The old saying goes, “An apple a day will keep the doctor away.” Well, didn’t they tell Eve not to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden? Well, she did and with good reason, they are good for you! I’d almost say they are the perfect fruit, packed with antioxidants, fiber and overall taste. Your mother was again right when she said eating one will keep the doctor away; apples are packed with Vitamin C (almost 14% of the daily value) to help keep the immune system strong and efficient. Here are the top 6 reasons why you should be eating apples daily:
Apples are packed with fiber (4.4 grams per medium apple). Fiber allows the body to blunt the fat storing effects of insulin and keeps blood sugar in a stable place.
They provide 14% of your daily value in the immune-boosting Vitamin C
Are low in calories (95 calories per medium apple) and can satisfy hunger.
Josh Bowen
Research has shown that people who eat apples on a regular bases are less likely to develop metabolic syndrome (heart disease and diabetes).
Apples can increase your endurance. Quercetion, an antioxidant, has shown to increase the amount of oxygen that is available to the lungs.
They taste good! Especially with a little peanut butter!
I am big believer in food as a source of healing for the body. We can get a lot of raw vegetables and fresh fruit more so that we can through processed foods. Apples are packed with good nutrition and should be taken everyday!
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Why Facebook won’t ever save your life.
Today I was working from my car (something I do often) and both phones were out of charge and and I had left my charging cable at home.
I mean….the whole point of having a back-up phone is in case the primary phone runs out of power but it was drained too. Having a back up phone is especially critical if your primary phone is an iPhone (which holds a charge about as long as you can drive on a spare tire) And note, iPhones are terrible back-up phones to another iPhone. It’s like replacing your spare tire with another spare tire.
But here’s how I realized Facebook isn’t a great vehicle for a blast text message screaming out for help. Of course, I didn’t need to scream out for help. But I did have a few minutes left on my laptop which was connected to wifi. And it made me wonder what would happen if I did post in big bold letters on Facebook, “Help Me!!”
And I realized instantly what would happen if I was being beaten and kidnapped moments before posting my desperate plea for help….assuming I survived to check my Facebook page the next day.
I would have received maybe 25 “Likes” and had about 10 comments along the line of “Hilarious!,” “No, not him. I need help! LOL,” “You should use a red octagon sign,” “OMG, that happened to me once and all I got were “likes.” Good luck!” And maybe a few “shares.”
But, then again, if something like that ever did happen, it would make a really funny Facebook post.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Dec 19, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
What if the most remarkable country in the world that has been negatively and unfairly defined by a single movie?
If you answered “Turkey” and “Midnight Express,” I’d say you and I agree.
In Ephesus today.
Here I momentarily forget what I’m thinking about and inadvertently find myself captivated by the tour guide’s explanation of the city’s history.
It happened many times today.
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Kickin’ it with my girl, Ottoman style! ; )
One of the greatest sins we can commit is to have a chance to get to know extraordinary people.
And then not take advantage of it.
And you never know when the opportunity will present itself. So always be ready to talk. Even when your not sure.
This pic of a cat siting on a column led to some chuckles from my wife and daughter but then a nice lady with a very professional looking camera decided to take the same shot. I nudged my wife and daughter and said, “Told ya it was a good photo to take.”
The woman with the professional camera overheard us and, along with her husband, laughed. And that’s all I needed. Over the next 20 minutes I learned that Matt worked as a VC for 6 years before he and his wife, Erica, dropped out and became professional world travelers 2 years earlier. They’ve visited and written about 30 countries, mostly about economic development but also offering a sort of personal Trip Adviser take on each destination. (Think of Albert Brooks’ Lost in America —but working out. And going international.)
Next year Matt hopes to find himself in Standord’s MBA program. And deserves to be there.
And if that still isn’t enough to pique your curiosity, their website is titled “What if” with the tag line, “Living to never wonder, What if”
Extraordinary young people I have a feeling I’ll see again and already have suggested they write for a blog and would love to help these two any way I can.
And I never even took the time to go back and thank the cat for awkwardly sitting on that column and giving me an excuse to meet to fine young Americans–Living the American Dream. (without a sarcastic overtone)
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Oh no you didn’t!
You didn’t really dismiss the idea of an American ever beating you in backgammon, before I did!
“Here, we play very fast.”
“In Kentucky, we just beat you. Whether you get beat playing in fast motion or slow motion is completely up to you.”
I wanted to say but didn’t. Instead, I said, “Oh, OK. Sure. Maybe we can play sometime.” ; )
Me with our world class tour guy and all round great guy….getting a free backgammon lesson from his KY friend.
“Many people think backgammon came from Persia. Actually, it came from Appalachia.” Something else I wanted to say but didn’t have the courage. ; )
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Theology and social media? No!!
My deep insight of the day offered to our tour group.
In Ephesus our tour guide was explaining the “Letters” written from the area by Saul of Taursus and John and St John –and how these letters later became entire books of the Bible.
“Sir,” I offered, “Can you imagine what the Bible would look like if they’d had email back then and communicated informally via email, texts and Twitter? It would be a third of the length and filled with ridiculous acronyms and smiley faces and even a few LOLs!”
I’m pretty sure no one had ever made that point to him before and was pretty proud of my theological insight. ; )
LOL!
Read the rest of… John Y. Brown, III: An American in Turkey
Steven Spielberg delayed the release of his movie on Abraham Lincoln to avoid the charge of hagiography, not of the sixteenth president, but of Barack Obama. It was Spielberg’s intuition that there were enough aspects of the film that were susceptible to being twisted to partisan ends—from its similarity to the Democrats’ narrative of a progressive president fighting off a revanchist congressional opposition, to the Obama Administration’s early infatuation with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, which is credited as the primary source for the picture, to the linkage between the first American president to align himself with racial equality and the first president whose bloodlines crystallize that equality—to keep its premiere out of the election season.
So, “Lincoln” avoided becoming a bumper sticker in the final days of the last election. It has not managed to side-step a whole slew of efforts by commentators to make it an instructive template for political leadership: David Thomson’s assessment in the New Republic that the guiding principle of the film is the need for leaders “who can stoop to getting the job done” is mimicked by David Brooks’ assertion that the film elevates politics by showing the noble purposes to which ordinary political maneuvering can be deployed. Ross Douthat captures the argument that ”Lincoln” is a tribute to the revolutionary ends that can be achieved when moderates and ideologues align and temper each other.
I will venture a theory that while not one of these observations is wrong on the merits, that they all suffer from reading “Lincoln” through a certain wishful lens: in this light, Spielberg’s version (and Tony Kushner’s screenplay) of Abraham Lincoln is a model of what Barack Obama might develop into if he added more grit to the polish and the cool; or more broadly, this fictional president is an imagining of what any successful chief executive in the future might look like—savvy enough to coopt the hard-liners, tactical enough to accomplish heroic ends through hard-nosed means. In other words, these pundits see a high-minded primer on how a capable president might win friends and influence people: a home-spun, American Machiavelli.
But reading “Lincoln” as an instruction manual ignores the degree to which this film is almost subversively hostile to two of the favorite values of contemporary politics: authenticity and transparency. The blunt truth of this portrait of Lincoln’s presidency is a democratic reality that if it materialized tomorrow, we would find depressing and hardly idealistic. It is a closed universe of insiders who operated free of consistent public scrutiny, or ethics regulations, or even a softer code that words and deeds should be tightly connected to be credible. There is a void of disclosure and standards that is not remotely capable of being replicated today, and that we wouldn’t want to conjure up if we could. The point is not to treat Lincoln is anything other than great, but that his greatness operated in a zone not remotely like our own.
It is not just that Lincoln is “wily and devious”, in Thomson’s description in TNR, or that he takes “morally hazardous action”, in Brooks’ rendition, it is that the times he lived in extracted no particular price for such shiftiness. So, Lincoln saves the 13th Amendment at a critical stage by deploying a word game to fend off the news that a set of Confederate negotiators are offering a peace deal that might end the war without emancipation. The negotiators are not in Washington, Lincoln allows, despite rumors to the contrary and aren’t set to be there: the more complete truth is that they are holed up on the Virginia coastline, waiting for a presidential visit. The deceit is not a small one, and the movie to its credit captures both its importance and dishonesty: by bending the actual time line just a bit to make Lincoln’s dodging the decisive blow to enshrine freedom in the Constitution, Spielberg and Kushner are taking aim at our squeamishness over candor.
And it is not just the white lie over a southern peace offering. Another central point in the picture is the urgency of separating constitutional emancipation from a broader campaign to extend larger citizenship rights on blacks. In Spielberg’s mostly accurate telling, Lincoln’s rival for control of the House Republican caucus, Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), equivocates at a key moment in the debate on the full implications of the amendment, and the film is complimentary of Stevens’ waffling, which is the exact rhetorical approach Lincoln himself brandished as a senate and presidential candidate and as the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. That it proved to be the shrewdest course in Lincoln’s day is hard to argue; what is impossible to argue is how aggressively such an evasion would be exploited in our climate (and how zealously we would argue for the dissembling to be unmasked if we were on the losing side).
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Lincoln’s Lost World
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Tue Dec 18, 2012 at 5:00 PM ET
The Politics of Laughter
Cards Against Humanity ran a Holiday Pack which people could buy for whatever amount of money they chose. Here are the results. [Cards Against Humanity]
How to Seize a Moment by Daniel Radcliffe [picture]
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Dec 18, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
Just like the swallows returning to Capistrano, or the first lilacs of spring, once a year you can count on a few pundits at Fox to resuscitate their complaints about the “war on Christmas.” Once again, they claim their beloved holiday is under attack because a group of atheists lobby to remove a nativity scene from a city hall, or a school changes its Christmas concert to a Holiday concert. Come on, O’Reilly – for several weeks, starting on Thanksgiving and often before, this entire country is covered in an avalanche of candy canes, Christmas tree decorations, and holiday muzak. You can’t go anywhere without being bombarded by Christmas – if it’s under attack, it’s doing pretty darn well. (As Jon Stewart pointed out, since this year ‘Black Friday’ started on Thanksgiving, Christmas is now eating other holidays!)
Of course there are a few loonies out there, fighting the fact that a vast majority of this country celebrate Christmas. But for most of us non-Christians, we have nothing against the holiday and even accept that there will be tinsel, Christmas lights, and dogs barking Jingle Bells everywhere we go. We simply would prefer not to be bombarded with the more religious aspects of the holiday – sparkling lights and metallic ornaments are a lot more inclusive than crosses or baby Jesuses. And wishing people “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” makes us feel less left out, without taking anything away from Christmas. In fact, we hope you have a lovely holiday (while we eat Chinese food and go to the movies).
This week’s video tries to explain why your non-Christian friends might be getting a little cranky this time of year – so I hope you will please cut them (and me) a little slack!
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Dec 18, 2012 at 2:30 PM ET
As you may have read, the malevolent jackasses at the Westboro Baptist Church have now chosen to further poison the American polity by picketing a vigil for the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting.
Here is their latest tweet:
Predictably, and of course most deservingly, the provocation has generated considerable outrage all over the Internet tubes.
Unfortunately, as my friend and social media guru Scott Clark writes , expressing our outrage online only helps this tiny group of extremist perverts further achieve its mission of spreading their anti-Christian gospel of hatred and intolerance:
Every time you share/like/comment on a post about the Westboro Cult, you boost their SEO and Social Media profile (yes, I recognize my role by posting this, but read on). This is precisely what they exist for – they know how to game the engagement algorithms online. Likes, Shares and Comments, Page Views, Click throughs, Good *or* bad publicity…they love it all. So stop.
So here’s my modest proposal. From now on, when you want to write something online about these malignant buffoons, refer to them as “The Recovering Politician.”
Such as posting on Facebook:
I hear The Recovering Politician is at it again — spewing hate and dragging the poor innocent souls of murdered children into its sinister plot.
Or on Twitter:
I think @RecoveringPol is the biggest douchebag in the country.
Give it a try.
Now that I’m out of politics I can handle the abuse. And I’d love to improve my SEO and Social Media profile.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Dec 18, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
#TEAMJYB3:
Phat Americans.
The Anti-Immigration Movement in the US may have an unsuspecting ally.
The article I just read (click here) now shows obesity is a greater food problem than hunger. That’s a big story. But not nearly as big as the “story behind the story” –that I suspect may be true.
Americans gaining weight is nothing new. Buy why are we gaining weight so consistently and deliberately? I think it is because you can’t argue with the fact that obese Americans simply take up more space than if they were thin. And then there is the other seemingly unrelated issue: That being an American and “vocally anti-immigration” is uncomfortable at best and somewhat hypocritical at worst.
The first time I realized I had mixed feelings about immigration and found myself agreeing with Lou Dobbs, I weighed 165 pounds. That was 27 pounds ago.
I still haven’t articulated any of my concerns. But i have taken concrete anti-immigration in other ways. Making sure I physically take up more space as an American—space that could easily be filled by a very skinny illegal immigrant. At first it was only subconscious…but the harder I find it to lose weight, the more it got me to thinking about my real motive for over eating since watching that fateful Lou Dobbs interview several years ago.
It just all makes so much sense now.
Even as a young child when the ice cream truck came by I would more likely order a Red, White and Blue “Bomber” popsicle while the other kids would order “Push ups.”
America’s problem with gaining weight began at about the same time there was an increasing concern that we were pushing the immigration limits in the US.
Americans who are selflessly carrying extra-weight must have been doing so—at least in part—as a subconsciously patriotic act to make sure our country stay’s “right-sized”– for our children and our children’s children.
Sure, there is an element of passive-aggressiveness and nativism —and maybe some unflattering stereotyping of “outsiders” (and in a few isolated instances even outright prejudice) we portly patriots are guilty of. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the only real prejudice we have is being a little too “Pro-American” for our own health.
So, next time you see one of us out and are tempted to roll your eyes at our lack of discipline —ask yourself, “What did I do today to curb rampant immigration in my country today?” It may just give you pause and remind you of the greater goal behind those who don’t believe it’s wrong to be more concerned for their country than their waistline.
And remind you, too, that the enthusiastic gleam you see in our eye– that you assume is our misplaced excitement about our next dessert order— may have more to do our determination to keep one more illegal alien from crossing the border because even though our ideals will always be compelling to others, the practical matter of available space is being decided not “one politician at a time” but “one Hot Pocket at a time. And by those who have courageously taken our “can’t say no” attitude and decided to use if for a higher nationalistic calling.
20 years ago American had about 200 Million Americans. We new our absolute maximum would be about 400 Million Americans. Or 300 overweight Americans. So the next time one of you smug little waif of an American sighs at the heavy guy sitting next to you on an airplane, to holding your disdain. And saluting instead. (And if you really want to “Thank us,” you’ll offer us your peanuts, too).
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Dec 18, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET
Knew about the baseball and politics. Didn’t know he was a poker player, too. I’m sold.
An excerpt:
Of course, for a gay, half-Jewish geek from Michigan like Silver, the establishment, like the high school clique, is anathema—one you are wise to keep at arm’s distance. He’s more at home on the outside rattling the cage than on the inside playing with the monkeys. It’s why he admires Gawker founder Nick Denton, who threw a party for him in his SoHo apartment after the election. “He’s willing to be kind of destructive and path-breaking, and to challenge the status quo; in some ways, it’s kind of more my style,” he says. (Of Silver, Denton says, “He’s not necessarily the best statistician, but he might be the best stats geek who can also write—and perform on television. His steadiness under pundit fire before the election was something to witness.”) Although he wasn’t excessively bullied, Silver spent most of high school immersed either in fantasy baseball leagues or the debate program. “High school debate is a strange thing,” he concedes. “It’s very technical—you’re not up there giving some type of Abe Lincoln speech, you’re reading different types of evidence really fast.” He compares his delivery to the old Micro Machines ads, which may explain why he still talks in such a torrent, as well as his enviable ability to apply himself to the task at hand.
“I’m very conservative in some sense because I do believe that hard work is a huge part of the equation,” he says. “It’s often not sufficient to bring about success, but it’s very often necessary if you want to be really good at something. My team won the state title in my junior year, and we were first runners-up in my senior year—had one of the best records in the history of the state of Michigan.” He pauses to let this remarkable record sink in before adding, “I probably dedicated 60 hours a week to debate during debate season.” This staggering commitment brings to mind Gladwell’s thesis in Outliers: that genius is composed in large part of perspiration, or what he calls the “10,000 hour rule,” the amount of time, roughly, that you need to practice a specific task to become an expert.
When Silver was not debating, he was playing Scoresheet Baseball with his friend Ray. They applied a kind of Moneyball methodology based on player statistics, and very quickly amassed one of the best teams in the league. Many years later, Silver would channel this passion for baseball into Pecota, a website that specialized in calculating the prospects of Major League Baseball players and which subsequently inspired his move into politics. And then there was his brief-but-glorious career as an online poker shark, largely as a way to temper the boredom of a consultancy gig with accountancy firm KPMG.
“One of the KPMG buzz words at the time was boundarylessness—it was such a good distillation of a totally meaningless corporate-speak cliché,” Silver recalls. “When people ask for career advice, I try not to be specific. I just say, ‘Don’t let yourself get bored; if you’re getting bored, you’re probably doing something wrong.’ ”
Silver eventually quit his day job to focus on cards, making $400,000 in just over two years, before realizing that bad players were a nonrenewable resource. “If you’re a bad player, you either become a good player or you go broke, and either way you are no longer available for others to beat,” he says. “Once the pond dries up, even the sharks begin to starve.” So out of the pond he flopped, and into the sea of analysis he swam.
If these pastimes—poker, baseball, debating Chinese–U.S. relations—seem atypical of the average twentysomething gay guy, perhaps it’s because gay nerds have a low profile in our culture. “To my friends, I’m kind of sexually gay but ethnically straight,” explains Silver, who came out to his parents after spending a year in London studying economics—“I don’t know how I got any work done”—and considers gay conformity as perfidious as straight conformity. He supports marriage equality, but worries that growing acceptance of gays will dent our capacity to question broader injustice.
They aren’t in a desperate hurry to save someone else; but in a chaotic hurry to be noticed even if it hurts someone else.
What if the most remarkable country in the world that has been negatively and unfairly defined by a single movie?
Oh no you didn’t!
But reading “Lincoln” as an instruction manual ignores the degree to which this film is almost subversively hostile to two of the favorite values of contemporary politics: authenticity and transparency. The blunt truth of this portrait of Lincoln’s presidency is a democratic reality that if it materialized tomorrow, we would find depressing and hardly idealistic. It is a closed universe of insiders who operated free of consistent public scrutiny, or ethics regulations, or even a softer code that words and deeds should be tightly connected to be credible. There is a void of disclosure and standards that is not remotely capable of being replicated today, and that we wouldn’t want to conjure up if we could. The point is not to treat Lincoln is anything other than great, but that his greatness operated in a zone not remotely like our own.
#TEAMJYB3
It just all makes so much sense now.
