barnson.org Half-baked opinions, served lukewarm.

Several years ago, the RIAA -- Recording Industry Association of America -- launched a massive wave of lawsuits against people sharing copyrighted recordings without authorization. By the tens of thousands, "John Doe" lawsuits brought anonymous file-sharers into the spotlight, with routine settlements paid by the Does to the tune of thousands of dollars.

I've been out of town the past few weeks, but had a milestone to celebrate.

With my weight at 224 pounds this morning, I am officially no longer "obese" according to the Body Mass Index. Still have about 30 pounds to go to get where I want to be, but there it is. I'm just overweight now! Woot!

Quote of the day:

"Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.

Well, here I am for my first full day in Colorado Springs. From my office, I can see the Air Force academy stadium, and light planes are constantly taking off & landing for glider training for our next generation of budding pilots.

So I'm headed to a data center in Colorado Springs for the next ten days (Dec 11-20). During that time, I'll be staying at a nice hotel with a gym, but I gotta ask: what do you do to stay in shape while traveling? In particular, how do you handle all the eating out?

I think my suite has a kitchen. If it doesn't, wow, this is going to be a rough week for sticking to my eating plan :)

So this picture captures the feeling of the average American citizen toward the Big 3 auto-maker bailout (note: language alert!):

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen due to his dual British-American citizenship at the time of his birth. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/08/scotus-rejects-appeal-qu... . In sum, he was born on American soil, to an American mother, despite a father who was a British subject.

Happy Thanksgiving from me to you! I know it's been a bit quiet around here lately. I have a whole boatload of blog ideas that I plan to unleash this coming Monday. Think of this as the calm before the storm...

We all know THOSE kind of Christians. Yeah. This lady lets us know in no uncertain terms that she's not one of THOSE kinds of Chrisians.

A well-known side-effect of a low-carbohydrate way of eating is the production of "ketone bodies" by the liver as a by-product of metabolizing fat to fuel the process of converting proteins into glucose to provide the body's daily carbohydrate needs. Muscles, organs, and the brain all lap up the ketones as an energy source, and even function more efficiently on ketones than glucose. In fact, the human heart functions much more efficiently on ketones than on glucose, and this increase in efficiency is part of the reason a low-carbohydrate diet can be successfully used to treat those with heart problems.