aezell

When the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited at the beginning, there is no "under God." I knew that it had been added in 1954 but it's interesting to hear it so clearly missing here given that the event occurred in 1939.

That wasn't my stance. My stance was one of examining the full societal cost of any activity. Football is certainly not alone in the impacts it has on families. It's just the one we are talking about in this forum.

But, if one is seriously trying to determine sociological trends, these are the kinds of questions one must examine. It might be a similar line of thought, with different details, for the increased use of digital devices in our society.

Lastly, you're being facetious but their watching football might well be part of the problem. Without participants or an audience, the NFL ceases to exist thereby removing the negatives AND positives that its existence might create.

If we really want to determine how dangerous or unhealthy football is, we should consider the full picture.

As part of this thought exercise, let's take as a given that CTE doesn't exist and brain injuries are unimportant.

After that, let's look at the prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, and other long-term degenerative diseases in the NFL player population.

Then, let's look at the shortened earning potential of the NFL player. Yes, for a year, maybe more, they are highly paid but lifetime earnings might not be what you'd expect. How do the stresses of many men who leave the NFL with no skills and often an abandoned college degree affect them and their families?

Next, let's consider the lifestyle the NFL envisions for its fans. Spending at least a full day each week sitting and eating unhealthy food while consuming alcohol. Spend the rest of the week gambling on the outcomes of the games (or individual players). Much of the time, this fandom is done as a family leading to impacts on children in the home. There's a societal health impact here.

The list goes on if we follow this thinking. So, if we go back and remove our given, we end up with a spectacle that unduly endangers its participants, encourages unhealthy behavior in its fans, and indoctrinates our youth to be accepting of all the above. Meanwhile, a very few wealthy families get even wealthier on the backs of all that.

(N of 1 anecdote warning)

I started playing football at 6 years old. Tackle football came about two years later. In my junior year of high school, my back problems and knee problems were so bad, I had to quit. It was the best day of my life. In recent years, I've become an ultrarunner and am generally very healthy.

I'm 41 now and about 5 years ago, I passed out after cutting my hand (vagal response to the sight of my blood) and suffered a 10 minute long seizure after passing out. So, I spent the next few days doing EEGs and MRIs on my noggin.

There was nothing definite but the neurologist noticed some lesions on my brain in various places. First thing he asks me, "Did you play football as a child?" I said yes, and he said, "You should have an MRI at least every 5 years to see if these things get any bigger."

Recently, my memory has gotten worse. I've found myself rocking or nodding my head for no discernible reason. Control over my lower legs is variable. As a runner, I'm fairly in tune with my body. I can tell that things are not going as they should.

Who knows if I'll get CTE (or some other neurological problem) and if I do, if it's related to the 10 years of football I played. What I do know is that this experience is not one I'd want my children to have when it's most decidedly not necessary.

All that to say that there might be a LOT of people like me in the US who never even got close to college football or the NFL that could potentially suffer this same fate.

I haven't used Transmit in a while as I don't have a need for it, but when I did it was a great client.

The Panic app I miss most is Unison. Well, miss in the sense of miss it getting updated. It's still available.

Years ago, Unison and a fat Giganews subscription were fantastic ways to discover music.

It seems to me that the piece of data always missing in these kinds of challenges is time. I think anyone probably can run a marathon given enough time to change their lifestyle and build the appropriate strength and endurance. If that time is 10 years, then so be it for that person. The human body is designed to adapt to stressors and environmental conditions. The time it takes to adapt is where this genetic predisposition seems to come in to play.

20 years and they still think I need more than one vacuum.

ht: https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/724817086309142529

I immigrated to Switzerland from the US back around 2000 for a technology job. It was actually fairly easy to get a temp worker's visa which was valid for 3 months. Once I was there, my employer went with me to the "Bureau d'Etrangers" to get my actual work visa which was valid for one year. It would be renewable each year as I proved I was still employed.

It's possible it's much more difficult now 17 years later with lots of political and social change around the world. But, I think the Swiss love for people to think it's a lot harder than it is. It requires diligence and some paperwork on a regular basis but if you are skilled technology worker, they tend to let you right in...in my experience.

Seems like a subscription to a national MLS service would allow her access to all the same images with none of the copyright claims Zillow wants to make.

In this part of the country, it seems like Kroger's ClickList service has been very successful. I'd imagine other larger chains in other parts of the country are doing similar things. Sure, it's not delivery but if you are driving right past the store on the way home and don't even have to get out of the car, it's a pretty close competitor. That's especially true in smaller communities where Amazon's grocery delivery doesn't yet make sense. Might this be a partial reason that Amazon is making a bet on the grocery market?

Ordered the book based on the fact that it helped you make these connections and hypotheses. Must be a good book.

You got me. I was reading and thinking, "This person just couldn't be more wrong." Nicely done.

Curator at an art museum and publisher of unique writing about music, art, and humans.

This is the same as cops offering to sell drugs or sex and then busting the buyers.

I'm working on a Twitter client that only runs on this OS. Wait a sec... Oh, I see. Time machine was NOT set to 2010.

Working on a Pokemon GO client that only runs on this OS.

This has nothing to do with gender issues, sexuality issues, societal changes, or Internet ubiquity. This is simply a flailing attempt to get press for a moribund flagship publication that is likely dragging down a profitable brand. This is a money and marketing decision and nothing more. Like New Coke, I can foresee Playboy returning to nude photos with some huge star in a few years.

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney. One of my favorites.

  Between my finger and my thumb   
  The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

  Under my window, a clean rasping sound   
  When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
  My father, digging. I look down

  Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   
  Bends low, comes up twenty years away   
  Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   
  Where he was digging.

  The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   
  Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
  He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
  To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
  Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

  By God, the old man could handle a spade.   
  Just like his old man.

  My grandfather cut more turf in a day
  Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
  Once I carried him milk in a bottle
  Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
  To drink it, then fell to right away
  Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
  Over his shoulder, going down and down
  For the good turf. Digging.

  The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
  Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
  Through living roots awaken in my head.
  But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

  Between my finger and my thumb
  The squat pen rests.
  I’ll dig with it.

Only for repeat opens. The original open still accesses a particular URL specific to that recipient so the open is recorded even if Gmail hides IP, browser, OS, and other data via their proxy. If the user doesn't view the images, that open is never recorded anyway. So, the caching doesn't actually affect the open rate.

As someone who's coming from a Django world and is trying to get into the Rails 4 "way of things," where does this article lie in my path to enlightenment?

I always liked this set of challenges/riddles, though it is directed at Python specifically. I appreciated that it forced you to deal with some Internet-related programming tools and concepts.

http://www.pythonchallenge.com/

Great. I bought a copy and will be following along on your progress. I'll be sure to use issues and pull requests for any other suggestions/fixes I might stumble across.

I love this. I think it would be useful to move the debugging chapter much earlier in the book. Presumably, new users of Flask will encounter the (pretty awesome) Werkzeug error page as they move through the book. It might work well if a debugging chapter had exposed them to a little bit of how to interpret and use that tool. I'm sure there's a lot more about debugging to cover so maybe splitting things up makes sense too.

Porn pays.

The anecdotal evidence in my personal case which supports the ideas in this blog post is overwhelming. Having started an exercise and diet regimen a few months ago, I have noticed a vast improvement not just in physical health but in mental health.

I feel brighter (not in the intelligence sense but in the photonic sense). That is, I feel like I'm pushing positive energy out into the world instead of negative energy. It has been a fairly subtle shift over the last 3 months, but in my mind it is undeniable.

This is more of a fasting-type routine. I think there are some interesting studies being done on religious communities where this type of fasting is relatively common. I'd love to know what it feels like that first day after your diet days. Are you hungry? Can you eat much without feeling overfull? Do you feel sluggish or have trouble concentrating?

Given the replies, I thought I'd add in some details for context. On June 20, I weighed 338 pounds. I'm 6'2" tall and had a BMI of around 43. I was well past morbidly obese and had been for nearly a decade.

However, I had a vast number of tests and blood work run and the only apparent issue with any of those tests were some slightly elevated liver enzymes (fatty liver, as they say) likely because of the large amount of belly fat causing fat intrusions into the liver. Every other test was in the normal to better than normal range. Pretty incredible given my lifestyle.

I am a programmer and therefore sit in a chair a large amount of the day so my resting calorie consumption was pretty low. I did no exercise of any kind.

As I sit here this morning, I weigh 289 pounds and have a BMI of around 37. I still have a long way to go, but a calorie-restricted diet combined with moderate exercise (The first day I did 12 minutes on an elliptical at around 50 watts equaling something about half a mile. This morning I did 45 min. at around 75 watts equaling about 4.25 miles) has helped me made the progress I've made.

As for the diet, I started out at around 1600 calories a day. As I've progressed, that quota has decreased to around 1300 a day, though I typically eat less than 1000. While I track it on a daily/meal basis, I typically only analyze it at the week-by-week level.

I primarily use loseit.com to track and analyze all the data I capture.

Roughly speaking, it's about 25% fat, 40% carbs, 35% protein measured over the course of a week. I've recently added some light weight training to the exercise regimen and I'd like to increase that protein percentage to give my muscles the protein they need to build/repair. I have found that a lower percentage of fat doesn't really work well as it seems to throw my lipids out of balance (body overcompensation, perhaps?).

Most of the other replies here got the gist of what I wrote, but for me, it's about apparent energy levels. That is, because I don't feel weighed down and sluggish because of a huge, greasy meal, I'm more apt to get outside and play basketball with my son or go for a walk, etc.

I think there's a component of this to what I'm doing. My wife and I are often making very healthy, high-quality meals instead of fast food as you suggest. I don't think that has to equal more calories or any less enjoyment of food.

Well, nobody said I don't eat foods I love on occasion and in moderation. For me, that moderation component is only achievable when I'm following a disciplined program the rest of the time. As to the notion of being impoverished by not having all the delicious foods in the world, that strikes me as a very aloof and distant connection with how the rest of the world lives.

I recently went to a county fair. While I tried to be mindful of what I was eating, I didn't deprive myself of the treats a fair has to offer. This is not about self-flagellation but about better self-awareness and in the end, hopefully about better health.