Le Blogger

As it snowed a little last week, today I ate hot pot to warm the belly. Hot pot very warming!

My current leisure reading is "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-eye view of the world" by Michael Pollan. Pollan is a contributing writer for the NYT Magazine and teaches writing at Berkeley. The book is fascinating. It's not the page turner kind of book that science fiction stories are to me, but still I find myself amazed at what little I knew and still do not know about these four plants: the apple tree, tulip, marijuana, and the potato. Pollan links these four species to some primal human desires---sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. There are some really convention-shattering things one will learn. For example, we have all heard of the Johnny Appleseed story, where Johnny lives the carefree life and wanders across America, like a bee, planting precious apple trees that eventually bear sweet red fruit. In fact, Johnny's original intention was to plant apple trees not for fruit, but to make hard cider. Alcohol! That's right. The apple tree planted ...

I went square dancing yesterday. Here's the website with a picture of the log cabin/building we danced in. It was loads of fun and really quite a work-out. Unfortunately no pictures from me as I was too busy dancing!

Here's some useful information: Top ten foods to help you fight high cholesterol . 1. Shitake Mushrooms The active component in shitake mushrooms--eritadenine--has been found to lower cholesterol levels in animal studies. The more eritadenine the animals received, the more their cholesterol levels dropped. 2. Walnuts A study in the April 2004 issue of Circulation found that when walnuts were substituted for about one-third of the calories supplied by olives and other monounsaturated fats in the Mediterranean diet, total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol were reduced. Walnuts contain the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to be excellent for the heart. 3. Uncooked Soy A new study found that eating two servings of soy protein a day can lower cholesterol by up to 9 percent--but it must be uncooked to have benefit. "Soy protein increases the activity of low-density lipoprotein receptors primarily on the liver that clears it from the body. Eating soy protein increa...

Psych experiment ! Did an experiment for a friend. Got poked and plugged in the brain!! The experiment was very interesting. I had to look at flashing photos of people's faces or houses, six of them arranged in a hexagon. I wasn't actually looking at the photos, instead focusing my attention on a crosshair set at the center of the hexagon. For the first run, five photos were colored yellow, and the sixth was cyan. The sixth photo would either be clear or blurred. My task was to press a button if the photo was blurred. The second run was the same, except the colors reversed---that is I was looking for a blurred yellow on cyan. The electrodes on my head and face picked up microvolt signals that were amplified and recorded on a computer. It's very sensitive! Simply blinking or grinding my teeth considerably altered the voltage scans. If I started to doze, alpha waves could also be recorded. What was the experiment looking for? Turns out, my friend was delaying the onset of col...

Charleston SC I road trip to Charleston, SC. It was quite a fun trip, and here are some of the highlights. Charleston is four hours away to the south of Durham. To get there, we took the 40 all the way down to near Wilmington, then switched onto I95. Our first stop was in Summerville, a small town 40 minutes northwest of Charleston. We headed straight for the historic downtown area, and parked next to the Town Hall. I mistakenly assumed the Town Hall would be some sort of visitor center/ museum and walked up to the reception desk to ask for interesting things to do in the area. The receptionist didn't quite know what to say, except that people just walk around and look at things. That's when I realized this was a real town hall, and not just an old historic building. So we walked around the area, and saw a candle shop called Lowcountry Candle . The shop owner makes all her own candles right in the shop. You can even custom order candle scents and colors. I had a nice conversat...

Check out these photos of clouds ! I like the one by Tanis Danielson as it looks like a Chinese dragon descending from the sky. Here's PC World's 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year . Interesting to see how the world and tech are moving along. From this we see how people are integrating technology into their lives to make it better and more efficient. It's also a way to figure out where the next big $$ can be made.