Month: November 2003

Ran across this article on a newsgroup today, and I thought it would be of interest. It’s an AP story, found a link to it on CBS (though, of course, being Associated Press, it’s probably carried by several hundred local papers).

Article here: Was Atkins Right After All?

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something like this comes knocking on your door…

In celebration of Thanksgiving, I give you… The Whipped Cream Games!

Yep, it’s fun party games you can play with whipped cream.

Here’s my favorite idea:

The Race
Each player starts with a full bowl of whipped cream. All players start eating the whipped cream at the same time. To signal that you have finished, you hold the bowl upside-down over your head; if anyone does so, the other players must do the same whether or not they have finished eating.
The winner is the first person to invert their bowl above their head,regardless of whether they actually ate the contents.

People actually do this stuff???

I was seventeen. I was in love with some girl I can’t remember now. I was young and cocky. I wore T-shirts with slogans on them, put on button-up shirts overtop of them without buttoning anything and left the whole thing untucked. I wore friendship bracelets on my wrists. I blow-dried my hair with my head hanging upside down so that my hair would be really tall.

I ate Kellogg’s Raisin-Bran for breakfast. I had a Snickers bar and a Dr. Pepper for lunch. I usually skipped dinner due to extra-curricular activities. I worked at the drugstore to make money to drive my 1980 blue 4-cylinder Volvo Stationwagon with a rumble seat in the back.

I was a cheerleader. I was into theater. No, wait, I was pretty arrogant about it, so I wasn’t into theater, I was into theatre. I was a musician, and in my own band. I was in the school jazz band. I was that annoyingly cheerful guy who did the morning announcements over the PA system, and did my best Robin Williams imitation by beginning the day every day with “GOOOOooooooooooOoOoOoOoOoOOOOOOOD MORNING, Quince Orchard High School! Today is (mumblety-mumblety) and these are YOUR morning announcements!”

I thought I was cool once, darn it.

My favorite “hello” phrase to good friends, then as now, was “How’s it hanging, dude?” In today’s politically correct environment, it sometimes earns me reproving looks. That’s just too bad for the overly sensitive political correctness police without a sense of humor, isn’t it?

One day after cheerleading practice in the late afternoon, I’d changed back into my bracelets and untucked T-shirt. I encountered Dr. Thomas Warren, the Quince Orchard High School Principal, in the hallway. He and I had always gotten along cordially, since I’d never been sent to his office for disciplinary problems. His vice-principal, though, was pretty well-acquainted with me. Anyway, we’d always been very stiff and formal, and in my heart I thought he was totally, assuredly, 100% un-cool:

1. He had the nickname “Dr. Warden” because of his sometimes security-guard approach to being principal.
2. He was really tall and slightly balding.
3. He wore a suit to school.
4. He had shiny shoes.
5. He addressed students as “Mister” and “Miss” So-and-so.

He was so-ooo definitely not-cool. Not cool like me.

But today, something was different. His hair was slightly mussed. His tie was undone a little bit. His suit looked slightly rumpled. It looked like he’d had a long, hard day at work. Just the kind of state of mind of a person my overly-cheerful self liked to pick on.

“Yo, Doc Warren, how’s it hanging, dude?” I called as I approached him.

Dr. Warren turned his head slightly in my direction as he kept an eye on maintenance workers through the cafeteria windows. “Short, shriveled, and always to the left,” he replied in a deadpan voice, cracked a wry grin at my open-mouthed holy crap my principal just said that! stare, turned on his heel, and began to saunter toward his office.

I recovered my voice after a few seconds of stunned silence

“Yo, Doc Warren!” I shouted toward his back as he walked away from me. He turned slightly and cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Doc Warren,” I continued, “you’re cool, man.”

“I know,” he responded.

He turned back the way he was going, and swaggered off towards his office.

So, over the past 24 hours, an idea has been brewing in my head for a type of new musical product that we can collaborate on in developing. This idea is based on recent ongoings and changes in the music industry, consumer habits, and my experiences at Best Buy.

My concept is for a new type of musical audio product that functions as a cross between prerecorded album, old-time radio, and soap opera.

In my opinion, the reason that album sales have been falling isn’t just due to file sharing. It’s due to a couple other reasons as well , including 1) Lack of good product and 2) A shift in consumer dollar spend to other cost-like software entertainment products (DVD, games). File sharing does make an impact because the music industry’s primary sales target has always been 18-34, and those are the techies who are now burning and sharing, of course. However, if you’ve got $20 are you going to window shop it on an album or on a movie? Right. So here comes the new idea.

The concept is to create an ongoing story, full of characters, situations, and compelling conflict that is set to music. A rock opera in a sense. Except that between the voice overs, music, and singing are a subtext of arias. Arias, for those unfamiliar with the term, are the hit songs in Operas. So, individual radio-format tunes are built into the works but it’s not complete without hearing and collecting the works in its entirety.

The product format would require actual screenwriting for plot, characters, and development. The music would be the feature, but the music would be built into the screenwriting format. Whatever the format is, be it magical sci-fi, historical, present-day romantic comedy, etc. it should be flushed out so that there can be endless streams of new characters and plot developments. Thus, the story never ends and it’s meaningless to hear the individual hit songs outside of the entire context.

The physical delivery format would be something like 45-60 minute installments on CD. It would be entirely done in audio, no visual or software add-on elements embedded. In my mind, installments would be released every other month. Any artwork placed on the external packaging wouldn’t brand the individual artists or the performing bands, but the larger concept instead.

I think it would be compelling because there would be a dramatic component involved. This would evolve the music from a simple stand-alone “hit” function to a broader theatre-like stance. We would serialize pop music. People would be waiting for the next installment to follow their favorite characters and wait for the next string of songs. Also, because multiple bands and artist could get involved, we could have a wide range of musical styles, which would open up appeal to a larger audience base.

Let me know what you guys think.

Sam

Yep, by popular demand (OK, two people) I’ve uploaded The Right Of Way. This was Wayward Sun’s second album, and number seven on Justin’s list of what it’s about darn time for. I’ll be putting a bit more history up on my weblog regarding the making of this album later, but for now, here are the songs. Special thanks to Justin Timpane for going through the painstaking effort of ripping, fixing, de-noisifying, and encoding these files.

I’ve also linked these from Matt’s Music Page so people can get two-click access to these tunes.

The Right Of Way: This link allows you to stream the entire album from start to finish. Requires WinAmp, xmms, or compatible mp3 player and a broadband connection.

The links below allow you to download the songs individually; they are generaly 5 to 6 megabytes apiece (You do the math to see how long they’ll take to download on your computer). Right-click and “save as” if you want to save it to your hard drive instead of play it immediately.

1. Compulsive Fire: “You’re telling me lies… so shut up and die!”. Yet another rebel tune by Sammy G, master of angst, anger, and attitude.
2. All Over Again: Growing up, Matt Barnson’s family had a habit of picking up stray people and letting them live with us for a while. Two of them were beautiful girls who, of course, the prepubescent Barnboy got a crush on. This was written for them. The author no longer has a crush on either one 🙂
3. Leave It All Behind: Written by Matthew Barnson, it was supposed to capture the essence of making it big in the music business. It ended up being kind of a lengthy, boring, almost-metal wannabe tune.
4. Afterlife: OK, if I recall correctly, this one was by Sam and Ben? Correct me if I’m wrong guys. And after years of only contemplating the meaning of this song when I was really, really bored, I still haven’t figured out exactly what it’s about. “We float about on pencil tips searching for the end of the torture that we suffer”? Hmm, Ben, you didn’t tell us about any psychoactive substances in your high-school years…
5. Chica’s Rag: Ode to a fangirl of the band. Her real name was, erm, Cathy, I think. She was very nice and quiet, but devoted. The song started as a jam session, with everybody kind of goofing around. Kevin was enjoying a new beat he’d made up, Sam was just barely learning bass and began a pretty simple riff, I decided to play some seventies-style “Wokka-Wokka” on the guitar, and Ben figured out a chord progression. Then one day Sam strutted in with some lyrics, Ben fleshed out the harmonies, Kevin elaborated on the drums, I stuck with the “Wokka-Wokka”, and Chica’s Rag was born.
6. House Of Dreams: The intro is a piano duet that nobody remembers how to play. Another Sam & Ben collaboration, combining Sam’s angst with Ben’s meaningless but elegant lyricism. It makes for a powerful combination saying… something 🙂 The first of our tunes where the guitar actually seems to be both prominent and reasonably good-sounding. The execrable “Leave It All Behind” doesn’t count :).
7. Kevin: Obviously, Kevin had no idea this song was going to go on the album until the last minute. Dani Haslam sang vocals, and it was a totally synthesized song. If I recall correctly, Kevin had been going through one of many crises at the time we were laying down this album, and this was kind of a “pick you up” tune. Some love it, some hate it.
8. One Man: This song by Matthew Barnson is best noted for the fact it has been remade at least four times. The first time was on Sam’s T-1 synth, sequenced in memory. I lost that copy. The second time was this album. The third time was on “No Further Questions”, the album the band did after I moved. The fourth time, I did it, and you can hear it elsewhere on this web site. Still not entirely done, though some people think the latest version is fine as it is.
   Anyway, I wrote it, as with most my songs, to impress a girl. This girl was named Jenny, whom I hadn’t seen since fifth grade. She was a pacifistic-type person, thus the line “Some would say the use of force is letting Nature run its course; they can’t see time passing them by”. She loved it. Too bad I can’t remember her last name.
9. Breathless I was goofing around with an introduction that I was trying to make a song from. Sam asked, “Hey, Matt, mind if I borrow that?”. Since I hadn’t managed to make anything meaninful out of the chord progression yet, other than a noodle, I said “sure”, and a few weeks later, Sam came out of the recording study at UMBC with this tune.
10. Don’t Let The Song Pass You By: Mucho Thanko to Juli Graber for providing the “Aye Aye Aye Aye” part of this tune, the most memorable thing about it 🙂 Ultimately written by Matthew Barnson, but with lots of input from other band members, and a gaggle of partially-drunk party-goers as well.

Well.. There are things in life you wait for and seem to ever be on the cusp of happening.

So, as we approach the last month before those guilt filled promises we call New years resolutions, I have 20 things I think its about time get taken care of.FEEL FREE TO REPLY WITH MORE!

ITS ABOUT DARN TIME: (in no particular order) 1) Sam Graber put up some music for me to download. 2) I get around to updating timpane.com 3) Matt released a collection of some sort. 4) The movie theatre stopped showing commercials. 5) Sledge Hammer! returned to the airwaves. 6) I wrote another screenplay. 7) “The Right Of Way” gets posted on Barnson.org 8) Ben Affleck’s 15 minutes were up. 9) Ditto for Britney, Ashton, and (please!) Carrot Top 10) Billy Joel returned to pop music. 11) Elton John left pop music. 12) People stopped remaking their own songs (Bon Jovi…) 13) A 4th Evil Dead movie came out. 14) I started exercising. 15) People started watching Star Trek again. 16) Sam and I collaborated on a song. 17) Rachel left Joey for Ross 18) People admit they hated “Cats” 19) Women stopped smoking cigars 20) Pencil erasers stopped leaving black streaks.

I thought you might be interested in the results from my first three weeks on Atkins:

Dropped 12 pounds from 240 to 228.

Lost (almost) two inches on my waist. Curiously, my hips and chest are just about the same size as when I started — too large :).

Energy level is constantly high.

Mood swings gone. Entirely. No more “three o’clock crash” at all! I go to bed around midnight, and wake up right around 7 AM (Mmm, there are some fun things about being out of work) and I’m perky and chipper the whole day through.

Eczema (very dry, cracking, bleeding skin): virtually gone. My case was never very serious to begin with, but very annoying. As far as I’m concerned, this is a very, very dramatic improvement.

Irritable Bowel: The jury is still out on this. I’m still in Induction, which tends to cause mild diarrhea. Since I was normally moderately diarrheic on a pretty regular basis before ever starting, it doesn’t feel that different (except I’m going a whole lot less). It will be interesting when I introduce more fiber to see what happens. However, I do not get the, erm, “explosive” qualities unless I overdo it on certain artificial sweeteners.

Headaches: Gone. Haven’t had one. Almost had one one day while we were on vacation (a very slight ache), but that also happened to be the time when I was fudging a bit too much on my diet. Drinking more water and steering clear of carbs I’m not familiar with cleared it up.

I’m still irritable occasionally. I’ll have to see what happens as time goes on. I seem to be irritable less often than before, but that’s a really tough call.

So far, I’m really impressed. I’m eager to see what the long-term effects are!

So I learned something new Thursday…

My son, Elijah, loves devilled eggs!

I thought about this for a few minutes, and realized why.

Little children love bright-colored food, particularly reds and yellows. Devilled eggs, if properly prepared with mustard included, have very bright yellow yolks, that are then sprinkled with bright red Paprika.

Kind of exciting, that. I prepared two-dozen devilled eggs this afternoon, and remembered why I like them so much. Immediately after I made them, there are… two dozen minus three 🙂

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

-George Bernard Shaw

So I read this disturbing article today from Googling for "Atkins nutritionally incomplete". I picked up on that phrase from Medical Research Council’s Dr. Susan Jebb.

Although I realize that people are allowed to have differing opinions on Atkins-type diets, such as the South Beach Diet, Somersizing, Cave Man, etc., it really bugs me when articles completely distort the truth. I feel the need to refute a few glaring misconceptions. I believe the misconceptions are on the part of the reporter writing the article, not on the part of Dr. Jebb who was very selectively quoted. It’s natural for the medical establishment to go slowly when entering new territory; it’s the nature of the Hippocratic oath to “first, do no harm”. So I don’t blame her, but it seems like these misconceptions are endemic to the misconceptions of people who have not read the available literature and many long-term (thirty years so far, in some cases!) studies thoroughly.

1. “The Atkins diet cuts out carbohydrates and boosts consumption of protein without having to avoid fatty foods.”

   This is a totally misleading statement. I’ve now read two of Dr. Atkins’ books, and nowhere do they say to "cut out carbohydrates". It’s true that, for the first two weeks of the diet, he encourages those who are significantly overweight (more than 10-20 lbs for women, or 20-30 lbs for men) to go into “induction”, which involves reducing total carbohydrates to below 20 grams per day. Those 20 grams must come from green leafy vegetables, certain low-carbohydrate but highly nutritive vegetables such as broccoli, and cheeses or other foods in great moderation. "Cut out" carbs? I think not. Sensible low-carb plans obviously reduce carbs, but carbohydrates are a vital part of one’s body chemistry. We low-carbers simply become more selective about which carbohydrates we’ll allow to pass our lips, and in what quantity.

2. “On the other hand, large-scale studies looking at the general effects of eating different kinds of food had yielded a wealth of data.
   They showed that people who ate the most carbohydrates had the lowest rates of heart disease.”

   The unfortunate fact is that, in combination with a way of eating high in refined carbohydrates, saturated fat kills. On the other hand, in combination with low-carbohydrate eating habits, all the classic warning signs of heart disease tend to drop dramatically. Atkins developed his original plan for heart patients, and it was enormously successful in that capacity, often allowing patients to get off cardiac medication.

   On the third hand, Dr. Atkins went into cardiac arrest in a restaurant at the age of 72, roughly one year before his death from a fall. However, it wasn’t due to the traditional clogged pipes; instead, his heart had been damaged by an infection for which he’d been in treatment for two years, which was the cause of his arrest. All the pipes leading to his ticker, and the muscle that had not been damaged by the infection, were in perfect working order.

   Low-carb eating patterns improve cardiovascular health, lower triglycerides, improved HDL concentrations, and tend to lower LDL. We’re all going to die from something, but the chances are good if you begin low-carbing early enough in life, that it won’t be from clogged arteries.

   One important exception: idiots that attempt to go low-carb/low-fat kill themselves. Now that has been well-documented. In addition, as more people hop on the low-carb bandwagon, people will focus on their diet rather than thinking of these deaths as a tragic accident. It’s kind of like when a Catholic priest molests a child, it’s front-page news, whereas when Joe Schmoe molests a child, it ends up on the court report page. When someone who has done Atkins dies of heart problems, it’s a big deal. When someone who isn’t on Atkins dies of a heart problem, it’s not. I have to find myself wondering, as well, if these “Atkins-related deaths” that are fashionable in the news lately were from people that really were going about it in a safe, sensible way and had read the book, or if they’d tried to concoct their own diet regimen that resulted in heart damage. An interesting thought that needs more study to find out, I think.

3. “Fibre, found in carbohydrate food, helped the body eliminate toxins and was associated with reduced levels of cholesterol.”

   The reporter here seems to assume that those on Atkins don’t get enough fiber. I beg to differ; I’m eating more fiber today than I ever did on any other “diet”. And I’m eating significantly more healthy dietary fiber as a result of following Dr. Atkins plan, even though I’m on induction, than I did in my usual standard American diet (SAD).

   Atkins does, however, recommend fiber supplements for those people who get clogged up. I’d recommend the same to anybody on any diet — if you’re getting backed up, start taking some stuff to flush it out rather than crapping a brick once every two weeks. As for me, my intestinal problems tend to err on the other side of that scale, and all the bloating, cramps, and other symptoms of irritable bowel seem to have largely disappeared for me. Except when I got too excited about some imitation sweets… even a few of those seem to cause pretty severe gastro troubles for me, as well as a bunch of other people.

4. “Carbohydrates were also the source of essential vitamins and plant nutrients, which anyone on the Atkins diet would have to consume as supplements.”

   Another totally off-base statement. Dr. Atkins recommends supplements to fend off dietary insufficiencies due to many vegetables and fruits found in supermarkets today lacking the nutrients they would possess if grown more organically, rather than mass-produced in soil that is long-since depleted and living on fertilizer. You could choose to address those deficiencies by using organically-grown fruits and vegetables with the diet.

   The supplements Dr. Atkins recommends are the same that most Americans should probably be taking anyway. Cover your bases, be sure you have sufficient vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids. The dude went from being a cardiologist to a specialist in nutrition therapy; it’s natural that he suggests supplementation or behavioral changes in certain areas to correct problems without traditional medications. The problem is not a low-carbohydrate diet; it is that man evolved for millions of years living off the land. Only in the last six thousand years have we learned agriculture, and with that monoculture, we introduce some dietary deficiencies that today we can alleviate using supplements. People who supplement B vitamins, even on the best of diets, tend to have fewer mood swings. People who supplement potassium, or make sure that their diet includes potassium-rich foods, avoid muscle cramps from the lack of it. Supplementation on Atkins is just that — a supplement, not a replacement for proper nutrition from one’s diet. I personally have mega-dosed vitamin C for a long time to avoid colds, and it seems to work like a charm. Although I can get sufficient from my diet, why not use a tool if it’s available?

5. “There was also good evidence that eating excess protein can cause kidney damage, and may lead the body to lose calcium.”

   This is simply untrue, an urban legend, and a twisting of evidence to fit opinion. There has never been a single case where someone with healthy kidneys damaged them by doing Atkins. In the case of individuals with advanced kidney disease, a diet high in protein or in water can further damage already sensitive kidneys. But in most cases, the kidney damage was caused by excessive glucose in the bloodstream in the first place, which is directly attributable to a high-carbohydrate diet! In some cases I’ve read about, going to low-carb diets allows the kidneys to repair some of the damage caused by the high-carb diets.

   Additionally, Atkins need not be considered “high-protein”. It’s only “high fat” or “high protein” compared to low-fat diets and the horribly imbalanced “food pyramid” idea, really. Induction isn’t nearly the entire eating plan, and the other phases of Atkins feature a pretty darn significant percentage of calories from carbs as well as proteins and fats.

   But people in advanced stages of kidney failure shouldn’t be making drastic changes in their diet without the supervision of a knowledgeable physician, anyway.

6. “A study published in the Lancet last month also shows that eating too much fat can double a woman’s risk of breast cancer.”

   Once again, this is only in the case of a high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. High-fat, low-carbohydrate diets, with adequate fiber (which the Atkins plan provides for easily) appear to reduce cancer risk across the board.

   One must wonder, though, if they reduce the cancer risk just because people are finally really watching what they eat 🙂 Similar cancer risks happen in healthy, non-overweight vegetarians, so one has to wonder if perhaps reduction in cancer risk is simply the result of following any eating plan that covers all the nutritional bases, like Atkins does.

7. “It was psychologically easier to follow than harsher low-fat regimes, but worked the same way as any diet – by reducing calorie intake.”

   While I must agree this diet is much, much easier to follow than the “eat less” plan I’ve always followed in the past to drop a few pounds, I have to disagree on the “reducing the calorie intake” bit. I’m averaging 2400-2900 calories per day at six feet tall, thirty years old, and 230 lbs (woot, go me! 10 lbs lost in two weeks!). The results are all out of proportion to the calorie intake.

   And people who say “it’s all water” are just lying. I know people who have lost over 100 lbs in a year in the OWL phase (Ongoing Weight Loss — much less strict than Induction) of Atkins. That’s a heck of a lot of water.

   There’s a well-documented "metabolic advantage" to a low-carb regimen. The body shifts from primarily carbohydrate-burning mode into fat-burning mode. The switch is automatic, and seems to be rooted in our hunter/gatherer evolutionary heritage. There would be lean times, where the only food one had was that mammoth carcass sitting out in the snow. And the tribe would eat it for weeks. Ketosis/lipolysis begins in the liver, where it converts fats and proteins into glucose for use by the body. Blood sugar remains amazingly constant when one is in this mode, which tends to prevent hunger, reduce cravings, and generally keep one’s spirits up. This, too, seems to be an evolutionary advantage for our species.

   What’s the “metabolic advantage”, calorie-wise, to low-carb eating habits? The chemical reactions required to sustain ketosis/lipolysis occur at far less than 100% efficiency. The most common statistic bandied about is “58%”. So the reality is, eating exactly the same amount of calories as one normally would to maintain weight, but doing so on a low-carb regimen, results in weight loss due to his inefficiency. The ketones that are “left over” after the chemical reactions are all done show up in one’s urine. This is a perfectly safe reaction, far different than “ketoacidosis”, the diabetic condition that also results in ketones, but in the presence of wildly out-of-control blood sugar being dumped into the urine in the body’s desperate attempt to overcome high-carbohydrate ingestion without insulin production.

   Anyway, here’s the fact: you can eat the exact same number of calories you were eating in high-carb, on a low-carb plan, and lose weight doing so. Of course, calorie reduction accelerates the process. And if you’re significantly overweight, you’ll reach a point where you need to crank back the calories in order to continue losing. But that point is far more calories per day than the same individual could sustain in a high-carb diet without gaining weight.

   A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Until you are talking about the human body when it switches from carb-burning mode to ketosis/lipolysis. And then the rules change. A lot.

8. “Dr Ogden said with any diet, about 60% of people succeed in losing weight at the start. But over the next three to 10 years, 95% to 99% of dieters regained the weight they lost.

   She said: “Some gain even more weight than they had in the first place.””

   Sad but true. The advantage of the Atkins way of eating is that it is much easier to maintain than a lifelong “eat less” regimen. I don’t have any statistics on retention rates, but the amazing thing about people who remain low-carb for life (and I intend to be one of them — no diabetes for me, thanks, I’d be stupid to eat like I’ve been eating with my massive family history of diabetes) is that they can continue to eat satisfying, filling, wholesome foods, as long as their carbohydrates are only consumed in moderation while avoiding all refined carbohydrates. From the people I know who have stuck to it for years, it’s the easiest way of eating to maintain known to man.

End of my rant. I just hate it when people automatically assume that because I’m doing Atkins that I’m gorging on red meat and avoiding all fruits and vegetables. I’m eating far more veggies on my Atkins regimen than I ever did on my standard American diet. Eventually, I’ll get into more fruits, but that’s several weeks away at least. It’s simply a healthier way of eating, for me, and for many other people who have pretty bad reactions to refined carbs.

Of course, there are people blessed with different metabolisms that thrive on high-carb diets. And I wish them well. But I think I’ve definitely found a way of eating, in avoiding the refined carbs that are the plague of the 20th and 21st centuries, that suits my body chemistry and have already helped me keep much more even energy levels and avoid unpleasant side-effects of a refined carbohydrate diet.

All in all, this piece sounds like a PCRM (Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine) publicity piece. PCRM is a front for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a militantly anti-meat group. More information available about PCRM available here.