Yar.

[silveradept]

Work today - opening to closing. Work tomorrow - opening to closing. Work weekends can be particularly loathsome. Ah, well. Such was the nature of the beast when I signed on.

Making one's money Godless, and the question of whether that's currency defacement, and thus a crime, or not. (Defacing the currency is a crime? Now I'm surprised that we can burn flags at all.)

Vegan diet reverses diabetes symptoms? How does that work out? The weight loss part I get, but the blood sugar lowering, too? Is the strict vegan diet just low in all sorts of sugars?

How close is the quantum computer to reality? Closer than we think, it appears. Perhaps not quite here yet, but maybe getting closer.

House passes mandatory filtering bill. Eh-hem. LIBRARIAN SMASH! While it would prevent, perhaps, the MySpace makeout session, restricting chat and social networking sites in schools and libraries is really asking for trouble - and for library usage to go waaaaaay down.

From the correlation-is-causation, and it's a Message From YHWH, to boot, The Whirlwind called Katrina. Apparently, every time there's talk of Israel giving up land or cease-fire happening, some natural disaster follows, be it hurricane, earthquake, or whatever. Then again, almost every day, something that could be considered a natural disaster of unnatural proportions occurs. So it's not really an angry YHWH. Either that, or Phelps is right and YHWH's just generally pissed off at humanity enough to visit vengeance on us regularly. If that's true, though, then people should find themselves a less vengeful and more forgiving and loving god.

A random-but-potentially-interesting subject. Potential angst and repeat subject warning. Playing RPGs awakens my hero/adventure longings, it's true. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll put them away, perhaps in some way, I'm addicted to them, along with all other forms of stories, because there's a hero who makes it work out. Or even an antihero who saves the world while not caring. Stories where the protagonists fail have a profound impact on me, in the sense of "That's not how it should end, is it? Where's the triumphant phoenix rebirth? Where's the Continue screen?"

My own narrative, compared to the average piece of literature, is sadly lacking. If my life were an anime/manga, it's likely more a "slice-of-life" possibly straying occasionally into the realm of situation comedy than anything like a fantasy or action piece. I'm more Boys Be than Kingdom Hearts. (Heck, I can't even claim something like Kimagure Orange Road.) It's not that I'm asking for permission to live my life out in a particular way (I alrady have greyweirdo's permission to be myself, if it were a case of that), it's more that I'm waiting for my master narrative to begin. Insert NPC-ness rant here, really.

Out of that, though, there's a bit of a realization - heroes and heroic situations happen in both stories and out here in life where there's a significant amount of danger involved. Often times there are lives at stake. If I'm going to be a hero, and a grand hero or superhero, then I'm going to have to be able to face those kinds of situations regularly and without flinching or tiring. No wonder most of the comic book heroes are superpowered in some way. Do I have the stuff to be a hero? Do I ever want to find out? It's being torn between feeling like I'm not living up to my full potential and the want to have a life only occasionally ruffled by small things. The choice between liberty and security, to some degree. Of course, on certain things, it's way too late to back down now, and those things should actually end up helping me toward liberty and some security. Meh. Just a suspension in the tune of my life. Resolution should be arriving soon. In the meantime, I'll keep bashing Heartless and living vicariously through other heroes. If I'm supposed to join their ranks, the time will come. I just hope I'm ready for it when it arrives.

Comments

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Unless you do the veg*n thing in a stupid way, it's going to be low in fat to begin with, low in "bad" sugar, high in natural sugar, etc. etc. The problem the study didn't mention is that while the veg*n diet contains low sugar and is good for type 2 diabetes....people who are veg*n can get the opposite of Diabetes. How many times have you been around me when I need to get something sugary into my body becuse I was feeling shaky from a lack of sugar? I know, it seems kind of funny, the vegetarian NOT agreeing with the article, but I don't think going vegan is the way to go if you've got diabetes. Really, i don't think Vegan is ever the way to go, and I prefer being a vegetarian. ANd I will admit that a lot of my stomach/liver problems did go away after I switched back to being a veg, but that'smore from a lack of processed and fried foods than anything I think.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Deliberately defacing currency SHOULD be a crime, yo. It's not a matter of "expression" like burning the flag is, it's a matter keeping the currency secure, un-reproducible, and economy. It'd be pretty bad if everyone started marking all over or tearing up their bills, wouldn't it?

I do agree that the "in god we trust" needs to go, though.

[wanderingbhikkh.livejournal.com]

re: adventuring

You don't have to put yourself at risk, you just have to put yourself in the unknown. I'm going to China for a year, and I'd call that an adventure.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

"The opposite of diabetes" is still diabetes.

Your body should have a good homeostasis and manage your blood sugar. Both hypo- and hyperglycemia are symptoms of the same disease: an inability for your body to control that.

Now the question turns to what causes that. Quick primer: in type-II diabetes, your fat cells and muscle cells no longer uptake glucose in response to insulin and require more and more insulin, eventually overtaxing the pancreas. Your blood sugar no longer self-regulates. This is an extreme form of self-preservation. It stops your fat cells from taking in so much that it gets to be deadly (ironic, huh.) This is why diets work so well to reduce the symptoms of type-II diabetes. Eventually the cells shrink enough and with luck, regain their ability to process insulin. It seems like the vegan diet is a better fat-cutting diet than the ADA diet which may be enough to explain all of the difference.

Veganism is very good at a few things: lowering cholesterol and saturated fat being one. (Seriously, it's almost impossible to get any "bad" fat in a vegan diet.) It's also very good at not leading to guilt. It's all about eating whatever you want that's vegan. No counting, no looking at nutrition information: only looking at ingredients. (I don't know why, but that feels so much better. Instead of focusing on all the bad things in food, you focus on all the good things you get.) You also get a lot of fiber (helps absorb cholesterol that your liver produces and reduce fat uptake) and a lot of antioxidants (for general good health.) In general, it's probably healthier than a prescribed ADA diet.

Veganism is low in protein. Protein is glucogenic. The liver can convert the amino acids in protein to glucose. It doesn't usually during periods of high blood sugar (I mean seriously, you don't need it) but it's one of the ways the body avoids "crashes" when the energy usage rises. However in diabetes, I'm not sure this mechanism works properly either. It's possible that the liver is screwed up (it uses insulin as well as blood sugar as a signal) and it, too, goes nuts and floods your system with even more sugar.

I personally don't see anything inherently wrong with veganism. I'd convert if I thought it would improve my health.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

I'd define it even more broadly than that. I'd call adventuring undertaking anything with the attitude of relishing the unexpected.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

That vegan article is just misleading as HELL!

What they don't bother pointing out in the story is that the vegans were on almost no or absolutly no processed foods. Any time you drop processed foods from your diet your health will improve. When you're the one putting the ingredients together, you know how much of each item is going in. When you eat what someone else has made, you've got no idea what's in there.

You can eat lots of meat and still be as healthy as this story pretends the vegan diet will make you. Just pay attention and make as much of your own food as you can.

As for the hero thing... I'll make my thoughts on that clear later.

[silveradept]

Well, the currency still stays unreprducible, it's just been modified to strike out the In God We Trust. The important parts are still there - the serial number, the amount, the "this note is good for all debts, public or private", and probably most of the security features. All the things that make the money have value are still there. If you start deliberately defacing those parts, then the money's not money anymore, and you've screwed yourself.

I guess I don't really understand why something like that should be criminal, when, in my opinion, it doesn't actually affect the money's effectiveness as an exchange medium.

[silveradept]

Sounds like I'm going to have to be a little more clear about the difference between adventuring and heroing. Adventuring? Good thing, should be taken at all reasonable opportunities. Heroing has a special condition to it, viz, that the adventure, completed successfully, does something heroic.

[silveradept]

I think it was more about how veganism, while dropping out processed foods, also helps diabetics by removing difficult foods from the diet above and beyond the obvious ones. But yeah, anyone could achieve good effects simply by dieting in the correct manner, no veganism needed.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

It wasn't really misleading as much as it didn't define the scope of the findings very well. There is NOTHING here to suggest that veganism is good for general health.

The study compared two different diets for people with advanced (they all needed medication) obesity-linked Type II diabetes: the ADA diet which is low-calorie, low-processed sugar and is tailored to individual diabetics and a special low-fat, low-processed sugar vegan diet (with unlimited caloric intake). Those on the vegan diet lost more weight, lowered LDL levels and maintained a lower blood sugar (as evidenced by a1c glycosylation markers.) The vegan diet was also easier to stick to. There was no indication of health benefits to people who were not Type-II diabetic. Both groups showed health benefits. Neither group was restricted against processed foods perse but both were advised against eating refined sugars and processed fats.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Honestly the only thing I found useful in that story was this comment.

"I hope this study will rekindle interest in using diet changes first, rather than prescription drugs," Dr. Neal Barnard

Boyond that, too much crap writting on the part of the journalist to come away with a significant result

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Also, even the ADA diet isn't "low carb", it's low refined sugar. Diabetics can't maintain their own blood sugar and need to take in a lot of complex carbohydrates to have slow-release of sugar into their blood.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Maybe fear about evyl Communists/Terrorists/[whoever] working to amass as much money as possible and burn all of it, thus taking it out of circulation and throwing a wrench in the government's economic plans for interest rates and the like... it doesn't really make sense, but neither does a lot of attempted government interference with currency, the free market, economics in general, etc.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) *considers* Or possibly, from a personal point of view (rather than world-affecting point of view, though in fiction the two often go together): something that puts your heart (Kingdom Hearts sense, not blood-pumping sense) to the test. On the lines of 'All right, now that dragon ahead is probably going to eat me alive or maim me horribly, and I'm really afraid, and I really want to run away right now, but I'm going to go forward anyway!'.

A counter-example is that of someone lying in a hospital bed, fighting cancer or the like: though many people claim that this is heroic, and though the trial is unpleasant and difficult, it doesn't really measure up to the same standards of what counts as 'heroism'--the general perception of heroism is of a significant part of it being inherently altruistic. Doing something hard, for the good of someone else or of all, despite your fear and the danger (of whatever sort) to yourself.

This raises the question of whether it can still be applied to someone forced against their will into a situation where defending thsmelves is heroic... there, a lot depends on intentions when fighting back (see: antiheroes), but it's significant to note that even when you seemingly don't have a choice in the matter, there's still the choice of losing your wits and curling up in a ball, or trying to run away. (Thus, even in such situations heroism is certainly possible.)

...that probably sums it up as best I can imagine it. If I say any more, I'll probably end up accidentally saying something ambiguous that could be read as contradicting something I've already said.

Just my two yen.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think only bankers are bothered by this. I HATED getting bills that had writing on them, or things struck out, and actually - anytime we got a bill like that, we were supposed to mark it as "mutilated" - that is, taking a black sharpie and writing MUTILATED" on the front and back of the bill, then selling it out to the vault, and then about once every 6 months or so we would sell the mutilated back to the feds. the feds don't like getting mutilated money, because they have to take it out of circulation and replace it, therefor, defacing bills is a crime,.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I still think that it;'s a bad idea for a diabetic to go vegan.