Do you edit audio for NBC? Because you left out some details for the sake of villifying Zimmerman.
You stated: "He shot an innocent with candies," painting the image of a sweet little cherub skipping down the street with a big lollipop, and a bully with a gun taking his life with no cause. That ignores the evidence and eyewitness reports that a 6'3" man was smashing Zimmerman's head into the ground before he was shot, ostensibly in self-defense. That he had Skittles in his pocket at the time is irrelevant.
At the end of the day, neither you nor I know what REALLY happened that night, and there is no way of knowing what was going through either man's mind leading up to and during the shooting. Zimmerman stated right from the beginning that he would turn himself in if he was charged.
So now there is going to be a trial. I really hope that justice is served. I fear that even if Zimmerman is genuinely innocent, he will be made a sacrificial lamb on the altar of national guilt. I guarantee that, if he is found innocent, there will be protests, gnashing of teeth, potentially riots, and the man will probably never live in peace again.
Just a thought... if you don't want to read it, don't.
Another thought... chill out a little. This is the Internet, not real life. I'd bet a bitcoin or two you wouldn't speak to the guy that way if he was standing in front of you.
I may be mistaken, but I thought that the reason the Apple used a 6502 is that both Steves were working for Atari at the time, and Atari used 6502s extensively (really, exclusively until they started licensing Namco games) in their arcade games and computers. So, they had the chip at their disposal and they knew how to program them. There's a great story about how Jobs lied to and porked his buddy Woz out of a bonus for designing Breakout for Atari (which did not use a processor, it was entirely TTL).
Don't. If everybody you're dealing with it using Windows or Mac, then follow suit. If you want to use Linux, then do it on personal time... as somebody else said, I wouldn't jeopardize my income by switching platforms "just because".
And since I'm sure to get flamed by all the Linux advocates... let me pose this question. Let's say you're working in a Linux or a Mac shop, including Linux-only apps, and somebody comes in and decides they want to use Windows... you'd probably not want to accommodate them.
I'm all for Linux and rooting for underdogs and all that good stuff... but, if you need somebody who can put 100lb widgets on a shelf that's 6 feet high, and the underdog is 4'5" and sickly and weak, he just can't do the job, no matter how supportive you are.
Sorry, sensitive one; my non-literal use of the word 'bully' has apparently evoked a strong emotional response from you. Let's pretend I used the word 'convince' instead, dab away the tears with a tissue, and go get an ice cream.
I live in an area where my signal is finicky... usually at 1 bar, sometimes 2, just as often 0. I was experiencing a lot of dropped calls and delayed SMS delivery in my apartment, so I went to the store and told them that I was switching providers (I go way back to the Cingular days) unless they gave me a microcell. They did. It works pretty well, but isn't perfect. I don't know if I'd pay $200 for one, but it's pretty easy to bully the people at carriers' store fronts into giving you accessories and stuff to keep you on their books. I told the manager, "it can cost you $200 now, or $200 every month... which is it gonna be?"
Right now I'm working for a company with a huge infrastructure (hundreds of servers), huge nightly backups, and essentially indefinite archival/retention requirements. Our tapes come bar coded, and are automatically cataloged by our auto-changers, and the software keeps track of what version of what file is on what tape if we need to recover something. The idea of manually numbering HDDs with a sticker, and maintaining a separate index that we "back up somewhere else" is just silly in this environment. It would be laughed at.
Now, that being said, I've recently held a couple of MSP positions, and our clients were generally much, much smaller environments... like 10 people. So in a case like that, perhaps your recommendation could work and there would be some cost benefit.
Bottom line is, one size does not fit all. There is a place for tape, and there is a place for disk. Many times, there is a case for using both. Sometimes your solution will be driven by a C-level who's really just a glorified accountant, can't see past dollars and cents, and you'll be told to implement something really stupid, despite your well-intentioned protests. Or maybe you're given a nickels-and-dimes budget to work with, and you'll need to get creative and cobble something together (yes, I've worked there too). The longer you spend in the field, the more you're going to see. You can't pick out the furniture until you measure the room.
The only thing a RAID array buys you is convenience of access and the ability to store single files that exceed the size of a hard drive, so if you're just storing individual files long-term, there's no reason to merge the stuff into large RAID arrays.
You can use a hard drive in exactly the same way that you would use a tape. Number each drive with a big, numbered sticker, and when you fill up a drive, make an index of everything on it and keep that on a drive that you back up regularly.
So for that case, the only differences between a hard drive and tapes are A. automated indexing (maybe), B. the cost of the tape drive, C. the difference in cost between a tape and a hard drive, and D. the additional physical space that the hard drive takes up. And even the physical space isn't all that different if you're talking about external laptop drives. So it's mostly cost plus ten lines of code.
For the giant library situation, yes, if you have instant access requirements (a TV broadcast facility comes to mind), it might be marginally cheaper to manage a library of tapes than a library of hard drives, at least for now.
I once saw photos taken by a (IIRC) French photographer at the previous turn of the century (1900s) of nude adolescent girls playing in the water. That's all. Nothing sexual about it. They're about as arousing as a table leg. I can't remember the photographer's name, but that's beside the point. In other countries, he's considered a great artist. In the US a child pornographer.
We in the US have retarded attitudes towards sex and we are the twisted ones. If you think nude pictures of child are pornography, then that means you find them arousing and that you are the sick bastard.
All those judges who ruled that pictures of children are pornography are the perverts.
We in the US are pretty much perverts.
The French photographer's work that you allude to may very well be art; I haven't seen it, but assuming that it was non-sexual in nature, and the fact that swimming in the nude wasn't terribly uncommon then, sure... let's call it art.
Pictures of one's kids in the bathtub? I'm sure that's innocent 99.999% of the time. I've heard stories of parents being arrested and charged because some panicky Pete at the developers saw the pictures and called the authorities, and I think that's patently absurd.
However, pictures or videos of pre-adolescent children being sexually violated? Please tell me how you would defend that.
So, no, perhaps not all photos of nude children should be considered porn, but neither can you say that none of them can. I have this funny feeling that all you people who like to sit on your intellectual high horses and pontificate as to the literal meanings of this or that might feel a little differently if you found out your babysitter was taking pictures of her boyfriend molesting your 3 year old. To pretend otherwise just seems smug to me.
I must be reading your post incorrectly, because what I'm getting from it is that you consider child pornography to be 'information'. Please tell me I'm wrong.
Actually, AF Combat Comms specialists DO get involved in heavy ground combat. Some people (not parent) seem to think that everybody in the Air Force flies planes... not the case. What is it, something like 4% fly?
And to the gentleman above who did not believe that Scouting had military aspirations, look up the early history of Scouting - especially in the UK. It definitely was a pre-military (as opposed to para military) organization. The concept of being in uniform, being beholden to a chain of command, having a group purpose, being outside and physically fit was indeed to create future Bog-Fearing warfighters.
Now the concept has morphed into something completely weird, but that tends to happen with big organizations.
If that was directed at me, yes I know that the original purpose (or one of, anyway) of the Boy Scouts was to ease a boy's transition into military life (that being in an era when boys would lie about their age to go fight a war at 14 years old, and serving your country in the event of war was practically a given), but that was 110 years ago. None of that exists today, for better or worse.
Your scaremongering ignorance is astounding. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Assault rifles do NOT have "point-and-click interfaces". Have you ever held or fired one? To begin with, they're heavy. A child would not be able to hold one level, let alone steady. Pulling the bolt back to chamber a round requires more strength than most children have. The recoil would probably knock a smaller child down, and certainly scare the majority of children into dropping the weapon.
Do you honestly think children learn how to "sprint with 60 pounds of equipment"? Utterly ridiculous. Cub Scouts today do jack shit physically... they do little crafts, play nicey-nice, maybe do the occasional camp out. Boy Scouts will do marches occasionally during camp outs, during which they are supposed to spot and recover and litter in the woods or on trails, but they're not being "trained" for anything more than cleaning up nature and leaving a site in better condition than they found it. Yes, they are encouraged to be patriotic (and what is wrong with that?), but never in the 12 years that I've been involved in it through my sons have they done anything that could be considered PT or indoctrination. Hell, they barely move at all anymore, even at the Boy Scout level. When my oldest son was Senior Patrol Leader, he got the idea to punish unruly younger scouts with pushups. That was quickly put an end to, because the fat little kids couldn't do any and it "hurt their feelings". Yes, even the Boy Scouts are crippled by silly, counterproductive, and ultimately harmful Political Correctness.
There is a great deal of good that comes from scouting, but much like religion and capitalism, all the news ever reports is when something goes wrong, and a leader molests a kid or something. Believe me, that is the exception and not the rule, and with all the safeguards in place to prevent that from happening, a lot of people have to drop a lot of balls (no pun intended) before that takes place... not the least of whom is the parents.
The assertion that the Boy Scouts, let alone the Cub Scouts is some sort of paramilitary organization is just absurd, ignorant, fantastic, and patently incorrect. It's about keeping boys out of trouble, involved in something, and teaching them responsibility, leadership, and chivalry for lack of a better term. I know it's all "cool" right now to scoff at those traits, but I'm proud of my sons and scouting has certainly helped them grow into better people.
Oh, and since your post was rife with thinly-veiled disdain for our armed forces, remember this... whatever you think of the war that we are currently involved in, those armed forces are the same ones who are sworn to protect YOU and YOUR FAMILY if and when an enemy decides you're better off in the ground and our resources belong in their coffers. Even if you don't like them, they would protect you anyway.
Wow, modded up to +5 Informative for a post that suggests that "the assumption that anyone from the south deserves to be denigrated and disrespected automatically" is "correct"?!
Seriously people? Somebody care to let stupid me in on why? Is it because Family Guy says so, or what?
I'm up in the Boston area, by the way, so I have no real stake in defending the South... I just think double standards suck. And, FWIW, the last couple times I was in the South on business (Alabama and Texas), I met some of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of speaking with. An accent and dialect doesn't make one less intelligent, any more than the color of one's skin.
All fructose is processed by the liver in the same way as alcohol. That includes fruit juice.
All this changes in the presence of fiber. If you eat a piece of fresh fruit, the fiber in the fruit changes the way the fructose from the fruit is absorbed so it's not such a huge shock to the liver.
Fruit juice != fruit.
Drinking a tall glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 6~8 oranges, but without the fibers.
Your liver treats the massive sugar dump much differently than eating the equivalent # of [fruit].
The FDA wants to toss fruit juices into the same category of "bad" drinks as sugar laden sodas.
Exactly true, and yet millions of (nutritionally) uneducated mothers and/or fathers insist that their children drink plenty of juice (most of which is probably only 10% real fruit juice to begin with), instead of soda... because it's "healthy".
I won't go off on my usual rant about the terrible food pyramid we've been brainwashed with since the 60s ("eat a shitload of bread, but NO FATS!"), but the bigger problem I'm seeing every day is just an utter ignorance about what people put into their body, or an unwillingness to try something different.
"It says LEAN Cuisine on the box! That means I'll lose weight by eating it."
My dad taught me something when I was younger, probably without even meaning to... if you can't pronounce all the ingredients, you shouldn't eat it. Of course, as a kid, I ignored that advice and just ate whatever tasted good. My mother did her best, but she grew up in an Italian household, which means a lot of pasta and other starches. When she went back to work, the fridge was filled with microwaveable "food", that I could nuke whenever I thought I was hungry. Guess who was a fat kid who sucked at sports, couldn't keep up with friends when there was running, biking, climbing, or jumping was involved? Guess who grew up to be a fat adult who tried all the same shit (pills, "diet" meals, "magic" exercise apparatus, etc.) as many other fat people, with the same results... still fat.
It took a combination of a rough period in my life, combined with pure dumb luck... I was really low and, rather than drown myself in booze, I decided that I'd had enough, and that it was time to work on me. I got an email from a major men's magazine, offering a 30-day free trial of a book (which I've shilled on/. before), the title of which appealed to desire to be more of a man than I saw in the mirror at the time. The price of the book was less than a night at the local watering hole, so I went for it. When it arrived, first I thumbed through it. There was a lot of *common sense* stuff in there that just hadn't occurred to me before. So, I went back and READ it. Many an a-ha moment. Then I went back again and applied it. Now, at the risk of sounding like a braggart, I'm one of the most fit guys in the office. People are constantly asking for, and then either disregarding or outright refuting my advice. The result is, they're still fat, and I'm still not.
Bottom line is, there's no magic pill, there's no silver bullet, there's really no secret. Back in the caveman days, right up to a half century ago, you almost had to try to get fat. Now, the food manufacturers (think about that phrase for a moment) are pumping chemicals into their products to make them taste better, cheaper. When I was a kid, McDonald's was a once-in-a-while treat. Now it's considered by many to be a viable option for all three major meals. People get in their car and drive to the store a block away. Hell, I see parents put their kids in the van and drive TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY to wait for the bus. People would rather wait in their car for 20 minutes in the Dunkin' Donuts drive through than park, get out, and be in and out of the place in 2 minutes. Schools have dropped gym class to save money and make more time for standardized tests. My oldest son tells me they don't really
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That is all.
Do you edit audio for NBC? Because you left out some details for the sake of villifying Zimmerman.
You stated: "He shot an innocent with candies," painting the image of a sweet little cherub skipping down the street with a big lollipop, and a bully with a gun taking his life with no cause. That ignores the evidence and eyewitness reports that a 6'3" man was smashing Zimmerman's head into the ground before he was shot, ostensibly in self-defense. That he had Skittles in his pocket at the time is irrelevant.
At the end of the day, neither you nor I know what REALLY happened that night, and there is no way of knowing what was going through either man's mind leading up to and during the shooting. Zimmerman stated right from the beginning that he would turn himself in if he was charged.
So now there is going to be a trial. I really hope that justice is served. I fear that even if Zimmerman is genuinely innocent, he will be made a sacrificial lamb on the altar of national guilt. I guarantee that, if he is found innocent, there will be protests, gnashing of teeth, potentially riots, and the man will probably never live in peace again.
This.
Just a thought... if you don't want to read it, don't.
Another thought... chill out a little. This is the Internet, not real life. I'd bet a bitcoin or two you wouldn't speak to the guy that way if he was standing in front of you.
6502 = MOS
6809 = Motorola
I may be mistaken, but I thought that the reason the Apple used a 6502 is that both Steves were working for Atari at the time, and Atari used 6502s extensively (really, exclusively until they started licensing Namco games) in their arcade games and computers. So, they had the chip at their disposal and they knew how to program them. There's a great story about how Jobs lied to and porked his buddy Woz out of a bonus for designing Breakout for Atari (which did not use a processor, it was entirely TTL).
That was a well-articulated, insightful, and enlightening post. Now I understand why they took China out of the Red Dawn remake.
Don't. If everybody you're dealing with it using Windows or Mac, then follow suit. If you want to use Linux, then do it on personal time... as somebody else said, I wouldn't jeopardize my income by switching platforms "just because".
And since I'm sure to get flamed by all the Linux advocates... let me pose this question. Let's say you're working in a Linux or a Mac shop, including Linux-only apps, and somebody comes in and decides they want to use Windows... you'd probably not want to accommodate them.
I'm all for Linux and rooting for underdogs and all that good stuff... but, if you need somebody who can put 100lb widgets on a shelf that's 6 feet high, and the underdog is 4'5" and sickly and weak, he just can't do the job, no matter how supportive you are.
Sorry, sensitive one; my non-literal use of the word 'bully' has apparently evoked a strong emotional response from you. Let's pretend I used the word 'convince' instead, dab away the tears with a tissue, and go get an ice cream.
Just read TFA... it is, in fact, actual GPS for not only positioning, but also time synchronization.
I live in an area where my signal is finicky... usually at 1 bar, sometimes 2, just as often 0. I was experiencing a lot of dropped calls and delayed SMS delivery in my apartment, so I went to the store and told them that I was switching providers (I go way back to the Cingular days) unless they gave me a microcell. They did. It works pretty well, but isn't perfect. I don't know if I'd pay $200 for one, but it's pretty easy to bully the people at carriers' store fronts into giving you accessories and stuff to keep you on their books. I told the manager, "it can cost you $200 now, or $200 every month... which is it gonna be?"
Actually, I have one, and I'm led to believe it is a real GPS. You need to keep the unit near a window. It's ostensibly for 911 purposes.
Right now I'm working for a company with a huge infrastructure (hundreds of servers), huge nightly backups, and essentially indefinite archival/retention requirements. Our tapes come bar coded, and are automatically cataloged by our auto-changers, and the software keeps track of what version of what file is on what tape if we need to recover something. The idea of manually numbering HDDs with a sticker, and maintaining a separate index that we "back up somewhere else" is just silly in this environment. It would be laughed at.
Now, that being said, I've recently held a couple of MSP positions, and our clients were generally much, much smaller environments... like 10 people. So in a case like that, perhaps your recommendation could work and there would be some cost benefit.
Bottom line is, one size does not fit all. There is a place for tape, and there is a place for disk. Many times, there is a case for using both. Sometimes your solution will be driven by a C-level who's really just a glorified accountant, can't see past dollars and cents, and you'll be told to implement something really stupid, despite your well-intentioned protests. Or maybe you're given a nickels-and-dimes budget to work with, and you'll need to get creative and cobble something together (yes, I've worked there too). The longer you spend in the field, the more you're going to see. You can't pick out the furniture until you measure the room.
The only thing a RAID array buys you is convenience of access and the ability to store single files that exceed the size of a hard drive, so if you're just storing individual files long-term, there's no reason to merge the stuff into large RAID arrays.
You can use a hard drive in exactly the same way that you would use a tape. Number each drive with a big, numbered sticker, and when you fill up a drive, make an index of everything on it and keep that on a drive that you back up regularly.
So for that case, the only differences between a hard drive and tapes are A. automated indexing (maybe), B. the cost of the tape drive, C. the difference in cost between a tape and a hard drive, and D. the additional physical space that the hard drive takes up. And even the physical space isn't all that different if you're talking about external laptop drives. So it's mostly cost plus ten lines of code.
For the giant library situation, yes, if you have instant access requirements (a TV broadcast facility comes to mind), it might be marginally cheaper to manage a library of tapes than a library of hard drives, at least for now.
I once saw photos taken by a (IIRC) French photographer at the previous turn of the century (1900s) of nude adolescent girls playing in the water. That's all. Nothing sexual about it. They're about as arousing as a table leg. I can't remember the photographer's name, but that's beside the point. In other countries, he's considered a great artist. In the US a child pornographer.
We in the US have retarded attitudes towards sex and we are the twisted ones. If you think nude pictures of child are pornography, then that means you find them arousing and that you are the sick bastard.
All those judges who ruled that pictures of children are pornography are the perverts.
We in the US are pretty much perverts.
The French photographer's work that you allude to may very well be art; I haven't seen it, but assuming that it was non-sexual in nature, and the fact that swimming in the nude wasn't terribly uncommon then, sure... let's call it art.
Pictures of one's kids in the bathtub? I'm sure that's innocent 99.999% of the time. I've heard stories of parents being arrested and charged because some panicky Pete at the developers saw the pictures and called the authorities, and I think that's patently absurd.
However, pictures or videos of pre-adolescent children being sexually violated? Please tell me how you would defend that.
So, no, perhaps not all photos of nude children should be considered porn, but neither can you say that none of them can. I have this funny feeling that all you people who like to sit on your intellectual high horses and pontificate as to the literal meanings of this or that might feel a little differently if you found out your babysitter was taking pictures of her boyfriend molesting your 3 year old. To pretend otherwise just seems smug to me.
Yes, yes. Semantics aside, I believe you understand the spirit of my post. But, whatever. It's more fun to be a pedant.
And the award for Most Obvious Joke That Didn't Need to Be Said goes to.... [tearing envelope].... THAT guy!
I must be reading your post incorrectly, because what I'm getting from it is that you consider child pornography to be 'information'. Please tell me I'm wrong.
[deafening silence]
Why, do you have some you don't want? [rubbing hands together greedily]
Actually, AF Combat Comms specialists DO get involved in heavy ground combat. Some people (not parent) seem to think that everybody in the Air Force flies planes... not the case. What is it, something like 4% fly?
And to the gentleman above who did not believe that Scouting had military aspirations, look up the early history of Scouting - especially in the UK. It definitely was a pre-military (as opposed to para military) organization. The concept of being in uniform, being beholden to a chain of command, having a group purpose, being outside and physically fit was indeed to create future Bog-Fearing warfighters. Now the concept has morphed into something completely weird, but that tends to happen with big organizations.
If that was directed at me, yes I know that the original purpose (or one of, anyway) of the Boy Scouts was to ease a boy's transition into military life (that being in an era when boys would lie about their age to go fight a war at 14 years old, and serving your country in the event of war was practically a given), but that was 110 years ago. None of that exists today, for better or worse.
Really? This? Are you going to have a merit badge for going to the movies?
How about you work on some of those long standing issues like your discrimination against gays, and non-Christians?
Yeah, except they don't have any problem with gays or non-Christians. So, what was your argument again?
Your scaremongering ignorance is astounding. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Assault rifles do NOT have "point-and-click interfaces". Have you ever held or fired one? To begin with, they're heavy. A child would not be able to hold one level, let alone steady. Pulling the bolt back to chamber a round requires more strength than most children have. The recoil would probably knock a smaller child down, and certainly scare the majority of children into dropping the weapon.
Do you honestly think children learn how to "sprint with 60 pounds of equipment"? Utterly ridiculous. Cub Scouts today do jack shit physically... they do little crafts, play nicey-nice, maybe do the occasional camp out. Boy Scouts will do marches occasionally during camp outs, during which they are supposed to spot and recover and litter in the woods or on trails, but they're not being "trained" for anything more than cleaning up nature and leaving a site in better condition than they found it. Yes, they are encouraged to be patriotic (and what is wrong with that?), but never in the 12 years that I've been involved in it through my sons have they done anything that could be considered PT or indoctrination. Hell, they barely move at all anymore, even at the Boy Scout level. When my oldest son was Senior Patrol Leader, he got the idea to punish unruly younger scouts with pushups. That was quickly put an end to, because the fat little kids couldn't do any and it "hurt their feelings". Yes, even the Boy Scouts are crippled by silly, counterproductive, and ultimately harmful Political Correctness.
There is a great deal of good that comes from scouting, but much like religion and capitalism, all the news ever reports is when something goes wrong, and a leader molests a kid or something. Believe me, that is the exception and not the rule, and with all the safeguards in place to prevent that from happening, a lot of people have to drop a lot of balls (no pun intended) before that takes place... not the least of whom is the parents.
The assertion that the Boy Scouts, let alone the Cub Scouts is some sort of paramilitary organization is just absurd, ignorant, fantastic, and patently incorrect. It's about keeping boys out of trouble, involved in something, and teaching them responsibility, leadership, and chivalry for lack of a better term. I know it's all "cool" right now to scoff at those traits, but I'm proud of my sons and scouting has certainly helped them grow into better people.
Oh, and since your post was rife with thinly-veiled disdain for our armed forces, remember this... whatever you think of the war that we are currently involved in, those armed forces are the same ones who are sworn to protect YOU and YOUR FAMILY if and when an enemy decides you're better off in the ground and our resources belong in their coffers. Even if you don't like them, they would protect you anyway.
Wow, modded up to +5 Informative for a post that suggests that "the assumption that anyone from the south deserves to be denigrated and disrespected automatically" is "correct"?!
Seriously people? Somebody care to let stupid me in on why? Is it because Family Guy says so, or what?
I'm up in the Boston area, by the way, so I have no real stake in defending the South... I just think double standards suck. And, FWIW, the last couple times I was in the South on business (Alabama and Texas), I met some of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of speaking with. An accent and dialect doesn't make one less intelligent, any more than the color of one's skin.
All fructose is processed by the liver in the same way as alcohol. That includes fruit juice.
All this changes in the presence of fiber. If you eat a piece of fresh fruit, the fiber in the fruit changes the way the fructose from the fruit is absorbed so it's not such a huge shock to the liver.
Fruit juice != fruit. Drinking a tall glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 6~8 oranges, but without the fibers. Your liver treats the massive sugar dump much differently than eating the equivalent # of [fruit].
The FDA wants to toss fruit juices into the same category of "bad" drinks as sugar laden sodas.
Exactly true, and yet millions of (nutritionally) uneducated mothers and/or fathers insist that their children drink plenty of juice (most of which is probably only 10% real fruit juice to begin with), instead of soda... because it's "healthy".
/. before), the title of which appealed to desire to be more of a man than I saw in the mirror at the time. The price of the book was less than a night at the local watering hole, so I went for it. When it arrived, first I thumbed through it. There was a lot of *common sense* stuff in there that just hadn't occurred to me before. So, I went back and READ it. Many an a-ha moment. Then I went back again and applied it. Now, at the risk of sounding like a braggart, I'm one of the most fit guys in the office. People are constantly asking for, and then either disregarding or outright refuting my advice. The result is, they're still fat, and I'm still not.
I won't go off on my usual rant about the terrible food pyramid we've been brainwashed with since the 60s ("eat a shitload of bread, but NO FATS!"), but the bigger problem I'm seeing every day is just an utter ignorance about what people put into their body, or an unwillingness to try something different.
"It says LEAN Cuisine on the box! That means I'll lose weight by eating it."
My dad taught me something when I was younger, probably without even meaning to... if you can't pronounce all the ingredients, you shouldn't eat it. Of course, as a kid, I ignored that advice and just ate whatever tasted good. My mother did her best, but she grew up in an Italian household, which means a lot of pasta and other starches. When she went back to work, the fridge was filled with microwaveable "food", that I could nuke whenever I thought I was hungry. Guess who was a fat kid who sucked at sports, couldn't keep up with friends when there was running, biking, climbing, or jumping was involved? Guess who grew up to be a fat adult who tried all the same shit (pills, "diet" meals, "magic" exercise apparatus, etc.) as many other fat people, with the same results... still fat.
It took a combination of a rough period in my life, combined with pure dumb luck... I was really low and, rather than drown myself in booze, I decided that I'd had enough, and that it was time to work on me. I got an email from a major men's magazine, offering a 30-day free trial of a book (which I've shilled on
Bottom line is, there's no magic pill, there's no silver bullet, there's really no secret. Back in the caveman days, right up to a half century ago, you almost had to try to get fat. Now, the food manufacturers (think about that phrase for a moment) are pumping chemicals into their products to make them taste better, cheaper. When I was a kid, McDonald's was a once-in-a-while treat. Now it's considered by many to be a viable option for all three major meals. People get in their car and drive to the store a block away. Hell, I see parents put their kids in the van and drive TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY to wait for the bus. People would rather wait in their car for 20 minutes in the Dunkin' Donuts drive through than park, get out, and be in and out of the place in 2 minutes. Schools have dropped gym class to save money and make more time for standardized tests. My oldest son tells me they don't really