Loxosceles

This article, "Unhappy meals" by Michael Pollan confirms a few beliefs that I've been calling my "crackpot theories" in recent years, including that (a) we don't know shit about nutrition (future scientists will laugh at our carbs-vs-fat debates like we laugh at the Four Humors) and (b) numerical measurements of food contents (calories, etc) will be shown to be almost meaningless.

Pollan's story about the government always recommending "eat more" and never "eat less" is told in more detail in the book Food Politics, which has lots more juicy gossip on the USDA and friends.

Speaking of juicy gossip, word on the street is that the FSF's associate member meeting is set for Saturday, March 24th. If it's anything like the past meetings, it'll be on MIT's campus and will feature an amazing afternoon talk by Eben Moglen. His talk alone (full of juicy gossip about under-the-table deals in the software industry) is worth the price of membership, and you can think of the rest of the conference as a freebie!

The same weekend is the Boston Tea Party, a swing dance event with six tracks of workshops, and tons of dances and competitions. Only 20 minutes away! They even have a beginner's track, so if you're in town for the FSF meeting you can learn to swing dance while you're there.

Meanwhile the CFP is out for YAPC 2007! It's in Houston this year. Hopefully I'll be there, and hopefully I'll be speaking, but I don't know yet about what. (Hey perl dorks: If you heard my talk at PPW, did it leave any burning questions that you hoped would be addressed in a later talk?)

OK, your bonus for reading to the end of this rambling post: a song from the new-ish album Strange Conversation by Kris Delmhorst. All the songs are other people's poetry, set to her music. They're all beautiful tunes, and some of them are really rockin', like this one, "Water Water". The album also features an excellent rendition of anyone lived in a pretty how town done as a fast-paced country ballad. It's available on emusic, my favorite DRM-free mp3 store (cheaper than itunes, works on any device, and it's a great place to discover new music. No, they don't pay me to plug them, but I want to support them because they are awesome. Happy customer for 2 years now.). I browsed back through Kris Delmhorst's other albums; none of them grabbed me like Strange Conversation but I did like several of the tracks on Five Stories - especially the energetic "Honeyed Out" and the really sweet "Lullaby 101".