Seems like nutrition is going to be a common topic for the foreseeable future here at SYNS.

Why would someone order a double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke?

I wanted to check on the nutritional value of a salad I had for lunch the other day. So I logged on to Wendy’s web site. I always look for the PDF document version of the nutrition info, rather than try to use some fancy fangled web form to find what I’m looking for. Some places will trick you with those web forms and not tell you the whole story.
Once, I’ve found the PDF, my eyes scan down the page, looking for “Mandarin Chicken Salad”. Ah. Here it is.

170 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. Say, that seems healthy enough. It’s only 3 points on WeightWatchers*. Sweet!

But wait. Something is amiss. These numbers seem way too low. Could 170 calories include everything that was handed to me through the red head’s drive-thru window? NO! Strangely enough, they separate out the various other ingredients that will balloon your back side.

What?! But that’s … *seven… three… carry the two…* That’s 540 calories!! Wendy! You vixen! You lied to me. But why?! This salad is not 3 WeightWatcher points*. It’s 12!! Gah! Now I’m going to have to eat half a lettuce leaf for dinner! Curse your crimson braids, Wendy!

Okay, for the purpose of full disclosure, I’m being a little sensational here. I didn’t actually have the Mandarin Chicken Salad. I had the Chicken BLT Salad which is listed the same way, but the difference is not as dramatic. And if you do use Wendy’s fancy fangled web form, it does lump all the ingredients together and shows 520 calories (closer, I guess). But still it took me a bit to catch on and realize that that stupid Honey Mustard Dressing had almost as much calories and even more fat than the salad and it’s on-board chicken. So I’m still mad about it.

A big ol’ boy like me is allowed around 37* points a day to stay svelte and sexy. I’ll write soon about why WeightWatcher points matter to me.

Don’t ya just love HotPockets? Those tasty little pastries, hard as granite on the outside and hot enough to melt your teeth on the inside? MmMmm.

This story is not about that kind of HotPocket. It’s about an actual hot pocket. Flaming hot.

According to this story from an Atlanta TV station, Danny Williams’ two-year-old iPod Nano could easily have got him arrested under suspicion of terrorism. Danny works in an airport and while at work, the Nano in his pocket burst into flames. Thankfully, the TSA didn’t notice his smokin’ hot pants and he had a brochure in his pocket that protected him from the flames.

Apple has promised to replace Williams’ iPod if he sends it in, presumable so they can study it, but when the TV station tried to contact them, Apple wouldn’t talk.

(Warning: This post got way too long because it really encompasses two separate issues: Deceptive media practices and ignorant, psuedo-religious ideology. Please read this with that in mind.)

I got an email from the AFA today asking me to buy and wear a button in support of traditional Christmas. Reason for the season kind of stuff. Not unusual. But the headline was about a school near Chicago that had “banned Christmas”. That’s a pretty bold statement. I appreciate the AFA but I’m keenly aware that they can get a little carried away in sensationalism, so I always do some background checking on their stories.

Initially, I found a bunch of blogs decrying the Oak Lawn school board for attacking tradition in favor of political correctness. The usual rancor you would expect. But all the rants linked to the same story from Chicago’s CBS affiliate. I read the story and even watched the news video clip and it seemed to me that it was all being over-blown. (Also something I’ve come to expect.)

This story and video report on a school board meeting at which a bunch of white folks say a lot of pretty stupid stuff* and the Muslim mother at the center of the controversy comes off as the most logical and level headed person at the meeting. So I begin to think, “Well, nobody is ‘banning Christmas’ here. It’s just a little Muslim mom asking that her kids be allowed to fast according to their religion. That’s nothing to get all mad about.”

But then, I found an older video which made much more sense. The blog links I had followed were referring to this video of the previous story in which the school did explicitly ban the celebration of “Halloween”, “Christmas”, and any other seasonal religious holiday. It was a knee jerk reaction to the display (and subsequent removal) of some Ramadan decorations. Instead, the school opted for sterile, politically correct “Fall” and “Winter” celebrations.

Now, normally, I would be upset about the religious ban, but the school board made the right decision in the end (according to the later story, allowing Christians and Muslims to celebrate). What I find really disturbing is that the CBS web site clearly replaced the first story with the second, using the same URL to cover up the upsetting story with the soothing one, hiding the story about religion being banned from school with the story in which the school’s “tolerant” final decision is made and the “good, white, Christian folk” are displayed using very poor logic* to condemn the school’s earlier decision.

Is anyone else bothered by the link switching going on here? If I linked to a story about religious intolerance and that link was later changed to a story about religious tolerance, I’d look like an idiot. Perhaps that was the TV station’s intention. Either way, it stinks.

* Now, I want to expand on this “stupid stuff”:

I’m very conservative and very nationalistic. I’m also a very vocal Christan and I tend to stand on the side of keeping Christmas Christian and public. But I really get aggravated when people use poor logic and bigotry to support their point. It makes the rest of us look bad. Here are some quotes from the parents at the school board meeting:

“If Muslims want the school holidays, menus and school traditions to become tailored to their needs or beliefs, then they should go to private school next to their mosque.”

So, tell me, sir: Why aren’t your kids in a Christian school? If your kids are in a public school, you should expect them to be exposed to multiple cultures. If you expect your public school to celebrate Christmas, you should not be surprised when they also learn about Ramadan. Your double standard in unconstitutional.

“They’re trying to take away holidays and stuff for the kids,” said resident Gene Boerema, dressed in a Santa Claus costume.

Wow. You really came out to support your religious beliefs, huh? Cuz we all know that Santa delivered baby Jesus and put him in a brightly wrapped box under a decorated pine tree. A Santa costume at a school board meeting? I think someone just wanted to make the news. People who turn serious issues into a circus really irritate me.

“We’re letting you come here, were honoring you, don’t dishonor us.”

Seriously?! You “let” people of another religion “come here”? What “here” are you talking about? “Your” school? “Your” neighborhood? “Your” country? You may need to brush up on your American history a little bit. “Here” isn’t “ours”. “Here” actually belonged to “them derned Injuns” first and the multitude of people to came “here” from somewhere else, I assure you, were not all Christians. It is very ignorant of you to assume a religion that is foreign to you is foreign to America. Now, if you’re talking about illegal immigrants using tax-payer funded schools and health care, that’s one thing. If you’re talking about Islam as something inherently foreign, you’re only exposing your own bigotry and stupidity.

Ok. I’ve ranted far too long. I’m going to have to let this one be and go take some deep breaths.

Yep, I got one of those emails. The one with the two pages of forward headers at the top and five ‘>’ at the front of each line. But this one had some gems in it. And since I am from Amarillo, I have to share a few lines

You know you are from Amarillo, Texas if…

• Friday night high school football is a sell-out.
• You laugh at out-of-towners who actually attempt to eat the free 72 oz. steak.
• You think that trees naturally grow leaning to the north east.
• You know where The Canyon is.
• You’ve never seen smog, but you’ve been through a dust storm.
• You know that the Cadillac Ranch isn’t a real ranch.
• 40 mph wind is, ‘a little breezy.’
• You’ve had to pull over and remove tumbleweeds from the grill of your car.
• You’ve seen rain, hail, sleet, and snow all in the same storm.
• You’ve seen tires on the roofs of trailer houses and you know they’re there to hold the roof on.
• You know how to pronounce Dumas.
• You accept the fact that the most prominent vehicles on the streets are pickup trucks, SUVs, tractors, then cars (in that order).
• You can get a sunburn one weekend and the next weekend it snows!
• Some mountain weirdo or hill country hippie has called you a ‘flat lander‘ and you were proud of it.
• You tell people you live in a red brick house with a tan shingled roof and and a tiny little tree in the front yard, and then realize that describes every house within a 5-mile radius.

It’s Wednesday, the unofficial cut-off time for posting a new white board quip. You’ll have to wait for next Monday. Sorry about that.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I swear today feels like Monday. *Peeks around the corner to see if Rod Sterling is doing an introductory monolog about me.*

For you geek theorists out there, this is huge.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, postulated back in 1965 that the speed and capacity of computer technology would double every two years. This is Moore’s Law and, with very little variation, it has held true for over four decades. The exponential increase in process speeds and storage capacity hug the theoretical graph.

So where we are in the shadow of 2010 and Moore was asked if there is a barrier at the end of the graph. He said yes! Watch the video and hear it for yourself.

The computer on which you are reading this contains a processor in which millions of tiny electrical switches are crammed onto a 2 inch wide piece of silicon and copper. There has to be insulation around these switches. (Think of the plastic coating on your hair dryer’s electric cord that keeps you from zapping yourself.) In current technology, that insulation is as little as five molecules thick. That’s insane.

What Moore says is that you can’t make the insulation any thinner without things starting to short out. According to Moore, we are 10 to 15 years away from reaching the physical limitations of electrical shrinkage.

Does that mean that we can’t go any faster? Well, they used to say you can’t go faster than the speed of sound, and for a propeller driven play, that’s probably true. So, let’s say you can’t get more than 5 gigahertz of process speed out of a single copper/silicon chip. That may be true. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never see a 10 gigahertz computer, or a 100 gigahertz computer for that matter. It just won’t work the same way that processors work today.

Still, it’s a pretty amazing time to be a geek!

I have always liked Mr. Bean. His innocence, his naiveté, and his bizarre creativity in the face of adversity are nearly as genius as the genre’s first great star, Buster Keaton. Combine his Keatonesque ability to get into trouble with is perfectly non-Keatonesque expressions (I swear Rowan Atkinson‘s face is made of silly putty) and you get the genius that is Mr. Bean.

Bean would be quite at home in a silent film, but he’s even funnier with sound. He never really talks other than a rare monosyllable like, “Bean!” But his non-verbal expression is hilarious, from frustrated sighs and bored moans to shocked squeals and frantic babble.

Let’s be honest, a lot of people hate Bean. If you don’t “get” his humor, he can easy come off as gratingly fatuous. And his first U.S. released movie, entitled simply, “Bean”, really was bad. If that was your only exposure to Bean, please give Mr. Bean’s Holiday a chance.

In 1997’s Bean, they tried to frame a decidedly American movie around a decidedly British character. It just didn’t work. He talked too much. The plot was contrived and stretched. It wasn’t really Bean.

2007’s Holiday, on the other hand, is exactly and perfectly Bean. The only time I recall him speaking more than one syllable was when he said, “Gracias.” The wackiness is just the right length, never stretched or overstated. It feels very much like his TV shorts, stitched together with a believable plot (ok, believable enough). In short, it works.

Holiday also scored with me on two other points. First, it’s rated G. Yes, G. Remember G? In a time when even cartoon features are coming out as PG-13, it’s nice to know someone understands entertainment for a “general audience”. I can’t remember there being any foul language (although there may have been something in one of Willem Dafoe’s stereotypical, Hollywood-snob rants).

Second, there were gags in the trailers that I didn’t see in the movie, and (more importantly) there were many many things to laugh at in the movie that were not in the trailers. That’s a serious pet peeve of mine so here it becomes praise-worthy.

Okay, this is getting long winded. Let me put my grins where my mouth is. (I think I’ve used that before. Hmm.) I give Mr. Bean’s Holiday a well deserved four grins.

P.S. There are a few of Mr. Bean’s TV shorts on YouTube. Check them out!

I ordered some Microsoft certification training materials from Amazon last week. I’m not a frequent Amazon customer by any means, but they had a great deal on some stuff I needed.

Today, I received some requisite unsolicited marketing from the big A. Based on my purchase and some deep, dark, magical algorithm, I was offered these books in which I might be interested.

Apparently, Amazon thinks that the kind of people who read Microsoft training manuals are also interested in Harry Potter. I find that an offensive generalization! Those anti-geekite bigots!

Or… maybe… those Potter fans know some magic spell that can help me pass my certification test! Hey!!

Ever wonder…

How is it that a pizza can get to your house faster than an ambulance?