Category Archives: “Real” things

Real things: news, environment, politics, science, sociology, etc.

TOO MUCH!

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This goes too far.

People now want a slimmed down Santa.

Umm, I don’t see any kids growing up saying “I want to grow up and be fat like Santa”.  In fact, while I agree healthy habits need to be fostered early in life, how does having a skinny Santa change that?  I think this is ludicrous.  It’s just another way to find something else to blame for what is fundamentally a (in the case of a child) parental problem.  Yes it costs more (not really) and takes more time to prepare healthy snacks and meals than to toss your kid a Happy Meal, but its the parents’ responsibility to their children to do so.

Girl Scout cookies

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Here’s the Girl Scout cookies in order of healthiest to least.

  1. Cafe Cookies (five er serving) contain little saturated fat.

  2. Trefolis have 150 calories per serving (five cookies).

  3. Little Brownies (four per serving) are sugar-free.

  4. Thin Mints (four per serving) have the same amount of sugar and fat as two-cookie serving of Samoas.

  5. Do-Si-Dos (two per serving) are low in saturated fat.

  6. Tagalongs (two per serving) are high in fat, but it’s mostly the good, unsaturated kind.

  7. All Abouts (two per serving) are also low in saturated fat.

  8. Thanks-A-Lot (two per serving) have the same number of calories as twice as many Thin Mints.

  9. Lemonades (two per serving) have four grams of saturated fat.

  10. Samoas (two per serving) have high amounts of fat and sugar.

Via Real Simple via That’s Fit. 

Thin Mints and Tagalogs are my cookies of choice.  Not too bad on this scale.  I can do the Samoas to a degree, but not too much.  Not because they are apparently unhealthy, but more because I’m not a coconut guy.

In case you forgot what’s what in the world of Girl Scout cookies, here’s a handy dandy guide.

Home wars

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So Oprah announced she’s going to back Barak Obama.  Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guiliani.  Time to make sweeping generalizations about their core demographics!  Yay.  So it sets up the war in the homes of middle Americans everywhere!  Yes everyone has their own vote (ooh, who has more pull?  Oprah to get her fans to go vote for Barak [heck do they trust her political candidate choices as much as her friggin’ book club choices?] or Pat to get his “parishioners” to go vote for Rudy?), but it has to bring up some tension in the home once the race ramps up.  Of course this also presumes that the fans of these two are mindless lemmings that do whatever their leader says to do.  And I don’t think that (for the most part).

Kottke links

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Links from Kottke.org.  Some older, some newer, I’ve not been to Kottke in awhile, so just things that caught my interest.  I might break some of these out into their own posts, maybe not.

NYU students are materialistic! -NYU students would exchange their vote for an iPod Touch or a free ride to NYU.  Half said they’d give up their right to vote FOREVER for $1 million.  Disenfranchisement for an amount that wouldn’t even buy a 1 bedroom condo in the city they go to school.  Even exchanging their vote, for an iPod?!  I love Apple, and my iPod (I don’t have a Touch, but I do own an iPhone).  But trade my vote for one?

Ninety percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for the money also said they consider voting “very important” or “somewhat important”; only 10 percent said it was “not important.” Also, 70.5 percent said they believe that one vote can make a difference – including 70 percent of the students who said they’d give up their vote for free tuition.

Yeah, real important.  So important that’d you sell it away…

Musical roads. – The Japanese develop roads that play melodys when being traversed at certain speeds.  I’m quite certain I’d find this annoying and speed to avoid it.  If they want to discourage speeding, they should make a road that generates an annoying tone at high speeds.

Okay, I had like 6 Kottke links, but as I was writing this post, decided not to put them here.  Two is enough.

For science, yeah….

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Japan resumes whaling.

the Japanese Government referred to the expedition as “scientific”. It is a description that infuriates anti-whaling activists. Whale meat harvested on the expeditions is sold on to the Japanese market and the profits used to fund “future research”.

As part of its declared mission to collect scientific data on the age and “mode of life” of Antarctic whale stocks

Admittedly, I don’t know anything about this past the news wire reports.  But I guess to learn about the whales you have to kill them.

Japan says it needs to kill the animals in order to conduct research on their reproductive and feeding patterns.