College Guy

Farewell Tulsa photo.

Dia packed the van to bursting and it took three days to move her into her dorm. No so for a guy. Ian's done in a day of packing and into his dorm in 15 minutes. Which is good, because we have to go clean Dia's dorm. It takes two days to clean it!!!!!

Women's Conference

Last speaker, first day, I giggled 'til I split.
The Ugly Truth About Beauty
by Dave Barry

If you're a man, at some point a woman will ask you how she looks.

"How do I look?" she'll ask.

You must be careful how you answer this question. The best technique is to form an honest yet sensitive opinion, then collapse on the floor with some kind of fatal seizure. Trust me, this is the easiest way out. Because you will never come up with the right answer.

The problem is that women generally do not think of their looks in the same way that men do. Most men form an opinion of how they look in the seventh grade, and they stick to it for the rest of their lives. Some men form the opinion that they are irresistible stud muffins, and they do not change this opinion even when their faces sag and their noses bloat to the size of eggplants and their eyebrows grow together to form what appears to be a giant forehead-dwelling tropical caterpillar.

Most men, I believe, think of themselves as average-looking. Men will think this even if their faces cause heart failure in cattle at a range of 300 yards. Being average does not bother them; average is fine for men. This is why men never ask anybody how they look. Their primary form of beauty care is to shave themselves, which is essentially the same form of beauty care that they give to their lawns. If, at the end of his four-minute daily beauty regimen, a man has managed to wipe most of the shaving cream out of his hair and is not bleeding too badly, he feels that he has done all he can, so he stops thinking about his appearance and devotes his mind to more critical issues, such as the Super Bowl.

Women do not look at themselves this way. If I had to express, in three words, what most women think about their appearance, those words would be: "not good enough." No matter how attractive a woman may appear to others, when she looks at herself in the mirror, she thinks, "woof." She thinks that at any moment a municipal animal-control officer is going to throw a net over her and haul her off to the shelter.

Why do women have such low self-esteem? There are many complex psychological and societal reasons, by which I mean "Barbie." Girls grow up playing with a doll proportioned such that, if it were human, it would be seven feet tall and weigh 81 pounds, of which 53 pounds would be bosoms. This is a difficult appearance standard to live up to, especially when you contrast it with the standard set for little boys by their dolls . . . excuse me, by their action figures. Most of the action figures that my son played with when he was little were hideous looking. For example, he was fond of an action figure (part of the He-Man series) called "Buzz-Off," who was part human, part flying insect. Buzz-Off was not a looker. But he was extremely self-confident. You could not imagine Buzz-Off saying to the other action figures, "Do you think these wings makes my hips look big?"

But women grow up thinking they need to look like Barbie, which for most women is impossible, although there is a multibillion-dollar beauty industry devoted to convincing women that they must try. I once saw an Oprah show wherein supermodel Cindy Crawford dispensed makeup tips to the studio audience. Cindy had all these middle-aged women apply beauty products to their faces; she stressed how important it was to apply them in a certain way, using the tips of their fingers. All the women dutifully did this, even though it was obvious to any sane observer that no matter how carefully they applied these products, they would never look remotely like Cindy Crawford, who is some kind of genetic mutation.

I'm not saying that men are superior. I'm just saying that you're not going to get a group of middle-aged men to sit in a room and apply cosmetics to themselves under the instruction of Brad Pitt, in hopes of looking more like him. Men would realize that this task was pointless and demeaning. They would find some way to bolster their self-esteem that did not require looking like Brad Pitt. They would say to Brad, "Oh YEAH? Well what do you know about LAWN CARE, pretty boy?"

Of course many women will argue that the reason they become obsessed with trying to look like Cindy Crawford is that men, being as shallow as a drop of spit, WANT women to look that way. To which I have two responses:

1. Hey, just because WE'RE idiots, that does not mean YOU have to be; and

2. Men don't even notice 97 percent of the beauty efforts you make anyway. Take fingernails. The average woman spends 5,000 hours per year worrying about her fingernails; I have never once, in more than 40 years of listening to men talk about women, heard a man say, "She has a nice set of fingernails!" Many men would not notice if a woman had upward of four hands.

Anyway, to get back to my original point: If you're a man, and a woman asks you how she looks, you're in big trouble. Obviously, you can't say she looks bad. But you also can't say that she looks great, because she'll think you're lying, because she has spent countless hours, with the help of the multibillion-dollar beauty industry, obsessing about the differences between herself and Cindy Crawford. Also, she suspects that you're not qualified to judge anybody's appearance. This is because you have shaving cream in your hair.

Family Skiing

New Post

Ian Senior Pictures

Arylamide??? What happened?

I did some research in September on acrylamide, a known carcinogenic in foods caused by cooking starchy foods at high temperatures in artificial fat. Highest levels are in french fries and potato chips.

National Cancer Institute http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/risk/acrylamide-in-food WHO (world health org.) says it is a significant risk.

I found a great website warning about it and identifying the government study that was to come forth in October. Then I get on that site to see what the study said, it's been dismantled! A new site is in it's place. My guess is that when this site was purchased by the Grocery Manufacturers Group, oddly enough, all of the study stats that warned of carcinogens in food are gone!

http://www.acrylamidefacts.org/Perspective%20on%20Acrylamide.aspx

Rest assured, there are still 200 international studies on acrylamide to come out soon it's so dangerous. Meanwhile, avoid french fries and potato chips for kids, because it's inordinately higher in acrylamide than any other food.

What's really going on? During my research, I read this article warning the food business that if consumers found out that potato chips and french fries were carcinogenic, we would balk at feeding them to our children?

http://www.bakingbusiness.com/news/headline_stories.asp?ArticleID=105596&e=tdadee@sbcglobal.net

Sacramento Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-7160-Sacramento-Nutrition-Examiner~y2009m6d15-Does-the-acrylamide-in-French-fries-potato-and-tortilla-chips-cause-cancer

Harvard study 2003 deadly cancers caused by acrylamide

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200301281.html

extra articles

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/Acrylamide-study-suggests-new-formation-pathways

Why is the public avoiding this issue? Are we just too tired of worrying about food?

Whee Ski Vacation

Pictures should say it all!

SKI SKI Ski

Wow, I saw these photographs and thought, "What great fun skiing is."

Look at that beautiful mountain.

Guys on the ski lift, gently swaying, listening to the silence of a beautiful ski day.

Then I remembered. I don't like skiing. It hurts, it's cold, and here is how I would look if I were skiing with them. Aidan must be channeling me.