no longer available. Sorry!

Days in My Life, Podcast Episodes Internet, interview, podcast, radio

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A plea to those who [should] care.

I write about Twitter too much. I know that. But Twitter has become part of my life and, like other things that are part of my life, it has given me plenty to write about.

Today’s topic is Twitter fluff. That’s my term for the kinds of tweets that are downright boring and childish, written by people who should know better. The sole purpose of these tweets seems to be to fill the Twitter world with content. Trouble is, the quality of that content is about equal to the quality of the stuff that accumulates in a clothes dryer’s lint screen.

While you expect that kind of behavior from people who really don’t have anything to tweet about or people too immature to realize the significance of their everyday experiences, you don’t expect it from people with experiences worth sharing.

I’m not naming names here. Or Twiter IDs, for that matter. But I recently added a professional journalist to my list of Twitter friends. This is a person who works for a media organization and typically follows stories relating to the Iraq war and politics — stories that matter. An adult. A professional. Someone who should have interesting tweets.

What I found, however, is that more than half of this person’s tweets are messages to his new Twitter friends to greet them. For example, “Hi new Twitterfriends, @AlexTheBird, @JackTheDog, and @mlanger!” While it’s very friendly of this person to greet all his new friends, reading dozens of tweets like this throughout the day — between the daily “Good morning, Twitter!” and nightly “Good night, Twitter!” posts — is pretty much a waste of my time. I’m interested in what this guy is doing. Who is he interviewing? What has he learned? What insight can he share about his professional journalism world? How can what he’s doing make me think about the world around me?

I need to mention here that I don’t expect every tweet I read to contain some kind of deep revelation for me. (If that were possible, I’d spend all of my time reading Twitter tweets.) This morning, one of my Twitter friends posted a tweet in which the text was all upside-down. How the heck did she do that? She followed up with a link that showed us how. Useless? Yes. Trivial? Sure. But fun? You bet! And a heck of a lot more interesting than “Hello new Twitterfriends @joe, @jim, and @jake!”

And, for those of you ready to go on the offensive, I’m also not saying that my tweets are anything special. I just tweet about the things I’m doing. Some of them are pretty dull. (Who cares that I’m reading my e-mail?) Some of them are pretty interesting. (How many people land their helicopters in a new friend’s backyard?) But I’m not filling the Twitter world with fluff, either.

Anyway, I’m kind of hoping this journalist friend reads this and recognizes himself and thinks about what he’s typing to the world — especially to all of those new friends he keeps greeting. No offense guy, but you can do much better than that. I know you can.

Call Me a Geek, Social Networking e-mail, helicopters, interview, Iraq, journalism, media, night, politics, professional, time, Twitter, war

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