Time for a change

Can’t decide whether or how to do NewMexiKen differently — or whether to continue doing it at all.

Perhaps it’s just necessary to take a week or two break every 2-3 months. I don’t know.

But until the muse returns, NewMexiKen will be on sabbatical.

Suggestions, ideas, etc. all welcome.

Yikes

Selected figures from Washington Post article U.S. Consumer Debt Grows at Alarming Rate

• America’s consumer debt has topped $2 trillion for the first time (includes car loans but not mortgages)
• three out of five U.S. families have credit card debt
• average household consumer debt $13,000
• rent-to-own store interest rates typically work out to more than 200%; some to 800%

Backfence: Can George do it? Not this George

Like with many newspaper web sites you have to register (so far it’s free), but it might be worth it to read James Lileks Backfence column from Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune on installing a home entertainment center. As neither NewMexiKen’s VCR nor audio tape deck work in their current entanglement, I can surely relate.

Mental movies

Renowned neurologist and author Oliver Sacks has an essay in the current The New York Review of Books entitled In the River of Consciousness. As NewMexiKen understood the piece, our senses operate in much the same manner a movie works; that is, as a series of stills. To me this was a new and rather fascinating concept.

Ever seen the spokes of a wheel appear to move backwards when watching a western movie? We understand that is because the frames of the film catch the spokes at various positions and not continuously. Sacks notes that he can sometimes see this same phenomenon with the blades of his ceiling fan (as can most of us). Our mind works much like the frames of a motion picture.

NewMexiKen must stop before he further corrupts your understanding of consciousness. Check out the essay.

The Amish paradox

From the Los Angeles Times

Call it the Amish paradox. An exercise science professor has discovered that a pocket of Old Order Amish folks in Ontario, Canada, has stunningly low obesity levels, despite a diet high in fat, calories and refined sugar — exactly the stuff doctors tell us not to eat.

They’re at a paltry 4% obesity rate, compared to a whopping 31% in the general U.S. population, which, as we all know, is getting fatter by the minute. This group of Amish manages to keep its overweight levels low despite a diet that includes meat, potatoes, gravy, cakes, pies and eggs. So what’s their secret? Exercise, people. Exercise.

The drought continues

It rained in Albuquerque on November 12-13. It snowed a bit on December 12. Other than that, nothing more than a trace recorded in three months.

Jack London…

was born in San Francisco on this date in 1876.