New research from Duke has shown that eating with a skinny person who has a high metabolism can actually lead you to eat more than can eating with other people--even if your companions (skinny or non) eat the same amount. Let me explain.

There were two groups. One group watched a skinny person take some candy from a bowl. The other group watched a heavier person (actually the skinny person in a fat suit made by a Hollywood movie company) take some candy from a bowl. In reality, both the skinny person and the heavier person took the same amount of candy. The people who watched the skinny person both took and ate more of the candy.

In opposition to what you might be thinking, the results aren't suggesting that obesity is the fault of those people who don't have to watch their weight. The implication is simply this: WE NEED TO STOP TAKING OUR EATING CUES FROM OTHER PEOPLE.

Here's my magical three-step weight loss solution.

1. Eat less food than your body requires to maintain its current weight.
2. Remember step 1.
3. Don't forget step 1.

It's math. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you need. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you need. I'm not saying it's easy--we're surrounded by easy calories, and many people have intervening factors (i.e., genetics, health conditions, etc.)--but I am saying that it's not only possible, it's a mathematical certainty.

I was on the train the other day when a tallish man with a crumpled little hat and a paper bag in his hand sat down beside me.

Him: I'm not a bum.
Me: Me either.
Him: No really, I'm not a bum. But I did just get out of jail.

He showed me the contents of his bag, which included a used plastic razor, a mostly-empty package of medication, a worn bible, and mail, addressed to the jail and stamped with that day's date.

Him: I need $5 to get a bus ticket.
Me: I need $19,000 to pay for school, and doesn't the train ticket come with unlimited bus fare?
Him: I need a Greyhound ticket, and I'm not a bum.
Me: Oh.
Him: Well, can you help me or not?
Me: I'd be happy to talk to you for a while.
Him: I don't need a friend. I need money.
Me: I don't give money to people who aren't my friends.
Him: I think I know a verse about that. God told me you were going to bless me.

Then he showed me his 'broken' Mp3 player and asked me if I could fix it. I did and showed him how to use it. He encouraged me to look at his book, a set of four novellas on sale at Amazon.com for $12.95. I said I would. He showed me his gang tattoos and said he wrote the book after a prison term in California when he became a Christian and decided to give up the "gang life." I asked if prison was as bad as they make it out on TV. He said it was worse. I asked how Christianity was working out for him. He showed me his favorite verse (It's better to live on the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.) and called the recent jail term and separation from his wife "setbacks."

I looked up his book later. My favorite part is the description of, That’s What It Is, novella number three: "a young convict finds out an older convict is a cross-country pimp, so he’s out to pick his brain for the pimp game."

If I could make this stuff up, I'd probably be an author myself. At least I made a new friend.

Things that have been happening lately:

• The dog has taken to cornering the cats and barking at them until we go over and pet the cats and tell him that they are not vermin.
• The dog has roundworms and at least one tape worm (thanks animal shelter).
• The cats don't have worms. Yet.
• I have three presentations in the next two weeks. One is scheduled for 20 minutes, one for 75 minutes, and one for 160 minutes.
• I don't have anything to talk about for the long presentation because, 12 hours before our meeting to talk about the topic of my presentation, my adviser unexpectedly had her baby several weeks early.
  
• On Tuesdays, I leave the house at 6:45 AM and don't get back until 8:45 PM.
• I hate Tuesdays.
• I put fire ant bait all over the yard, and I think the fire ants are all dead.
• I'm not sure it will be safe to have a garden in the yard because of all the poison.
• I hate fire ants and poison.
• I said "y'all" today (on purpose).
• I'm not sure how I felt about it. On the one hand, I recognize the clear need in the English language for a second-person plural. On the other hand, I'm not that acclimated yet.
  

I don't think we realized how sick Barney had actually gotten. He's been getting healthier and healthier as the days go by, and I think he actually must have been pretty sick already when we brought him home from the pound.

Every time I think he's reached his upper limit on how much more active he's going to get, he just gets a little more hyper and exceeds my expectations. Yesterday he was bounding across the couch pouncing on imaginary things in my and Sarah's laps. This morning he was chasing me (and catching me) as I sprinted around the potted plants in the backyard.

Then came this afternoon, when he became a teenager. As I was trying to get some work done for school, I noticed that he was fiddling with the stuffed moose that he brought home from the shelter (they said it was his favorite toy). He kept chewing on it's legs, pulling at its ears, and wrestling with it. After a while, I looked closer. Wrestling? Or humping?

Favorite toy indeed. New euphemism: "humping the moose". It'll catch on, you watch.

Are you left handed, or do you know a person with left-handedness (person first language is typically appropriate when you're speaking about someone with a disability--e.g., person with down syndrome, person with depression, person with left-handedness, etc.)? Were you cutting open some bags of dried beans today? And did it take you 10 minutes to get the scissors to function properly? Did you end up using both hands?

Friends, LH isn't as bad as any other disability in the world, but it does impair a person's ability to use scissors. If you or someone you know never learned to use scissors, please call 555-Scissor-Illiterate, and get access to needed help. Just because you or your loved one failed to learn this skill in 1st grade doesn't mean suffering should needlessly continue. Help is on the way.

After some poking around outside, I found that there are far more ants than I initially thought. After going to Lowe's to buy supplies for the ant fight, I've come to believe that there are far more ants in the South than I initially thought--because there are a LOT of anti-ant products out there. In any case, the fight is on hold for now, because it's been raining for three days, and I think the ants are hiding from me. Or from the 6 inches of rain we've gotten. But I suspect it's from me because I said some stern words to them before heading to the store.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my buying habits. As most of you know, I'm generally a frugal person, not a tightwad, but almost. In deciding whether or not to buy a product, I typically consider three factors: (a) the price, (b) the value/quality of the product, and (c) my own personal need of the product. In other words, I only buy things that are cheap, or offer good value for the price, and I usually only buy things that I need (relatively speaking).

But recently, a philosophical shift in my thinking has led me to consider another factor: (d) the business practices of the company who sells the product. Yesterday Sarah and I decided to go out to eat after church. We could have gone to McDonald's and spent $3.17 (one dollar menu sandwich each, plus one dollar fry to split), but instead, we decided to go to Whataburger, a slightly smaller company (only in 10 states) that happens to give health and retirement benefits to ALL its employees (that's right, health insurance for flipping burgers). We spent $5.37 for the same meal we could have gotten at McDonald's for 40% less money, but at the same time, we used our 'wallet' to encourage the free market to compensate ALL workers well.

I'm not saying everyone should do shop this way. Some people just don't have enough money to spend 40% extra everywhere they go. But let me tell you this, at Whataburger, we were greeted with a friendly hello upon entering, stunned by the liveliness and conversation of the employees while dining, and sent off with a friendly goodbye and "come again" when we left. As it turns out, well-compensated employees make good workers.

Places I have been shopping more lately: Costco, Lowe's, Whataburger. These companies offer employees medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as retirement options, sick leave, and other benefits that similar companies do not always provide.

"If money talks, I want to make sure mine is saying good things about me." ~ Me

Did he just quote himself? That's perverse. This is a paid advertisement, isn't it?

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a week. I've been busy trying to get work done and impress the people who decided whether or not I'll get funding next year. Things in that regard are going well enough, but I'm not sure what factors will actually influence any decisions that will be made.

In other news, we have fire ants in the back yard. I know because they attacked me two nights ago when I was taking the dog out so he wouldn't pee in the house. My first mistake was going outside without shoes. My second mistake was standing on top of a rock that the fire ants had (unbeknownst to me) built their little kingdom under. As I shifted back and forth on the stone, waiting for the dog to finish his business, I think I upset them.

At first, I thought I was getting bit by a spider (we have lots of spiders in the grass too, those I had seen before) because it felt like I was being electrically shocked in my foot. By the time I had reached down to swat the 'spider,' I'd already been 'shocked' about 10 more times, and I really hoped I wasn't getting attacked by some sort of a flock of spiders. So, like any man would do, I grabbed my tiny dog and ran into the house like a little girl.

The angry terrorists were still biting and stinging (they do both) me well after I came inside, but they were so small (and flat, after I squashed them) that I couldn't be sure what they were. A trip to the rock and a little cautious excavation the next day confirmed my suspicion that they were fire ants.

If they think it was upsetting that I was standing on their rock, I wonder how they'll like it when I pour a bucket of boiling water on their nest?

Sarah and I have been talking about getting a dog for a long time. We've even made several trips to various animal shelters and humane societies. Yesterday's trip resulted in a new addition to the household. Meet Barney.


He's three months old, weighs 6.2 pounds, is 1/2 Papillion and 1/2 Toy Fox Terrier, and won't get too much bigger than he is right now. Both his breeds are intelligent, athletic, and bred to be responsive to human emotion, and Barney seems to be all of those things so far (inside the house, he follows us around or stays on our laps; outside, he loves to play and romp around).

Next up, getting him to stop peeing in the house.

I think I've mentioned to everyone in the world that I've been annoyed with my new department because they're making me re-take statistics, a class I've already advanced beyond in the typical course sequence. Imagine taking Spanish I and II, getting an A in each, and then being asked to take Spanish I again instead of Spanish III. Oh, and you have to pay $2700 to do it. Acceptable? No?

Their answer to my pleas has been something along the lines of "It doesn't matter what you say. It's department policy. But at least it should be easy for you!" Easy for me?!?!? That doesn't fit into my worldview. Why don't I go back to third grade. It won't be a waste of my time because it will be easy. See you in 17 years after I've repeated everything.

Anyway, I think I've figured out how I'm going to make the class worthwhile. Given that I believe I could teach it, and given that my professor is retiring at the end of the semester (after 40 years teaching the course), I'm going to borrow all his best methods and create my own stats course in case I ever need to teach one in the future.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Why is this interesting to me?" Here's the thing: it isn't. Talk to you later.