So, the first year med students started a new class a few weeks ago called Clinical Ethics. While some have pronounced their enthusiasm for all-things-philosophical, my reaction was rather muted. Let me expain. I enjoy the occasional heady discussion, but amidst the rigors of gross anatomy and histology—with exams just a week and half away—I could not be easily swayed in my opinion nor my level of enthusiasm. Add on a few essays and non-science (read: non-gross anatomy) readings, and I would not call myself “enthralled” with this class, until my first essay for this class came into being.

The first assignment turned out to be less of an essay and more of a subjective, “What is your code of ethics” akin to the Hippocratic Oath. We had a few reading of other codes of ethical conduct put out by a nursing association, a managed healthcare organization, and an excerpt of the wonderfully-consistent and apt “Edmund Pellegrino”:http://www.cbhd.org/aboutcbhd/fellows/pellegrino.htm, who sits on the President’s Council on Bioethics. His writing, while verbose by normal standards, offered pertinent insight into the field of medicine and who defines it and how they go about it. (I may delve into the particulars in a future post.)

It turns out that in my personal code of ethics, I wanted to quote Pellegrino saying something along the lines of , “…should not be used to frustrate the ends of medicine.” Of course, I remembered the word frustrate, but how do you go about finding that phrase amongst the tens of pages that I had just read? Enter “Google Print”:http://print.google.com/. I had never used it before this occasion, but it allowed to me to quickly search for Pellegrino’s work and find the title. Luckily it was in their collection. I entered the word frustrate into the “Search this book” field and _voilà_, I was staring at the very page I wanted.

The controversy of Google Print as infringing on the copyrights of authors is very interesting. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the “Wall Street Journal”:http://www.wsj.com/ that offered great insight into some of the reasons for Google’s interest into scanning, digitizing and indexing the world’s compendium of written knowledge. In it, he addresses the lawsuits brought by publishers and makes a very strong case for why the lawsuits will fail. His points are compelling, namely that:

* Publishers and authors can opt out of the program.
* Copyrighted materials will not allow huge chunks to be viewed
* Search engine indexing of the internet is no different than indexing books: it offers one to search through the contents, not necessarily give them away for free
* Google Print has direct links to allow users to buy books in and out of print
* Google Print will increase the exposure of lesser-known authors

Granted, Google will have full copies of all these books, but copyright and fair use has always stemmed, at least in my opinion, from intention and not acts. Google has no intention of freely distributing copyrighted works, and the intentions of Google surely must fall under fair use. Google’s primary goals are in line with the very reason fair use exists: to expand the reach and utility to society of these creations. What more argument do you need?

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-content/pages/freshview/images/freshview_logo.jpg!:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/projects/freshview/ Ah, it’s done! Many, including myself, have expressed some lament over the lack of any purely-visual indicators for Shaun Inman’s “Mint”:http://www.haveamint.com/. I have some thoughts as to why Shaun shied away from any visual cues. For one, most other web statistic tracking applications inundate the user with useless bar graphs and pie charts that do not succinctly display data in a friendly or accessible manner. Quite naturally, dynamically-generated graphs are hard to do aesthetically for several reasons:

* GD graphics for PHP does not have anti-aliasing
* Flash graphs would be difficult without relying on some external code to create the binary flash data
* Most graphs look horrible as they were slapped together just to show the data. No design was considered in their creation except for the very bright, primary colors used for each data group.

“Fresh View”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/freshview/ fixes all of this, and more. For one, Fresh View uses SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, to display graphs for the Past Day, Past Week, Past Month, and Past Year. What are the advantages of using SVG(Scalable Vector Graphics) over the options listed above? Anti-aliased goodness and open, XML-based goodness. Add in the fact that “Firefox 1.5″:http://www.mozilla.org/ will have native SVG(Scalable Vector Graphics) support, and you have a sweet -tasting- looking setup. I worked hard to match the look and feel of Mint, so as not to clash with the great aesthetics of Mint, while giving you a quick visual look at your visitor data.

One of my favorite features is what I call “Weekend Highlighting.” Basically, on the Past Week and Past Month graphs, a translucent box is drawn over the weekend data points that immediately clue you into week and weekend trends. Cool, huh? In addition, if you roll over a data point, the exact amount corresponding to that point is shown in a nifty, JavaScript-driven SVG tooltip. I’m sure that with use, you will discover other cool features that I have not mentioned here.

Well, enough jabbering! Take a look, get the details, and “GO DOWNLOAD IT!”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/freshview/

!http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/pastweek_graph.png!:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/freshview/

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/mint_logo.png(Mint, by Shaun Inman)!:http://www.haveamint.com/ After a long lull in my posting, I am sure that no one even cares: I have installed “Mint”:http://www.haveamint.com/, the fresh web statistic tracking program created by “Shaun Inman”:http://www.shauninman.com/. Although this site serves little more than my personal creative outlet for writing, thoughts, ideas, and exclamations, there is a wee bit of narcissism that follows the creation of a personal blog. As such, how can I tell if I am (not) popular? Eating a “Mint”:http://www.haveamint.com/, of course!

Mint intelligently collects and displays hits, unique visitors, referrers (minus the referral spam, of course), and much more. Mint replaces the venerable “ShortStat”:http://www.shauninman.com/plete/2004/06/shortstat-again, which I used since this site’s inception more than a year ago. I added an SVG chart to my copy of ShortStat that matched the look and feel and I am anxious to rework it as a plugin (called Pepper) for Mint.

At $30 per domain, Mint might be a little overkill for my site, but the scalability and logical, common sense approach to the data collection is right in line with my goals of -world domination- better data visibility in smart, open formats. SQL is a such a format, and Mint is the means to accessing that data. Did I mention that there is also a “Mac OS X Tiger”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/ widget, aptly named Junior Mint?

The installation was more simple than I imagined. Change a few lines in the configuration file, upload the directory. I followed the installation prompts (site name, email, and password for authentication to haveamint.com presumably), copied the JavaScript line into the site files I wanted to track, and in seconds, I was staring at Sensory Output’s mint breath.

For all your linking pleasure, see these gushing accounts of the wonders of Mint. (Yes, by now, I am a Mint horror, too!)

* “Mint: The Flavor of the Month(Mint: The Flavor of the Month)”:http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/09/mint-the-flavor-of-the-month, by Mike Davidson
* “Mint: Better Than Girl Scout Cookies(Mint: Better Than Girl Scout Cookies)”:http://jeffcroft.com/blog/archives/2005/09/mint_better_tha.php, by Jeff Croft
* “Mint: Fresh ‘N Yummy(Mint: Fresh ‘N Yummy)”:http://www.thebignoob.com/Blog/308/mint-fresh-n-yummy, by Keegan Jones
* “Mint: It’s Good and Good For You(Mint: It’s Good and Good For You)”:http://www.iammattthomas.com/journal/mint-its-good-and-good-for-you, by Matt Thomas
* “Pimp My Mint(Pimp My Mint)”:http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/pimp-my-mint, by Jon Hicks

* “Dr. Inman’s Mint(Dr. Inman’s Mint)”:http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_articles/2005/09/03/dr_inmans_mint/index.php, by Kevin Cornell
* “Mint: A Stats Odyssey(Mint: A Stats Odyssey)”:http://www.robweychert.com/editorials/2005/09/03/mint_a_stats_odyssey/index.php, by Rob Weychert

If the title of this post did not dredge up ugly thoughts about the media and their awful obsession with Americans and their “bad” eating habits—calories, fats, carbs, and the likes—that all fall under the umbrella of nutrition, then this opener ought to do so, just in case. We all know that over America looms a giant cloud of overweightness, the streams of fat waiting to drop onto us like a torrential downpour—if it hasn’t already. The media sure lets us know about it with special reports almost weekly about the latest research into what’s good and what’s not with items like “eggs”:http://www.drlam.com/A3R_brief_in_doc_format/2003-No3-Eggs.cfm, “coffee or caffeine”:http://www.ific.org/publications/brochures/caffeinebroch.cfm, and “carbohydrates”:http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates.html floating from one side to the other in a constant tug-of-war. Although the government has guidelines pertaining to proper nutrition, how can a single label apply to a diverse population? Personally, I have been very disgusted with America’s coverage of nutrition and its affect on people’s habits, and I plan to dispel some of the myths surrounding food here. (Please note that I am not an expert, but rely on my own intuition, logic, and scientific training for my observations and conclusions presented here.)

h3. Calories, Fats, and Carbohydrates

From personal experience, I have seen the health-conscientious types attempt to ward off all things caloric, fatty, or loaded with carbohydrates. Items omitted often include red meat, cheese, 2% milk, sour cream, bread, potatoes, etc. Instead, these “bad” foods are replaced with low-fat chicken breasts, non-fat milk, low-carb you-name-it. As if the last list did not tip you off, Americans have a fetish for low-fat, low-calorie, low-carb everything. How gullible are we to think that these must be the solution to the weight pandemic that has descended upon us? Very, I will answer. I will propose that these are not in fact solutions to the problem but are endemic to it: to believe that fats and calories in general are fully responsible for Americans’ gaining of weight is preposterous! I will explain why.

Calories are a measure of energy, specifically how much energy is required to burn it. The common notion is that more calories is bad because it will take you longer to use up those calories in your daily routines. Personally, I think that calories are an awful measure of the quality of food that you are eating: on a caloric scale, a dinner at In-n-Out Burger may equal a home-cooked pasta dinner. Equivalent? I hardly think so, but people, even after I point out such evidence, often scoff. The problem with measuring by calories arises in the components in food, fats, sugars, carbohydrates, proteins. The human body processes each category in different biochemical pathways that work at different efficiencies. Translation: not all calories are created equal.

The same goes for fat, in that not all fats are created equal or bad. Cream, milk, cheese, and yogurt are all staple foods for French people, but they do not have a weight problem. Still, people do not realize that they have bought into the biggest hoax of all time perpetrated by big food corporations. “Fats (or fatty acids) come in many varieties”:http://www.diabetes.org/nutrition-and-recipes/nutrition/foodlabel/specific-fats.jsp including saturated, unsaturated (mono and poly), trans, and various omega types. Without delving into the specific structural differences between these, I can say that Omega-3 fatty acids (found in some fish), mono- and poly-unsaturated fats are actually _good_ for the body in that they can help decrease LDLs (reducing cholesterol). Trans and saturated fats are generally considered bad. See the difference. To assume that all items containing _any_ amount of fat be cut from the diet to eat healthy is flat-out *wrong* and unhealthy.

Carbohydrates. What are we going to do about these? According to everyone’s favorite new fab diet, the Atkin’s diet, carbohydrates are bad. In reality though, that depends again on what type—the all important distinction—of carbohydrate to which one is referring. Soda pop and foods that contain huge amounts of sugar (cereal, candy, sweets, ice cream) contain bad carbohydrates because these are simple carbs. These are the same types of carbohydrates found in the classic white/wheat bread found in your grocery store. Everyone knows the type: “Wonder Bread”:http://www.wonderbread.com/, the kind that you could mush together into a tight little ball if one wanted. In fact, “major reports”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/05/health/webmd/main653957.shtml “quantify this claim”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3889147.stm. Simple carbohydrates are easily broken down by the body, requiring little effort to transform them into sugar and into glycogen for later use when the body has took much sugar rolling through the bloodstream. Complex ones, though, are much better for exactly the opposite reasons: they are digested more slowly at a pace much better suited to normal daily routines, thus avoiding sugar highs and lows and spikes in insulin levels after eating. If I may quote “Carbohydrate-Counter.org”:http://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/about-carbohydrates.php :

bq. Many people will try and avoid all types of carbohydrates where possible, particularly when on weight loss diets. This is not a good idea. Carbohydrates in general are not normally a problem. It’s the quality of carbohydrates that should be taken into account. Highly processed foods should be avoided. This is because they normally contain a higher proportion of simple carbohydrates. For example, whole grain bread (complex carbs) should be eaten instead of white bread which uses refined white flour (simple carbs). Complex carbohydrates are often also lower in fat and provide higher amounts of other essential nutrients like dietary fibre. It is for the above reasons that a diet of complex carbohydrates is preferable.

Moral of the story thus far: do not buy into the low-fat, low-calorie, low-carbohydrate crap that special interests are attempting to sell you. They have a vested interest in controlling how you think about food so that you buy their versions. It is a war between ideals, and by believing and being sucked into their sick game, you are allowing yourself to become the cannon fodder. Either way: you lose.

h3. Special Interests and Whose Fault It Really Is

As I alluded earlier, the special interests are the big food corporations the likes of “Nabisco”:http://www.nabiscoworld.com/Brands/default.aspx, “General Mills”:http://www.generalmills.com/, and “Philip Morris”:http://www.altria.com/about_altria/01_00_01_kraftfoods.asp (aka Altria, aka Kraft Foods). The problems with big business getting involved in your diet is simple: the bottom line is profit, requiring the use of cheap materials to make good tasting foods. How do they do it? Preservatives, trans fats, partially-hydrogenated oils, artificial ingredients, artificial flavoring, food coloring. Then they affix a non-fat, low-fat, low-calorie label and they sell it by the millions. Virtually every product in the super market falls under this umbrella. These products keep these companies alive, and they depend on you to buy them. I might come off as conspiratorial here, but if you think about it, the truth will come out: they have a vested interest in keeping you hooked on their foods by making them tastier through artificial and psychological means.

How many people cook any more? Who has the time? Instead, we buy everything. Interestingly, the rest of the world knows it—and this is a primary reason for getting fatter (given the ingredients added above to make our food better given the lack of all fats, calories, and carbohydrates). During my year-long study abroad in France, my host family once commented that they believed that Americans bought everything pre-made. At the time, I argued foolishly that was not true—how wrong I was. It dawned on me upon my return back to the States that we do buy _a lot_ of food ready-made and just add heat. Cooking good, wholesome food is a lost art in America because our lives have been so inundated with activities that eating three square meals just doesn’t fit into the schedule. Many people just eat all day, snacking their hearts out. They lie to themselves with the reassurance that the food they are pigging out on is nutritious because the label lied right back at them. “If it says fat-free, it must be good for you!” Wrong. All those fake sweeteners certainly cannot be good for you: nature did not intend for these bodies to consume so many unnatural foodstuffs.

These days, the Special Interests employ vast numbers of chemists to do their bidding, to make food less caloric and less fatty while maintaining flavor through artificial means. They use insidious mean to entice Americans to buy these products through clever advertising, kiosks, samples, vending machines, you name it. Until the pendulum swings back toward home cooking (not just heating up store-bought crap food), I doubt America’s weight problem will disappear.

It is worse when people become so convinced by the ploys of these Special Interests. for example, it sickens me to hear people say, “I like diet soda” or “I _only_ drink diet.” I want to scream! The body still has to process everything in that soda through the natural biochemical pathways. There are bound to be side products of these reactions and your body has to do something with them. You want to know the solution to soda pop? *DON’T DRINK IT!* The French do not drink soda, as they drink water or wine. Pure and simple. Soda is the bane of this society. Go into any corporation, and check if there is a soda machine in the break room. I can guarantee you that a minimum of 90% of corporate-type business (offices, for example) contain snack and soda vending machines. Schools have them, teaching our children to become caffeine and sugar reliant just to get through the day. Many are at the beck and call of the very primitive parts of our brains that want more sugar and more caffeine to satisfy their base needs because they are not strong enough to realize they even have them. Ugh…

The first step is to recognize these very apparent signs that people, government, and businesses either do not see or flat-out ignore. Then, we must re-educate ourselves in the art of cooking food with vegetables (you know, those green, orange, red, and yellow things…) and complex carbohydrates. Everything in moderation, -including moderation- itself. OK, maybe not that last part. We must not be afraid of fats or calories, we must find the complex carbohydrates, and we must pass on the word to our children so that they can pass it onto theirs. Somewhere in the last two generations, a hiccup occurred in the passage of food knowledge either unintentionally or through direct intervention by the Special Interests. Which one, you can decide for your own family.

Can we squarely blame the Special Interests, though, for a fattening America? Of course not! We, as human beings have free will to exercise our use of judgment. Clearly, that does not happen often with regards to eating well these days. We either lie to ourselves about the labels on food, do not exercise, eat too much, do not cook well, eat too often throughout the day, drink soda, or any combination of the above to kid ourselves about our diet. Counting calories is not a solution. Understanding the complexity of food types like those presented briefly in the first part of this essay and applying that knowledge clearly is.

h3. Economics

It is unfortunate that the Special Interests have taken America hostage as they have because now economics often play a role in the argument against eating well. “Wal Mart is cheaper,” I often hear, but I cannot imagine that they sell anything remotely healthy. Wal Mart is all about the bottom line, low prices for consumers, low pricing from their huge Special Interest vendors, and low prices for the fake ingredients. It boils down to finding the sweet spot in how cheap a product can be made while still garnering a nice bunch of buyers. Market forces ensure this is true. Very few companies actually take responsibility for the crap they have been injecting their food with. Although Wal Mart’s business practices in itself are worthy of entire books, it knows what people want above their health and livelihoods: to spend less money or more stuff. They do it well, but the end result is negative for body and person with regards to food and nutrition.

h3. People

People will continue to kid themselves about their diets, concerning low-fat, low-calories, or low-carbohydrate, until education is improved and the Special Interests back off from marketing bad food full of artificial, chemically-created ingredients. Some will become more conscientious about their eating, trying to cook more often with natural, fresh foods, and some will continue to binge all day on snacks and soda without attempting to narrow their eating to but three meals. Some, like me, will find that happy balance and try to spread the word that calories are not bad, that cheese is delicious and good for you, that carbohydrates do not come in one form, etc. Moderation is key. If only this information could come out in a consistent, easy-to-digest manner _en masse_ some progress might be made towards education, but I fear that will not be the case. At least you, dear reader, can keep an open mind and keep the Special Interests’ interests at bay.

One must also take into account vastly different genetic makeup and current health concerns. If you are pregnant, have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other high-risk conditions, there are certain dietary concerns to which you must adhere. Most of what I have said here still applies, but there are exceptions for anyone in those categories. Certainly, consult a physician before making any drastic changes to your diet.

A final word of advice: remain active! “Exercise is good”:http://www.nefha.com/Newswire/Back_issues/newswire_2004_12_09_2.htm for the body _and_ mind. Run, walk, swim, bike, hike, row, lift—do whatever feels good for your body and fitness level. Start slow, stretch, and do not over exert. I should also mention that a “report released this week”:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050413222339.htm warns of over-hydration during exercise, so pay close attention to body weight before and after your exercise session to ensure you are not over-supplying your body with liquids, whether water or some energy sports drink.

h3. Conclusions

I believe it possible to eat healthy and enjoy food at the same time. There is no reason to stick to non-fat, low-fat, low-calorie foods especially given the artificial ingredients added to supplement the loss in flavor. Eat sensibly from all food groups, dairy, fruits and vegetables, carbohydrates (focus on complex), and protein (meat, fish, eggs). So many people today fail the test of fruits and vegetables, and parents are inevitably not teaching their kids to like them either, which is scary. Remember moderation, eat three meals a day, and avoid snacking and sodas. Drink water or _real_ fruit juice. Also, do not fool yourself in believing that fruit juice is a replacement for the real thing because real fruit has fiber and other nutrients that are essential to your functioning body. Buy natural, fresh food and leave the pre-packaged, pre-cooked items on the store shelf.

And please, for the love of all things human, forget all the media-spoon-fed nutritional tidbits that have been fed to you over your many years on this planet. Return to the art of cooking wholesome foods that are savory, fresh, and full of nutritional ingredients that your body craves.

Our culture proclaims freedom in this land, freedom from tyranny, freedom from oppression, freedom to worship (or not), freedom to speak our minds. Little do many lemming Americans realize that we are indeed increasingly not free. Case in point: FCC mandates broadcast flag, “software patents”:http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html, DMCA, lawsuits brought by the MPAA and the RIAA, “extension of copyright to life+70″:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act, “lawsuits against derivative works deterring their creation”:http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/grey.html, “removal of unregulated-use rights”:http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48088,00.html, “obliteration of fair-use rights”:http://slashdot.org/features/00/05/11/0153247.shtml, “threats against free code”:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/190801_openoffice15.html, “censorship by the FCC”:http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/t/turner/2004/turner061504.htm, “net vigilantism”:http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47552,00.html, “eBook limitations for works that are no longer bound by copyright law”:http://usa1.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=196133, “inability to speak/report without fear of being sued”:http://www.kottke.org/04/12/sony-ken-jennings-and-me or “even jailed”:http://www.dailyiowan.com/news/2004/10/08/Nation/Judge.Orders.Times.Reporter.Jailed-747364.shtml, DRM(Digital Rights Management), and the list goes on.

I have grown increasingly disillusioned with our society as mass media conglomerations are allowed to merge and concentrate their influence over us and as the FCC oversteps its organizational mandate time and time again. If you have similar opinions, you must listen/watch “this flash presentation”:http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/free.html by “Lawrence Lessig”:http://www.lessig.org/blog/ over at EFF‘s website, founder of the “Creative Commons”:http://creativecommons.org/ License, an alternative to the standard copyright law, waiving some of your rights in exchange to allow other to create, use, and share.

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/cc-logo.gif(Creative Commons)! What is one to do? Resist. Resist at all cost. I start my resistance with the placement of this website under the creative commons license, granting users the ability to share, distribute, copy and modify anything found here, while attributing me as the source. Simple, easy and fair.