Thursday, December 18, 2008

Healthy Obsessions: Zevia Diet Soda

I don't drink or smoke. I have never done drugs and I tend not to gamble. But I have one serious vice: I love soda. I love soda of all kinds and can drink it non-stop. In college I would drink 10-12 cans of regular, sugary soda a day! (And I wonder why I'm pre-diabetic) I switched to diet for awhile, but as a person with an interest in avoiding chemicals, all that aspartame wasn't really working for me either. Enter Zevia, my newest love and soda replacement. With a main ingredient of stevia, it's an excellent, natural and healthy replacement for soda. It tastes like regular coke, without the sugar, carbs, and chemicals (minus the BPA in the can lining, but that's a story for another day). It does not effect the glycemic load. So if you're like me and would put your face under a soda fountain and drink in sugary bliss until your teeth fall out and your pancreas explodes, Zevia is for you.

Stevia is a natural sugar replacement from South America called "sweet leaf" as the leaves of the plant are so sweet. In the summer, I actually grow this in my backyard and boil it, using the sweet water to add sweetness to tea and lemonade. The plant, which costs me around $2, lasts all summer, and proves much cheaper than buying the processed version in stores.

Stevia can be purchased at most health food stores including Whole Foods in the sugar section, in either liquid or powder form, the powder form usually containing fiber and marketed as a supplement. Stevia is just now gaining popularity, as the sugar and sugar substitute industry lobbied against stevia growers in the eighties and may have falsified reports regarding its safety. Thus it can only be sold in the United States as a supplement, despite the fact that it is merely just a natural sweetener. A word of warning: Stevia can be a little strong for some people, including my Dad who said, "I'd love it, except for that strange aftertaste." Check it out, see what you think!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Louis CK...Putting it All in Perspective

Other than the new "Wolverine" trailer, this is the greatest video I've seen in a very long time. A must see!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

In Your Space


I'm one of those creepy people that has a strange winter hobby. With the trees bare and darkness engulfing the world much earlier, it allows me to peer inside the houses of people as I drive by. I like to quickly see what furniture they have, how they styled their rooms, and what their Christmas trees look like. This living space voyeurism was also present in college where I enjoyed visiting new and different dorm rooms, new homes where I babysat, and the various offices of teachers.

A new website has taken my strange living space fetish to a new level. At On My Desk, you can see how and where other people work. I especially find the work spaces of artists the most interesting, especially as I'm about to design my own mini studio space. It's just as good as the Lifehacker posts on people's computer desktops! Another great site for space voyeurs....The Selby's collection of artist studios/living spaces. Photo above of computer from powerpage.org

A Friend's Away Message...

If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help them.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Fly By Mooning


This Friday the moon will be not only full, but the closest it's been to earth in 15 years! As a lover of the moon, my little crabby ass will be out tonight gazing at the huge moon and hopefully getting some pictures.

"It will be a little over 350,000km away as it passes over the northern hemisphere, which is about 30,000km closer than usual.

If the sky is clear it will appear brighter and larger than usual, say astronomers.

Closest path

Friday's full moon could appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons this year, Nasa said.

The Moon's orbit is elliptical, meaning it does not follow a circular but rather an oval path."

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Bow Down Before the One You Serve


In alarming news today, the government has reportedly been using a variety of music to torture prisoners, from my personal favorites of Nine Inch Nails and Sesame Street to Pantera, which would make me go insane almost immediately. According to the MSNBC post:

The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, 'to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture shock.'


According to an FBI memo, one interrogator at Guantanamo Bay bragged he needed only four days to “break” someone by alternating 16 hours of music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.

Excellent.

But while some musicians, like Lars and company from Metallica fight illegal downloads, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tom Morello, and Massive Attack, are working to get this practice stopped.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Thanks Nick!

THINGS BEARS LOVE!!! more here...
A hilarious site dear Nick just sent to me. He's a great Santa Claus!

Charting Your Fears


Not unlike the excellent Google Flu tracker, this new map from the Center for American Progress now tracks the human toll of climate change. If you were not already worried, this is a great way to start, and to see how your friends on the coasts are doing. You are also given the freedom to post your own weather events. It's especially a great tool for those with budding meteorology careers.

Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat


I’ve never been one that can handle a lot of unnecessary stress. Call it the OCD German roots or just my inability to stomach endless viewings of the Fox News network, but I, not unlike most people, am tired of the political back and forth. What a wonderful night it was when Obama cast his spell over America with his rallying and beautiful speech. It was in that moment, Democrat and Republican alike, that we were allowed to think about what’s really important. It was in that moment that we were allowed to get excited about our new government, to get excited about the possibilities. I might have even held a Republican’s hand. But now, just a little over a month later as we all check our inboxes for the pink slip of death, we have returned to the inane blather of before.

This is my first major life changing election as a true adult, and thus it’s the first one I really remember (I was involved in the whole Kerry thing, but after his loss, it seems to all have faded, and I try not to think about the Gore/Bush debacle). As a result, it also seems the most aggravating. But as the older family members of mine keep reminding me, and my history textbooks keep telling me, politics have been, and always will be incredibly annoying, made worse by our use of the internet, MSNBC, and all that other jazz that you already know about. Now that Obama is no doubt working tirelessly to figure all this stuff out and keep us together in some mish mash of our former glory, we’re hearing the socialist word again, the big government complaints, and the small government complaints, and the constant anxiety over regulation. I’d like to put all those fears to rest.

Even if Obama is a socialist, which he is not, we could not become a socialist country because of the failed nature of our system. In fact, no president it seems has really been able to accomplish anything of consequence since World War Two. Why? Four years, even eight years, is hardly enough time to enact real change, especially if you have a hefty opposing group sitting in your congress doing its job of checking and balancing your power and over two hundred years of messes to fix. Although I’m entirely hopeful and excited by Obama, it is ridiculous to assume that he will be able to totally and utterly flip this country into something entirely different and contrary to our nature without intense military force reminiscent of the Russian communists circa Stalin.

What about Bush? Didn’t he destroy our country given at least four years? He did, but a nice, clean foundation was built for him to work off of, starting with rise of consumerism and the “what-ev, I’ve got my ipod” mentality that brewed in the 80’s and 90’s and the smarmy conservativeness he claimed to have. And yes, some presidents do great things in the face of adversity, like the New Deal, or Kennedy’s dealings with the Bay of Pigs, and so forth and so on. But those were the days when the country cared, when the country was able to agree in those brief moments when something, anything had to be done. But those were also the times when the majority of the country was white, the majority of the country was Christian, and no one’s shoes were scuffed, even if their feet were run over, at least publicly. It was a time when you could go to church, both elitist and six pack Joe without wondering whether your neighbor was an idiot, a terrorist or, gasp!, gay and how as a result he would bring down the country.

Now, in a time when everyone is searching for an identity and so desperate to hold on to it, when issues are complicated by a multitude of world views, races, genders, and classes, no one can agree, no one can relent. Because relenting no longer makes you smart, it makes you wishy washy, a flip flopper, as Bush so loved to name Kerry.

And so it goes in America where we will never be small or big government, socialist or democratic, because we sit in an endless cycle of buzzwords. Clinton put some minor regulations in place, increasing the government’s “power.” The Bush administration decimated the government by ending all regulation, even on itself. We go back and forth, only perpetuating and sticking a finger in the bursting dam, as other holes leak around us. Instead, I hope Obama will be that rarity of a president who puts politics aside and does something, even if it’s a minor something, to fix the root system itself, and not just pander to fixing the last administration’s mistakes by rocking the boat the other direction. I think he has a pretty good shot, especially when conservatives like Bill Kristol seem just as fed up as me. As he says that the end of a recent New York Times piece,

“I can’t help but admire some of my fellow conservatives’ loyalty to the small-government cause. It reminds me of the nobility of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, as it charges into battle: “Theirs but to do and die.” Maybe it would be better, though, first to reason why.”

Perhaps we can begin something of a hybrid government system where we have just enough gas to keep ourselves individual and innovative, but try to do the right thing at the same time. Yes we can?