James Meisler

Yesterday I mentioned that I’ve started running again, for the first time in earnest since high school.  The overcome the inertia of the last decade, I’m harnessing the power of the the best thing to come out of the aughts–social media.  I got a pair of Nike+ Air Pegasus running shoes and the Nike+ sensor (along with a moisture wicking shirt, some socks, and those plastic things you put in your shoes to keep them from stinking).

One of my weaknesses is that I won’t keep doing something once I’ve plateaued.  I need to make progress on whatever I’m doing, or I get bored and quit.  My solution is two-pronged.  First, I’m using the Couch to 5K plan to get from mostly walking to a sustained 3.1 mile run.  Second, the computer nerd in me longs for two things: awesome gadgets and a game system that rewards accomplishments and uses your stats to measure your progress. By collecting data on every cardio workout, I’m able to monitor my progress.  When I hit plateaus, I’ll know exactly how to kick it up.  Thankfully there are two such products that satisfy the RPG requirements and simplify C25K.

Nike+iPhone

Hotlinked from the Nike store. The shoe has been discontinued. I love outlets.

I’ve never really been a big user of Nike products, having always favored New Balance.   However, you can’t put a Nike+ sensor in the NBs (well, you can), and it’s hard to turn down the deals you get at outlets.  The shoes I got weren’t quite as comfortable as my tattered old New Balance trail running shoes that I bought in 2007, but they’re not painful.

The great thing about Nike+ is that it records my distance and pace and posts it online when I sync my phone.  Now, I know that there are other running apps out there that track these stats without needing to use the $20 sensor, but I like that Nike+ is a feature built into the phone, so I can run other apps while I’m collecting data.

I do have a few problems with the Nike+ system though.

• Only other Nike+ owner’s can participate.  It makes sense.  After all, Nike is trying to sell shoes, but the exclusivity is kind of annoying.  There are other apps that have more open communities, but they don’t run in the background.
• The website is Flash-driven.  It’s bulky and slow.   Also, even after I bought their shoes and the sensor, they’re still trying to sell me crap whenever I’m logged in.
• Run stats aren’t uploaded immediately after the run.  You have to wait to sync your iPod with with the computer, which I don’t do often, but I’ve gotten in the habit of leaving my phone plugged into at work, which has had other positive effects.  Well, one.  My phone doesn’t die as often.

The major advantage to Nike+ is that it can run in the background, which is very useful since I’m using C25k.  I can start Nike+ with the music I want to run to, then I can open C25K which will tell me how long to run and where my intervals are.  You can also set a “power song” to play when you’re running out of stamina.  While “Eye of the Tiger” is the most obvious choice, I’ve gone with “Single Ladies.”  There are also a number of interval training applications that I can run on top of Nike+ so that I can work in a little HIIT with my runs.  However, until I’ve completed C25K, I won’t be playing with any of that.

Felt Tip’s Couch to 5k App.

I like this app a lot.  It’s very simple to use and includes a diagram for stretching.  There is one thing you need to keep in mind when using this product, and I make this mistake at least once a week:  make sure you unmute before beginning a workout.  If you’re not paying attention you will miss your cues.

Now, if you don’t have an iPhone and still want to do C25K but are worried about getting the timing right, there’s another option.  Robert Ullrey has created a series of Couch to 5k Podcasts where he steps you through each run/walk transition.  It even provides music.

This is it.  This is the year I get my act together and live healthier.  Weight loss is among the intended results, but I’m not doing this only to lose weight.

The background:

My father was a marathoner throughout his adult life, and I grew up with (or at least aware of) healthy eating habits.  I wasn’t particularly active when I was young, though.  I never played any sports and my activity was limited to occasional runs and one year when I joined the track team briefly.  I lost a lot of weight after my sophomore year of high school due to work.  I worked a number of service jobs that had me on my feet and running around every day after school and on most weekends.

When I got to college, I went from eating one or two smallish meals a day and staying on my feet to spending hours at my computer and eating two very large all-you-can-eat dorm meals every day.   Add to that sugary coffee drinks at Vienna, quickly prepared meals in my apartment, the discovery of beer, and a free bus pass and you have what amounted to 30 pounds of weight gain over 5 years.    After graduation, Kaitlin and I moved to Montgomery, AL where our busy work week and my 40-mile round trip commute led to another 15 over a year and a half.

The Goals:

Lose 20% of my January 1, 2010 body weight (205 lbs.) in one year by exercising more and retooling my diet.

The Method:

Fix the diet

I’ve never been a fan of dieting.  No one has.  I’m steering clear of radical changing and instead using with greater frequency my good eating habits and winding down, but not necessarily eliminating completely, the bad.

Kaitlin and I already eat pretty healthy when we cook at home.  We try to cook our own meals at least 5 times a week, and they are generally nutritious meals high in whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and lean meats.  We don’t heat much red meat at all and we cook with poultry at the most twice a week.  Oils and fats are kept to a minimum.  The unhealthy elements of my diet and practices are these:

• Lack of Breakfast – I almost never eat breakfast.  So far this year, I have made a habit of eating breakfast every morning.  This usually consists of a .5 cup of fat free plain yogurt and .5 cup of granola or fruit (cantaloupes have provided me with the most fruit/dollar so far.
• Lack of Portion Control – No matter how healthy a meal is, if you eat too much of it, you’re taking in more calories than needed.  I cook for two, but most recipes are written for four servings.  Now I serve my self less at first, eat more slowly, and make a point to wait 20 minutes after the first helping before deciding whether or not to get more.  This leads to more leftovers and takes care of the next problem.
• Poor Lunch Planning – Most days, lunch is a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat or a cup of ramen.  The sandwhich isn’t bad, as it it comes in at under 300 kcal and provides a lot of fiber and protein.  The ramen, while by no means healthy, comes in under 300kcal but is high in fat and sodium and low in everything else.  Some days, if what I bought was insufficient or I was running late and forgot to pack something I’d head over to one of the many fast food outlets near by.  I was on a first name basis with Burger King McDonald’s cashiers.  Despite how effing delicious Chicken McNuggets and Whoppers are, you don’t need Michael Pollan to tell you why they’re bad for you.
• Baking - Cakes, cookies, artisan breads.  Enough said.
• Alcohol – Since my social life is basically nil, I don’t go out nearly as much as I did in college.  However, it’s nice to have wine with dinner or beer while watching TV.  As a result, we consumed on average 2 bottles of wine and 2 six-packs of beer a week.  Teetotalism isn’t my style so I’m just trying to cut back and so far consumption is down by more than half.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve done a pretty good job at keeping up these habit modifications.

The Tools:

1. I began counting calories with the iPhone app, Lose It!, but I haven’t kept up after the first few weeks.  Frankly it’s too time consuming.  Once I adjusted my diet, I tracked the calories for a couple weeks to get used to that amount.
2. The Reddit community has a fitness forum where people ask questions, post articles, etc.  I have found that enormously helpful.

A little later I’ll post part two of my method, which will include my running plan.

Survey

From Google Finance

The DJI passed 9000 points today, its highest since January 2 of this year.

Pat Buchanan show his real colors on Maddow.

Let’s start with some of the factual inaccuracies:

• Judge Sotomayor was born in New York, not PR.
• On having never written anything – She edited the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law.
• I’ll leave the affirmative action discussion to Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic.
• That half of  the class graudates cum laude – Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude.  At Yale, at most the top 30% of the graduating class graduates with honors.  Summa cum laude graduates are at the top 5%, in the case of the class of 1979.  I don’t know the size of that class but it would put her, at the very most, in the top 10.

Visual aids after the cut.

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My Google Analytics page cites a large number of people who stumble on my site looking for information about my father. I’ll put a page up soon with links to clippings and articles about him that I’ve found.

Orbitz has a commercial featuring a character wearing a polo shirt for the GLBT PAC, Human Rights Campaign.  HRC’s website has this quote from Orbitz President and CEO, Steve Barnhart:

“Since our company’s inception, Orbitz Worldwide has been a leading supporter of the LGBT community. We’re proud to be honored by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and proud to be recognized as a leader in promoting a non-discriminatory workplace, and one that continues to be proactive in its efforts to best serve the LGBT segment of the market.”

Of course, he’s using a long putter, so I almost didn’t post the link. . .

Five Facts about Alabama Prisons

From:

1.  Judges override jury verdicts to get reelected. Alabama is the only state practicing Standardless Judicial Override.   An Alabama Judge can sentence a convicted criminal to death even if the jury recommends another sentence, such as life without parole.   In 2006, 30% of new death sentence inmates were put on death row by their trial judges after juries had ruled on life without parole.   About 20% of individuals currently on death row were condemned by judicial override.

Alabama trial judges have the ability to override jury verdicts in the other directly, taking death penalty rulings and reducing them to life sentences, however this has happened only a handful of times since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.  Several Alabama local governments have tried to promote standards for Judicial override.  These attempts have been defeated because of political pressure for local and state politicians (including elected judges) to appear “tough on crime.”

2. Excessive sentences contributed to prisons being filled to 200% capacity.   The AL DOC incarcerates 30,896 individuals.  The prison system is built to accommodate 13,403 prisoners.    The inmate-to-staff ratio is close to 10:1, about twice the national average.  That ratio applies only to the number of COs employed.  In terms of the number of officers on duty at any given time, it isn’t rare to have 250-300 inmates per officer.

Since 2001, 86 new felonies have been added to the books, but the prisons’ square footage has remained static.  Even Governor Bob Riley, a conservative Republican, has expressed concern about the state of Alabama’s prisons.  In 1980, Alabama instituted the Habitual Felony Offender Act, which provides for lengthier sentences for habitual offenders (meaning someone convicted of one previous felony, unlike California’s “3 Strikes” law that creates a life sentence after 3 felony convictions).  The sentence enhancement don’t even rely on felonies either.  Sentences can be increased to excess over misdemeanor and nonviolent convictions.  These sentence enhancements led Alabama to have the highest rate of life sentences in the U.S. with almost half of inmates serving 20 or more years in 2000.

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Judy Chu has been elected the first Chinese-American woman to serve Congress. She defeated Republican Betty Chu and Libertarian Christopher Agrella yesterday.  She will fill the seat vacated by Democrat Hilda Solis.  Solis vacated her seat in Congress, which she easily won in 2008, to become President Obama’s Secretary of Labor.  Chu’s victory means that the Democrats now hold a 78-seat lead in the House.

Dr. Chu’s election is notable because she won more than 60 percent of the vote in a largely Latino district.  The special election garnered little attention from the media.  It received little attention within the district as well, with just under 25,000 votes (roughly 10 percent of the electorate).  The districts heavy Democratic lean contributed to the low turnout.  More than a quarter of the electorate, 57,222 voters, turned out for the May 19 primary that featured 8 Democratic candidates who together won more than 71 percent of the vote.

Libertarian Agrella, who only recieved 654 votes in the primary, recieved almost twice as many in the general election, winning more than 5 percent of the vote.

Neil E. Meisler

May 11, 1947 – March 4, 2009

Rest in Peace

A favorite riddle of mine:

A son and father get in a car accident. They are rushed to two different hospitals. The son goes to get operated on and the surgeon says , “This is my son!” Who is the surgeon?

The reason I like this riddle so much is that it plays on the assumptions and stereotypes we make about gender roles.  This riddle also shows up in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.  Another answer I like is, “The boy is the son of  same-sexed parents.”  That way, we continue breaking common assumptions about gender roles and defy the status quo further…of course, we’re still making gender assumptions about surgeons.

Another riddle:

“Before you are two roads.  One road leads to the Land of Truth and one leads to the Land of Liars.  Each road is attended by a foot soldier.  The soldier from the Land of Truth will only tell the truth.  The soldier from the Land of Lies will only tell lies.  Given only one question, how do you ask the soldiers which way is the way to the Land of Truth?”

The answer to this one is fun: you ask one of them what the other would say.

If you had asked the one telling the truth he would tell say, “He would tell you to pick his road”

If you  had asked the one who lies, he would tell say, “He would tell you to pick my road”

Then you pick the other road because you know no matter what you’re being told,you are being lied to.  This method requires, at first, a lot of thinking.  However, there’s an easier solution, and I stole this from Werner Herzog’s “Kaspar Hauser.”  You ask one of them, “Are you a tree frog?”  Riddle solved.