Some more arrests that need to be made?

Regarding my state's demands that ICE stop working here, and actions that more or less make it impossible for ICE to do their work, it strikes me that if this sets a precedent, any state can shut down the EPA, IRS, DOJ....and then the question comes up "isn't this textbook obstruction of justice, and doesn't Tampon Tim belong in the graybar hotel?".  

I think the answer is yes.  I'm actually not a huge fan of how Trump is doing his immigration sweeps; I'd be much lower key by requesting that jails and prisons notify ICE before releasing illegal immigrants so they can be picked up, and then if they don't comply, make it public exactly which officials want their communities to have more criminals among them.  But that said, we do happen to have millions of illegals here using government services, and forcing lower income Americans to use welfare services, and we've got to do something to mitigate this problem.  

Prohibiting ICE from working altogether should not be on anyone's dance card here, and those public officials who think it ought to be should be in jail.  Let Walz be the "dancing queen" there.

Campaigning hard for a "Darwin Award"

Sadly for the cause of office mirth, the old "Darwin Awards", where people would be "honored" for removing themselves from the gene pool in amazingly stupid ways, seem to have disappeared.  However, if by chance they do still exist, anti-ICE demonstrators may have narrowly evaded getting their names enshrined in this hall of honor.   

How so?  They blocked the stairs in a church that led to the Sunday School wing, and if there are by any chance any anti-ICE demonstrators reading this blog, take heed; the safety & security teams at many evangelical churches are armed.  So are many of the members, and if they believe you're likely to hurt their children, you just might find out who's carrying in exactly the wrong way.

Here's another example; a crowd approaches a number of software engineers wearing engineer-style clothing (often "boring") and accuses them of being ICE.  Pro tip for those anti-ICE demonstrators; do you think that ICE is going to "work sites" without vehicles to carry those apprehended, and quite frankly to protect their own officers these days in Minneapolis?

This has been a public service announcement by Bike Bubba's Boulangerie.  Thank you.

RIP, Scott Adams

As most of us know, the sad news came that Scott Adams, creator of "Dilbert", has died.  I don't know about his spiritual condition--he's evidently made comments both ways--but as the author of one of my favorite documentaries comic strips, I think he's worth a eulogy.  Agree or disagree with various other stands he's taken, he rightly skewered many of the most obnoxious habits of corporate America, to the point that there were studies that showed that the more "Dilbert" comics displayed in an office area, the worse management was. 

A wonderful bit was that about the same time Mrs. Bubba and I got married, one of the themes was that "Tina the tech writer" had fallen in love with Dilbert, and was forced to write "I proactively leverage my synergies" 100 (1000?) times as punishment.

Mrs. Bubba was a tech writer at the time, so we made that phrase into a warmup for the church choir we sang in at the time.  Dilbert has been a source of much comfort in the difficulties of office life, and an outright joy at times.  

One side note is that while reading my favorite yellow magazine, I once saw a picture of a man whose tie was curving upward--sometime in the 1950s.  So apparently that Dilbert tie was a reality.  RIP, Scott Adams.   

More on protein

The higher emphasis on protein in the new USDA food recommendations brings to mind some thoughts I've had about how one can get enough protein.  My daughter--formerly an aspiring dietician--brought home a pamphlet that claims that any athlete needs to use protein powders/supplements to get enough.  It was, of course, from a company making protein supplements.

Now if one gets a lot of calories from sugars (including juices) and fats, that is perhaps true, but with ordinary foods, one will quickly find that one gets reasonable levels of protein without trying.  Fruits and vegetables have 10-20% protein as a portion of calories, dairy products (excluding cream and half & half) are 20% protein and higher (skim milk is about 40% protein as a portion of calories), legumes and beans are about 30% protein, and meats 20% and up--and the 20% is hamburger with a lot of added fat.

Average things together, and reasonable whole food diets will tend to be about 20% protein or more as a portion of calories, which gets a reasonable 2000 calorie diet to about 400 calories from protein, or about 100 grams.  With just a little "nudge" in favor of legumes, meats, and dairy, you're in the range recommended by the USDA.

Why is this so?  Again, it's a simple matter of chemistry and biology; plants have cell walls of fiber bound together with a protein called lignin.  Proteins form a necessary part of all living creatures, so unless you refine them to get just the sugars or fats, you're going to get proteins.

And to get protein powders, what you do is eliminate starches, fiber, vitamins, and minerals from ordinary foods...in short, they are depleted foods, just like sugar or corn oil.  The plea to build one's diet off real, whole foods is well taken. 

Now there's a great argument

Apparently a lawyer for the plaintiffs (confused) side of the current Supreme Court case arguing whether Title IX refers to biological sex or gender identity has claimed that biological males on girls' cross country team doesn't matter because "cross country doesn't have cuts".   Having personally been cut from my college cross country team (and deservedly so, I really wasn't good enough), that one got a belly laugh out of me.  Even at the high school or junior high school level, the king of athletics has limited varsity/first team roster spots, so adding a (often faster) biological male to the girls' team generally does push a girl off the varsity roster.

Of course, since the plaintiffs' whole point is to deny reality, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they would deny the reality of roster cuts in my favorite sport, too, but it's still amusing.

New government guidance on diet

As the son of a dietician who still enjoys studying the subject as a hobby, the updated diet recommendations from the USDA are of interest. I grew up in the "early days" of the "Four food groups", then replaced by the "Food pyramid", then replaced by "MyPlate", and now the "inverted food pyramid".  Now if you read carefully, the overall science isn't that different; there is a higher acceptance of saturated/animal fats in the diet, and a higher emphasis on protein in the diet, but overall, the guidance would be recognizable by those who founded the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (then the American Dietetic Association) in the 1920s.  

The increased emphasis on protein is welcome, in my view; I remember that even in middle school, I questioned the limit for protein sources/meats of two servings.  I've always felt that a portion of overall calories would have been more appropriate, and then the new guidance's linking of protein intake to body mass is welcome.  Perhaps it overshoots the target--it recommends, for a 215 lb guy like me, about 120-160 grams of protein, perhaps a bit excessive--but nevertheless, it is a welcome correction.

The most interesting part of the new guidance for me is that the visual guidance doesn't really indicate how many servings of each kind of food is warranted, and I'm still working through my thoughts on this.  On one hand, one of the genius things in MyPlate and the "Four Food Groups" is that it emphasized the need for a varied diet, but on the other side, if you're eating whole foods, there is a fair amount of overlap in nutrition from grains, tubers, legumes, vegetables, fruits, meats, and dairy.  As my brother said once to me, every food we eat has exactly what was needed for that plant, seed, or animal to preserve or create life, and our nutritional needs are not as different from that of cabbage, corn, or cows as we might like to think, and perhaps it's not as important that we emphasize some food groups over others.

But all that noted, I think that the benefits and risks to this will be muted, because in my view, the big problem we've got in our country is massive subsidies for corn, dairy, and sugar.  Because of these, meats, fried foods, starches, and sugars--which are "eating triggers" in pretty much every place I can think of--are cheaper than they otherwise would be, and real foods are more expensive.  That, along with an increasingly sedentary society, are the big drivers of our obesity related diseases.