The Carb-Sane Asylum

I wanted to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you who celebrates the birth of Our Savior a very Merry Christmas!  May you stay safe, warm and healthy at this joyous time.    While many bloggers will probably be scarce until after the New Year, yours truly will likely be blogging up a storm as my day job is on hiatus for a month.  Hope to "see" you around, but if not, that's OK too ... I'll see you in 2011.  This afternoon I'm cooking up traditional Christmas Eve fare of my husband's ethnic tradition.  Perhaps I'll have some pics to post over in the Culinary Concoctions blog.   Thanks for reading and contributing here, it means a lot to me.

Hi Gang! Some have already noticed the new "What I'm Reading & Tweeting" widget over on the right hand side bar.  I got the idea to do this from Chris over at Conditioning Research .   He used to have a scrolling "What I'm Reading" box on his blog, that apparently was a widget from Blogger/Google that let him share selections from his reader.  Apparently that feature is no longer available through Google ... bummer as I was looking for something a little different than a blogroll and such.  So he told his readers that for now to follow on Twitter.  I have noticed many blogs with Recent Tweets widgets.  Lightbulb ... head ... So, I decided to get on Twitter and put that widget here.  My intent at this point is to share with my blog readers those things around the web that I'm reading and find interesting and worth sharing.  I would like to keep the outgoing tweets "clean" in this regard.  A one-way street if you will.  Not to be an...

It's been a wild and wonderful ride.

I overheard a student the other day discussing her, apparently mandatory, meal card.  I remember that well.  All freshmen living in dorms at almost every college/university must participate.  My first semester I rarely ate in the cafeteria because the food sickened me. So one of my students was saying that she had over $1000 on her meal card.  WOW!  I can't help but think what that amount of money can buy.  I find this so very sad. Why do I feel so old?  Well, because I can't help but think about the costs of things.  In my day most rented those little cubicle dorm fridges for like $50/year or semester even.  Now?  You can buy a small fridge/freezer that is separate for not much more!!  There were no Home Depots, Lowes, WalMarts, Costcos, Sam's Club, BJ's back then. And yet with all that they have available, *kids* these days are (a) on the one hand still forced into ridiculous mealplans and such , and (b) on the other hand so a...

Gotta brag a bit.  On Saturday afternoon my husband got the bug to rent a log splitter so we could split the remaining wood from last year.  The hitch sleeve was rusty so it took a bit to even get the hitch on, but by 3pm we had the splitter and went to town.  Had built a small pile in a couple hours then showered and went out with friends.  I thought for sure I'd be sore yesterday but not really.  We gave the neighbors a break and didn't start until noon (plus we didn't want a visit from the police!).  We worked for about 5 hours (not constantly).    The big pile ... around 7' high x 12 x 10'

I am not a doctor.  I've never had cancer, though I've had numerous close to me diagnosed and have actually studied it quite a bit.   So with Jimmy's Crap on the Jaminets fest going on over on his blog, lots of opinions on diet for cancer, ketogenic specifically, and Paul's "dangerous" recommendations are being bantied about.  I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Shou-Ching Jaminet is a cancer researcher!   But I guess she's only responsible for Paul's white rice consumption, and has no bearing on Paul-the-astrophysicist's understanding of molecular biology.   Yeauh right.  :-(

I'm flabbergasted that (before even Stephan posted his comment here)  Blogger registered a "spike" in my traffic (and we're talking the "instantaneous" 2 hour hits kind) worthy of the blood glucose curve for  Wheat Belly consuming 5 bowls of battery acid .  Stephan's comment has obviously been linked to at www's far and wide and generated more, but this is something *different* here, even given my penchant for those Gary Taubes exposes seen as provocative. In the three days since the Wonder what he said  post was published, it has rocketed up my most viewed posts to be #2 ALL TIME and as of this post, half the page hits of the long standing #1 GT email post.   What does this say folks?  

In the very near future, My Carb Sane-Asylum will be branching out onto YouTube!  I have some ideas for the name of my YouTube Channel, and slogans, etc.  But I thought I'd cast a net out there to y'all as I think my readership is very creative and witty.   So.  Name, logo, slogan, music, format (keep in mind initially these will not be live videos of moi, it will be narrated slideshow type vids), effects, etc.  If you've got an idea you'd rather share privately, the Inbox is always open: carbsane at gmail.com. Thanks!

There's quite a bit of discussion going on over this topic in the comments HERE . Archibald posted a link to Issues and Misconceptions About Obesity , the infamous Flatt paper. Since this part was "hot" right now, I decided to blog on this, also because the issue has come up in other recent comments. 9. Conditions for body weight stability: “settling point” vs. “set point” Although less obvious than the fact that energy intake must be equal to energy expenditure, weight stability also requires that the substrate mixture oxidized be equivalent, on average, to the composition of the nutrient mix consumed. When “substrate balance” is not achieved, changes in body composition occur, which in time are bound to elicit adjustments in food intake.  Weight maintenance thus tends to become established for a particular body composition in a given individual living under a particular set of circumstances. This corresponds to a “settling point”. Such a view accommodates the fact th...

... but it really is besides the point. I've finally fixed the picture issues over at my Who Is CarbSane page and it's been an interesting several weeks to read the musings about the internet about my weight, etc. based on my face shot.  I must be a cannonball, there's no way I can fit into the sizes I do, whatever ...

At the time of posting, my installment in this series about Laura Dolson didn't catch much flack.   Of course later it was picked up on a bit, but in general I believe the lack of "backlash" on this one was that it spoke of an obvious truth -- and about someone who doesn't seem to have an active "internet personality" presence.   By that I mean Dolson blogs semiregularly over there w/o mentioning much about her personal weight issues.  Said weight issues one would have pretty much no idea about looking at her (likely Photo-shopped) face shot.  And let's read her bio , shall we? Experience: Laura has been developing health and education Web sites for over 10 years. She was a writer and cancer support provider at Mediconsult.com, and has taught health and nutrition classes at a junior high charter school in California. She has been focusing on low-carb and low-glycemic eating for over a decade -- investigating the emerging science related to low-carb eat...

This is a philosophical post of sorts that's been knocking around in my head for a while.  I've briefly defined here before the type of intellectual bullying that goes on that I've always referred to in my real life as baffling with bullshit.  A more detailed example can be found in this blog post .  Today I want to talk about another tactic prevalent in the works and writings of pseudoscience journalists and bloggers.  It's the use of the concept of whether or not someone understands something, basically taking advantage of the general lack of knowledge in the population as a whole to make them feel stupid.  This, too, is a form of intellectual bullying folks, there's no doubt about it.  I'm sure there's some fancy Latin phrase for all of this, but I just want to point out how it is used against folks in debate and encourage would be victims to stick up for themselves and not fall for it!

I've received a number of back channel communications -- most from well meaning friends -- regarding my recent calling out of the low carb community in posts like the "Is LC Morphing into HAES" series.   I've also eavesdropped on several discussions about me (from before my interview with Jimmy on through after that blog post series unveiled) where folks really "don't get me". At this point I want all of my readers to realize that, yes, there is a personal component to my relationship with, and opinion of, Jimmy Moore.  We had exchanged an email/PM or few regarding discussions on his forum as well as my commenting several times on his menus blog regarding his weight struggles over time since I joined up on his forum a little over two years ago.  This was all before the LC Chief of Police  (Fred Hahn) found my blog entry on glyceroneogenesis that violated the LC Profanity Code.  Where were my three seashells when I needed them?

Announcing my unveiling of the new look here at the Asylum! If I were a conspiracy theorist I would believe someone jacked my usual browser as just after I applied the new template --  that needed quite a bit of tweaking -- blogger went down on me.  So much for doing it in the wee hours!  Then I saw a comment come through my reader on another blogspot blog and tried IE.  Well, thankfully that worked. Not much will be changing here at my main blog, other than the look, but I've now revealed my secret identity and written a bit more about the conception of this blog and its direction moving forward.  Always being an all or nuthin' kinda gal, there's probably a lot more about me there than anyone needs to know.   The most important new thing is the Discussion Boards are open!  Jump on in!! I hope I have all the links going to the right places.  Please do let me know if you find any problems there.  And, as always, feedback is welco...

Guess my ethnicity! I'll tell you that the hair color comes from a bottle these days, but I was blonde until my 20's when it started to turn mousy "dirty blonde".  The brows have always been dark.  It's "my signature" as Mom says ;-)   That is a fairly recent pic of me up there sans makeup.  I'm sporting a bit of a tan as I'm a day or so into a Mexican vacation. I'm majority of two nationalities.  And there's no prize for guessing correctly, although who knows, if I ever have anything to give away maybe I'll shoot ya a freebie.  

I've been struggling a bit of late with the content of this blog.  On the one hand, I'd love to keep it all science, all the time.  I clearly have a contingent of readers that are interested in just that.  But you know what?  I like to think that even in those science posts, my personality peeps through my writing and has some people reading (and hopefully learning) despite the otherwise rather bland content of said posts.

I recently googled for my blog (since I was in Google search anyway) and lo and behold up pops the following website: This is a verbatim copy of my own blog post by the same title:   Does Eating Carbohydrates Cause Diabetes ? without attribution.   I post this here to alert others of this website that seems to contain a TON of blog content by who knows how many writers out there.  Some of my readers with their own blogs may want to google some of their phrases to make sure they're not having their content swiped.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have been pre-occupied of late caring for a family member.  This has taken a bit of a toll on me both mentally and at times physically.  This past weekend marked the beginning of the end of this chapter, as this person has made it to the in-patient rehab phase of their journey towards recovery. I've tried to welcome every newbie who comments here, but, as traffic has picked up, this has been difficult to keep track of.  And I embarrassingly mixed up two different people with the same screen name, for which I hope my apology has been accepted. I wanted to take the time this morning to thank each and every one of you for reading and offering your input here.  If I don't always get to acknowledge or answer your comments, it's not because I don't want to, it's because I do have more than this blog in my life, much as I like to "goof off" about the internet!   Couple that with one of my failings - getting easily distracte...

I'm sure the irony doesn't escape you.  A movement, comprised of those who prided themselves on casting aside dogma in favor of real data and facts, has now become hysterically dogmatic itself. 

I received the following email a couple of days ago: I have spent about half an hour on your blog trying to find some kind of specific entries that explain why you, per your headline, don't buy what most of the low-carb community says about why it works, but you live it anyway. Do you have a post or two that sort of sums it up?  Because I just got lost and it seemed that in order to understand what you were talking about I would have to commit to starting at the beginning and read everything, including all the links - AND I'd have to have the ability to understand it all, which I do not. So... could you give me a hand in getting a grounding in how you seem to be pretty hostile to a whole lot of low-carb stuff while living low carb. Much obliged for your help. I've come to realize that I don't have such a post or two to point to, so I thank this reader (I'll let him/her ID themselves if they so desire) for bringing this to my attention.