Day: January 17, 2004

Losing it: But there’s a price for everything

“I have lost 147 pounds. I weigh less than my photo.”

James Lileks is on the Atkins diet.

“Atkins it was, then. Here’s my new diet.

Breakfast: Sixty-seven eggs with cheese. Fourteen strips of bacon washed down with the drippings. The plates are made of sausage; save those for last. If someone offers juice, recoil in horror: Are you trying to KILL me?

Your juiceless future is the hardest thing to accept at first; after all, nothing says Healthful Morning Breakfast like a bright orange glass of citric goodness, but there are 10 billion carbs in a single juice molecule. You could have some toast, but no-carb bread costs too much. All the Atkins stuff is preposterously priced. A package of lo-carb pancake mix costs $6.19. Apparently the process of extracting carbs is hideously expensive. Probably requires zero gravity. That’s what they’re doing on the International Space Station. It’s one big orbital Atkins factory.

Lunch: a small pig.

Supper: Now we get down to the serious business. Good news: It’s steak time! Bad news: It’s steak time! Again! Somewhere in the second week of your new regimen you’ll actually weep at the thought of another bacon-wrapped filet mignon. I can’t do it. I just can’t. I’ve eaten 2.3 cows in the past week. I had a tongue smoothie for an afternoon snack and a butt-steak non-dairy sundae with Bac-o-Bits sprinkles for dessert.

You beg to the ghost of Dr. Atkins: Please, sir, a carrot. One small tiny fresh wet crunchy baby carrot. Don’t tell me to mince some steak and form it into the shape of a carrot. I can’t do it. I need milk! Can’t I have milk? It comes from cows! Can’t we call it liquid steak?

This is the hardest phase, and it passes. I’ve jumped the hump; I’m in that blissful state of ketosis psychosis. I have an absurd amount of energy, and frankly I’ve never felt better. When I’ve lost a few more pounds, I’ll start cutting back on the meat.

Because these daily heart attacks are really getting annoying. Did you know that the ambulances hand out punch cards? They do. My 10th myocardial infarction will be absolutely free.

Read the whole Backfence column.

Driving on ice can be costly joyride

Geez Dad, didn’t we do this when I was a kid?

From the Detroit Free Press

Matt Vermeulen grew up near Lake St. Clair and knows the frozen lake’s slippery ways and how to stay safe. Or so he thought.

On Tuesday, he drove his Tahoe onto what he assumed was solid ice. But without visible indication, the ice thickness was no longer a sturdy 12 inches — instead it was a mere 5 inches that cracked, sending the rear end of his 1997 sport-utility vehicle into the icy water.

“There’s nothing you can do,” said Vermeulen, 25, of Fair Haven. “You just jump out.”

“It’s embarrassing, and very, very expensive,” he said Friday, declining to estimate the cost.

Every winter across Michigan, cars, trucks and other vehicles go crashing through the ice on lakes and rivers. Salvage companies charge thousands of dollars to haul out the vehicles, and drivers can face hefty traffic and environmental penalties.

During Prohibition, bootleggers scooted across the ice from Windsor, but today it’s usually sportsmen or reckless young drivers who may have to make the humiliating admission: “Honey, I sunk the car.”

Hmmm! Interesting

“[R]etirement is often a special hell for super achievers. As they’re suffering for success, it seems like an oasis in a dessert of demands and sacrifices. But, for many, when they get there, the cool refreshing water is an illusion. They long for the old rat race. And especially the company of their fellow rodents.”

Thomas Boswell in today’s Washington Post

Surgery

Dave Barry reports from Iowa

There I found a clot of seasoned political journalists, who briefed me on the Democratic race. The big news was that John Edwards, who had been stagnant, was surging, while at the same time John Kerry — who had faltered early in the race, then surged, then re-faltered — was now surging AGAIN.

This bodes badly for Howard Dean, who used to be the Lone Surger out here, as well as traditional Iowa-caucus winner Dick Gephardt, who has, frankly, been unable to surge. He is surge-impaired, and he badly needs surgification in Iowa if he is to survive New Hampshire, where, word has it, Wesley Clark, who had been faltering, is now surging like a madman. He’s the Surgin’ General.

You may think I’m making this stuff up, but it’s a fairly accurate portrayal of how political journalists talk after weeks of being forced to write thousands upon thousands of words based on virtually zero hard information.

Coach Olson

From UA superstitions in the Arizona Daily Star:

But when Olson doesn’t feel right, even if the outward appearance is fine, it gets worse. The Wildcats can lose.

On Feb. 16, 2002, the normally well-prepared Olson forgot a critical element in his game-day efforts at USC.

He had the defensive assignments parceled out. The pre-game talk prepared. The offensive sets planned.

But there was no red necktie in his hotel room.

He called associate head coach Jim Rosborough, who thought he had the perfect tie for Olson to borrow: red with navy stripes.

Olson wore it to the game, and Rosborough was relieved. He had no reason to worry.

Arizona lost 94-89.

“He gave it back to me and said, ‘You need to burn this tie,'” Rosborough said.

NewMexiKen hopes Olson has all the essential clothing when he gets to Pauley Pavilion this afternoon.

Trip With Cheney Puts Ethics Spotlight on Scalia

From the Los Angeles Times

Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president’s appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration’s energy task force….

But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, saying, “I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.”…

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said Scalia should have skipped going hunting with Cheney this year.

“A judge may have a friendship with a lawyer, and that’s fine. But if the lawyer has a case before the judge, they don’t socialize until it’s over. That shows a proper respect for maintaining the public’s confidence in the integrity of the process,” said Gillers, who is an expert on legal ethics. “I think Justice Scalia should have been cognizant of that and avoided contact with the vice president until this was over. And this is not like a dinner with 25 or 30 people. This is a hunting trip where you are together for a few days.”

The pair arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp., an oil services company in Amelia, La. The Associated Press in Morgan City, La., reported the trip on the day the vice president and his entourage departed.

Let me read that again

Caption in the Santa Fe New Mexican

Kirt Kempter, a geologist, sifts through ash that fell in the Arroyo de Los Chamisos behind the Santa Fe High School Thursday morning. Kempter says the ash came from the Bandalier Tuff eruption 1.6 million years ago.

So, let me see if I got this right. It erupted 1.6 million years ago and fell Thursday morning?

Actually the article is rather interesting. New Mexico it seems “ranks fifth behind Hawaii, Alaska, California and Oregon in geological activity because of movement on the Rio Grande rift.”

The Founding Uncle

Benjamin Franklin was born on this date in 1706.

As his most recent biographer, Walter Isaacson, states

[Franklin] was, during his eighty-four-year-Iong life, America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical, though not most profound, political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and cleanburning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He launched various civic improvement schemes, such as a lending library, college, volunteer fire corps, insurance association, and matching grant fund-raiser. He helped invent America’s unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism. In foreign policy, he created an approach that wove together idealism with balance-of-power realism. And in politics, he proposed seminal plans for uniting the colonies and creating a federal model for a national government.

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America’s first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.

And, as historian Gordon S. Wood wrote in his review of Isaacson’s biography

[Franklin] is especially interesting to Americans, and not simply because he is one of the most prominent of the Founders. Among the Founders his appeal seems to be unique. He appears to be the most accessible, the most democratic, and the most folksy of these eighteenth-century figures.