Lost, But Making Good Time

Calling All Bloggers! I Need Your Help!

I'm now on my third (yes, third) web host in the past two weeks. Two were just downright shitty (random downtime, dead hard drive), and the one I'm currently at, runs Plesk on FreeBSD, which apparently has some all-powerful stranglehold on perl, making the admin scared to install DBD::MySQL for me.

I don't think my requirements are too insane: enough storage space for my photos, some bandwidth, PHP, and the perl modules to run MT. And the ability to host a second domain. I'm a student, so money is a concern, but I just want a reliable host (ie: little downtime, been in business more than 2 weeks).

What do you guys use? I've read the MT forums and some reviews, but I'd like to hear what actual bloggers use.

Cool idea for a website: recommendations from other bloggers like this, trackbacked-together using TB categories.

Joescalise.com

JoeScalise.com is a website.

Did you know that, Google? Did you?

Geez, what's it take to get a non-blog site listed in a search engine these days?

Oh hells yeah

Finally! Internet back at home! Breathing again for the first time!

I'm No Good

Let's just be honest here, you and me. I'm not so great at this blogging thing. At least in my Glog carnation. I'm too all-over the place. Is it a personal site? A political rant? A tech/web/link/blog fest? There's no room in this blogging world for a directionless site. And since I'm starting med school in a month, I don't think I'm going to have time for political ranting, or ranting whatsoever. It is with this frightening-but-true announcement that I make another: my rise-from-the-ashes-like-Fawkes Buddhist reincarnation at Gross Anatomy! I'll most likely move it over to Grahamazon once the TypePad beta ends and I get kicked out for being a TP-freeloader, hoping madly for MT Pro's release to implement some of TP's functions in it, but for now, I'll TypePad away.

Not that you're curious about why I'm switching styles... but if you are, or you just can't help but click,

Trans Fats, Hear Me Roar!

You know those "Comments" hotlines on food packages where you can tell the manufacturers what you think? Well, I called one today.

Ever since this Metafilter thread, where dejah420 educated me about the dangers of trans fats, I've been on another of my personal health rampages against them. (I do this about once or twice a year, cutting something nasty from my diet. A year and a half ago, it was fast food and beef, a year ago, it was my sugar binges... I'm back to eating sugar, but still off the beef.) But I digress. These trans fats are bad news, but they're about as omnipresent in our foods as a god is supposed to be in the world. You'd be amazed where you find this stuff--cereals, bagels--even Rice-a-Roni packages.

So, I called up the fine people at Rice-A-Roni, and told them, "I'm sorry, but I can't eat your food anymore. It has trans fats in it." The guy on the end of the line gave some pre-written speech about the FDA not making any specific comments on trans fats (even though the Institute of Medicine's report recommends consumption "be as low as possible.")

I'm happy to say that the FDA is expected to force food producers to list the amount of trans fats in their products, just like saturated fats are listed today. So the guy suing to take Oreos off the shelves succeeded (even after acknowledging the lawsuit was frivolous). A victory for the little guy.

(For the time being, anything "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" most likely contains trans fats.)

And if you're curious what the problem is, here's some background:

You've got two types of cholesterol in your body: HDL cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein) and LDL cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein). HDL is "good cholesterol." It's a fat molecule that absorbs excess cholesterol from the blood, takes it to the liver, where the liver removes it from your bloodstream. LDL is "bad cholesterol." It can build up on arterial walls (it's then called "plaque") and shrink the passageway for blood. This is a major cause of heart attacks, strokes, TIAs, leg clots, etc.
HDL (you want it High) and LDL (you want it Low)

By fat-type:

• Unsaturated fats: that's things like fatty fish and oils, like olive oil, INCREASE your HDL (this is good) and DECREASE your LDL (this is good)
  
• Saturated fats: animal fats (fatty meats besides fish), butter, and tropical oils, INCREASE your HDL (this is good) but INCREASE your LDL (this is bad)
  
• Trans fats: think Crisco, as well as partially and fully hydrogenated plant oils, DECREASE your HDL (this is bad) and INCREASE your LDL (this is bad).

  Get it? Got it? Good.

MotherFather!

Seeing as thought my POS server had a hardware failure and they're now trying to restore the data, I may just be sticking with TypePad a bit longer. I guess you get what you pay for.

Broadest Brush I've Ever Seen

I never really followed Ann Coulter, but dear lord, she's seriously losing it. Paranoia out the wazoo. From Spinsanity, quoting Coulter:

"As a rule of thumb, Democrats opposed anything opposed by their cherished Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not like the idea of a militarily strong America. Neither did the Democrats!"

"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down."

She even claims Jimmy Carter was being treasonous by accepting a Nobel Peace Prize:

"Carter would travel to Norway to accept the award in December 2002 - two months after Congress had authorized war against Iraq. Article III's definition of treason is narrow. But after Congress's action authorizing war, for any American to accept this award on the ground offered does sound terribly like "adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.""