Atheists Unplugged
January 31st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The publisher of The Atheist’s Bible: An illustrious collection of irreverent thoughts should have taken Mark Twain’s advice: When you catch an adjective, kill it. The word illustrious adds nothing to the subtitle. See Ben Yagoda’s When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse. Actually, the entire subtitle is unnecessary. The Atheist’s Bible—nice and clean.
I was perusing The Atheist’s Bible at Starbucks and a passerby, with a look that he had discovered something sinister, interrupted me. Isn’t that—Atheist’s Bible—an oxymoron? he asked. I nodded yes, remembering the quote, “The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.”
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Page Fright: Writers do it everywhere
January 28th, 2012 § 1 Comment
I’m left-handed and writing with a pen almost always ends up being a messy affair. In the West, we write left to right, making my left hand drag the ink along and smudge the page. Even with a pencil, my hand tends to cramp as a left-handed person must write inward across the page. I’ve often envied right-handed people who can gracefully write outward across the page like a violinist with his bow extended to caress the sweet high and low notes.
The computer is an equal-opportunity instrument, though I imagine if I researched the origins of the QWERTY keyboard, I’d find it was designed not only for the slowness of mechanical typewriters, but also for the prominent right-handed population. Even though I prefer writing my first draft in longhand, I often start on the computer.
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Tea according to Christopher Hitchens
January 19th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Do I really need Christopher Hitchens to tell me how to make tea? Yes, it turns out I do.
After buying some high-end French Theodor tea that I squished into one of those spoon-type loose tea holders, I mused that something was not quite right with my method. The very next day, I hear the Hitch has written about the proper way to make tea.
I followed Hitch’s directions, which were really George Orwell’s, published in 1946, and sipped on my early afternoon brew. The tea was preceded by a salad of mango, avocado, and orange with bits of walnuts.
Life in the fat lane with journalist William Leith
November 11th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Reviewers of The Hungry Years couldn’t quite classify it—memoir, personal diet book, literary journalism, creative non-fiction—and this intrigued me.
What would a sometimes-overweight and well-known British journalist do with the topical issue of fat? William Leith needed a good angle for Hungry Years: confessions of a food addict and he found it in his interview with Dr. Robert Atkins.
Leith, the last person to interview the infamous doctor before his death, went on the Atkins diet as any good fat journalist would do for research. And, to spice things up in the book, Leith also chronicles his fondness for cocaine, painkillers, caffeine, alcohol, as well as his penchant for women who smoke and shop too much. Leith is desperate one moment and funny the next.
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What did Bill Clinton say to the vegan?
October 26th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Is that Daiya on your dress, or am I having a flashback?
Macleans called Daiya “fake cheese that’ll make vegans swoon.” And Bill Clinton, a newly converted plant-based eater, is swooning over his 24-pound weight loss. He says he feels great since adapting to a plant-based diet, with a little fish now and again.
I was sceptical that I could ever love a vegan Caesar salad or a vegan nacho dish, but dining out with Earthsave’s Vancouver Meatless Meetup group, proved me wrong. I loved both the Caesar and the nachos.
Located on the upper eastside of Vancouver, the Eat, Drink and Perch at the Arc Café is an oddly shaped café with a balcony holding about six or seven tiny tables that seat three people each. Nice and cosy for a private party like ours. The balcony overlooks the bar and tables downstairs. This café on Powell Street, owned by the Wallflower on Main, caters to vegans, vegetarians and gluten-free dieters. But, it also offers meat.
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An apple a day—wisdom or myth
October 19th, 2010 § 3 Comments
The green apple on the cover of An Apple a Day caught my eye. But the subtitle caught my breath: The Myths, Misconceptions and Truths about the Foods We Eat. I panicked. I assumed that an apple a day was a good thing. As you can see in the book’s cover photo, there are some startling unhealthy sounding elements in apples.
The author, a scientist named Joe Schwarcz, is the director of the Office of Science and Society at McGill University. He knows his food chemistry. He also knows how to turn a dull technical subject into an entertaining read.
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The morning after the night before
October 4th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The main thing in life is when you fall, you need to get right up again. Someone who has the incredible endurance to keep on going, is Cathrine Ann. This week, I’ve been reading her memoir, Beautiful Buttons. I couldn’t believe how many times this woman was knocked down—some of her own doing—only to get up again and keep moving. She now operates a multi-million dollar business from Sechelt, BC and has won numerous biz and entrepreneur awards.
Catching a curve ball
September 27th, 2010 § 1 Comment
It’s those curve balls that can get you down. And your weight up. Get you off track. Or in the vernacular of the day, cause you to fall off the wagon.
After wiping out on my bicycle, I’m going to hold back on exercise for a week or two, or until the pain in my neck subsides.
I was cycling along Jericho Beach, one of the city’s most spectacular spots, when a large woolly terrier bounded from the off-leash section of the park, into the pedestrian and cycle path. To avoid the dog, I crunched down hard on my brakes and swerved to the right, hearing myself think, I’m going down. In those split seconds I recalled a passage from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers about a co-pilot saying to the captain, “We’re going down,” seconds before the fateful airplane crash.
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Sport has never caused anyone to be slim, according to Montignac
September 20th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
La Méthode Montignac, developed by Michel Montignac, is the original glycemic index diet.
Montignac was a French pharmaceutical executive—I won’t hold that against him. While his work came with the luxury of dining out—and he put on the pounds—his work also gave him access to scientific literature. After learning about the newly developed glycemic index, he wondered if it would work for weight loss. He developed a plan and in three months, he lost 30 pounds. Since then, Montignac has authored 20 books on diet and health, achieving international fame—though I never hear of him before.
Montignac was so convinced with his method that he claims people don’t have to exercise. It works that well, he says. He is, of course, criticized for this view, but I’m sure he didn’t mean for us to sit around on our asses. And no one follows a diet 100%, 100% of the time, so exercise is an important adjunct.
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Baseball Poem for John Lee Hooker
June 21st, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I hated you loving baseball
Not because I hated you
but because I hated baseball
And when I learned to hate baseball
I learned to love you loving baseball
I loved you loving baseball.
Yours, Slim
John Lee Hooker | August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001
We’ll meet again
