Averagely Inadequate

Good Foods and Bad Foods

I'm still thinking about dieting. Every time I go to eat something I wonder whether it's helping me lose weight or not. To some extent I'm afraid to eat anything. For lunch, should I have a meat pie or two bananas or fried rice? I've done some more thinking, and yes that is as dangerous as it sounds. It occurred to me that once we know the energy content of food (because you can find that on the web) and we know that 37kJ = 1 gram of fat blubber you need to carry around, we can figure out how much of a certain food will turn into how much blubber and calculate the percentage blubberosity of certain foods. Then we can know better which to choose. I have a spreadsheet for this, but here are the findings, because I don't think I can embed a spreadsheet here.

butter - 81%

almonds - 69%

peanuts / peanut paste - 66%

chocoloate - 60%

cheese - 45%

instant porridge - 45%

corn flakes - 40%

fried dim sim - 38%

honey - 34%

hot chips - 33%

tofu, meat pie - 31%

white bread - 30%

pizza - 25%

ice cream - 23%

steak - 19%

egg - 16%

pasta, white rice - 15%

chick peas, tuna - 14%

brown rice - 13%

potato - 11%

banana - 10%

baked beans, peas - 9%

mango, yoghurt, pear - 7%

milk, apple - 6%

orange, onion, carrot, Rush low fat iced coffee - 5%

broccoli - 4%

mushrooms - 3%

pumpkin, tomato, zucchini - 2%

lettuce, celery - 1.5%

You can figure out the blubberosity of a particular food by applying this simple procedure. Find the weight you're measuring, call that w. Find the kilojoules in that weight, call that k. The blubberosity is (k * 100) / (w * 37).

Note that these are precentages of weight, and this table doesn't take into consideration that you might only eat 5 grams of chocolate. On the other hand you could eat 100 grams of mushrooms for the same energy, and mushrooms are pretty yummy.

Also note that bread is only half as bad as chocolate, and we tend to eat bread without guilt, in large lumps. I guess the reason it became a staple food is because it provides energy to keep you alive even if you've only got a little bit of it.

Dieting, without the Equivocation

I've been doing some reading about dieting, because, let me put it delicately as Dr Chai did, I'M WAY TOO FUCKING FAT. OK, Dr Chai didn't say "fucking", but within the bounds of doctor-patient politeness he implied it. I know what he meant. Anyway, as a consequence I've been doing some reading on nutrition and how to lose weight and all that, and the first thing I want to say about that it OH MY GOD nutritionists are the worst communicators in the world. I'm sure I could get more factual information out of a Khazakstani fertiliser dealer than out of a dietician. They're so scared of saying something wrong they say nothing at all.

Consequently I've decided to translate diet gibberish into plain speech. Let me start with the body mass index calculation. To calculate the BMI you take your weight in kilograms and divide by the square of your height in metres, and if you did that, you already know you're too fat so pay attention to the rest of this article. That's what I mean by plain speech.

FACT 1: 1 gram = 37 kilojoules. To lose 1 gram you need to get rid of 37 kilojoules. The Victorian Government said so here: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/kilojoules_and_calories-explained and would Joan Kirner's heir lie about that?

FACT 2: Cycling at 10 km/h burns 1000kJ per hour. If you can't believe a wombat, who can you believe? http://www.webwombat.com.au/lifestyle/health/joules.htm

In fact, FACT 2 is a classic example of REALLY FUCKING AWFUL presentation of information. Do you know how fast you cycle? Do you measure the time? Or do you ride for a while then get home gasping for breath and lie unconscious in the front yard till the dog's stinking breath wakes you up, like I do? If we multiply both sides of the equation you get that cycling 10km burns 1000kJ, so cycling 1km burns 100kJ. Why didn't they just say so? I don't care whether it's actually true or not, it's approximately right, and whether you lose 3 grams or 2.7 grams is really not so material - at the end of the week, you don't do the fat / food / exercise reconciliation and wonder where the missing 873kJ went; even Weight Watchers don't do that. So why should diet sites give such obtuse information?

So I'm going to take a step stupider, and say that from facts 1 and 2, we can infer that cycling 1km will cause you to lose 3g of fat. And if any dietician wants to argue, let them come round to my place and we can have a passionate debate about quality of information.

FACT 3: There are 3780 kJ in a bag of corn chips. It says so on the back. I'm specifically referring to the bag of corn chips in my pantry, and when I say "it says so on the back", I mean it says so on the back after you admit you'll eat the whole goddamn lot if you open them and do the maths, because the manufacturer is sure not going to admit that:

from facts 1 and 3, we can infer that eating that bag of corn chips will gain you 102grams. Holy crap, it's only a 175 gram bag of corn chips. On the other hand, if you would have eaten those corn chips and now you don't, you LOSE 102 grams. All of a sudden dieting is easy and isn't maths wonderful!?

Let me do some other calculations. (BTW don't forget how extremely scientific all this methodology is).

cycling 1km = lose 3g (figure out how far you went on Google Maps and multiply by 3)

walking 1km = lose 8g (" by 8)

jogging 1km = lose 10g (" by 10)

swimming 1km = lose 22g (" by 22)

don't eat a whole bag of corn chips = lose 102g

just sit at your computer for a whole day (without eating, of course) = lose 216g

drink a can of Coke Zero instead of Coke = lose 29g

don't have chips with your burger at Maccas = lose 29g

have a Macca's salad instead of a Big Mac = lose 54g

just have water instead of half a bottle of red = lose 32g

There are some other numbers here: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/03/1054406180833.html but you get the idea.

 

Now, there are some important facts remaining:

FACT 4: you've gotta eat

FACT 5: nobody can *really* swim a kilometre, can they?

FACT 6: I'm not eating the salad in a fit, I'm having the Big Mac

FACT 7: and a glass of red.

so you've got to stick to reality and do the things you can. I'm a firm believer that lettuce is not food, and that anyone who thinks real people are going to lose weight by eating lettuce all of a sudden has their head firmly stuffed up their arse. I just hope that by presenting information in an unambiguous and comprehensible manner that you can make better choices that fit your lifestyle.

Reading in 2011

Gosh, have I been reading French novels for only two years? I just reread the post I wrote 12 months ago, where my goal for 2010 had been to read a French novel. I'm still reading French novels, and for the second year in a row I read more French than English. Last year I read 22 English books and 37 French ones. Of that total, 16 were graphic novels of various types, mostly because they were souvenirs that we bought when we were in France. Here are some selected highlights of the year.

 "Let the Right One In" - I am totally not a vampire story guy. But after I saw this movie I decided I needed to read the book, and it was very cool too. Read it first and argue with me later.

"Noir" by Robert Coover. Robert Coover is one of the most whacked authors going around, it's always fun to see what he comes up with. On the other hand, if you want a tight plot, look elsewhere. Robert Coover books are always about Robert Coover.

"Death Most Definite" and "Managing Death" by Trent Jamieson. These are urban fantasy stories, i.e. stories where fantastic elements are incorporated into urban environments. In this case, Stephen de Selby works as Death, because hey, you gotta work somewhere! Trent Jamieson is a Brisbane author and the stories are set in Brisbane, and they're kinda funny.

 "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger, who also wrote the brilliant "The Time Traveller's Wife". A good book, but not *as* good. It's still worth watching to see what she comes out with.
"The Bayeux Tapestry", comic book edition. In France this sort of book is called a "BD" for bande dessinée (drawn strip), and that category of adult-type hard-bound comic book is much more mainstream in France than it is here - for example, Tintin and Asterix are well-known in the anglosphere, but they are two of thousands for the French. We bought this at the Bayeux tapestry gift shop on our holiday to France. It struck me that if you wanted to explain the story of the Bayeux Tapestry, this is exactly the right way to do it.

Finally in the English section, a non-fiction book "For the Soul of France". This is about the culture wars in 19th century France when the religious conservatives, beaten down during the Revolution, clashed with the modern left, inspired by the Industrial Revolution to believe that the world was changing and the old ways would vanish. I love this sort of history.

Now we move onto French stuff.

The Garin Trousseboeuf series. I finishing reading the 11th of these during the year. On our holiday we went to Mont St Michel and the Papal Palace in Avignon, both places I'd heard about only from these books. I went on to read one more Evelyne Brisou-Pellen novel, but it wasn't as much fun as Garin so I might stop there.

"La Bête du Gévaudan". This was a really dull book. There are two BDs about the Beast of the Gévaudan which are much better. However it's included here because we went to the Gévaudan (which is now called la Lozère) and we went to the wolf park there. Yes, the countryside is rugged, it would be a bastard of a job to hunt wolves there in winter.

 

"Maleficus" by Emma Locatelli. A novel about demonic possession, inquisitorial church practices, and law in 17th century France. Generally very scary but always intriguing. And long. At 600 pages it's the longest thing I've read in French.

How Learning Spoken Language Happens

If you've ever learnt a second language through the standard teaching process, you'll be well aware that it's a very different process than the one through which you learnt your first language. If you learn French or German, all of a sudden you need to know about third person and direct objects and other grammatical dramas that obviously have ne relevance to your native language, except of course they do. The problem is that in your native language you learn all that stuff automatically without having to be taught it, so why is it relevant all of a sudden when you learn a second language.

This is a very cool article about how Google Translate works. Read it now then come back to me.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/how-google-translate-works-2353594.html

So the summary is, Google Translate works by having millions of examples to choose from to infer the rules of language. Sure, it does a crappy job, like a two-year old would. But the two year old is somewhat smarter than the Google Translate software and continues receiving examples for the next three score years and eight. After maybe twenty years of training, the human starts saying insightful things.

My experience with learning French and Italian suggests that humans learn spoken language the same way. I know that my French reading is far in advance of my spoken French - i.e. there are many things I can read that I'd never think to say. As far as I can tell, there are two reasons: I don't remember to; and I'm a little bit scared to, in case it's not right. Now, as my substitute Italian teacher told me on Tuesday night, "the biggest thing that prevent the adults from speaking a foreign language is the proud". I guessed she meant "pride". Now I got over the proud about a year ago, after going to French language meet-ups for a few months. I no longer have the proud, I just have the stupid. But there's a reason for that.

I well remember the time when I was 12 or 13 or so when my mother told me "keep your mouth shut!". Whether I followed her advice or not, I learned that that was a valid construction in the English language. In French, do I say "assures-toi ta bouche est fermé", "gardes fermée ta bouche", or "ferme ta gueule!"? I don't know... but if my mum had provided an example 30 years ago I would.

My hypothesis, supported by Google Translate's method, is that *spoken* language is not learned from rules, but is a melange of things that we've heard throughout many years experience with a language. The first part of learning to speak is to assemble enough samples that you can infer word boundaries, then you move on to assembling comprehensible phrases, and at this point I'm thinking OMG babies are so smart, and then you move on to sentences and eventually expressing ideas which have never been expressed before. That's why Lawless Laura's poll has speaking anxiety as one of the most difficult things about learning French:

http://french.about.com/gi/pages/poll.htm?poll_id=8987132235&linkback=http://french.about.com/b/2011/06/25/what-s-the-hardest-part-of-learning-french.htm

If you think you can learn a foreign language by being told stuff for 2 hours a week, you're wrong. In 2 hours a week, you can learn enough to try to decrypt what other people write so you can try to decrypt what they say so you can try to copy it. Give up on the proud, the proud is your albatross. Once you get past the proud you can start learning.

Speaking of which, in less than a week OMG! we head off to France where I will completely abandon the proud and be embarrassed for three weeks solid. I'll just be pleased if I don't start any fights.

Illiteracy

I have a confession to make. I'm illiterate. Do you believe that?

OK, I'm not illiterate in English, but just try me in French or Italian (or any other language for that matter) and I look like an absolute goose. I misunderstand many things I read, and when I can compose a sentence it's full of spelling and grammatical errors. I've been so fluent in English for so long it's a real revelation to me how it feels to be otherwise.

For a start, reading is hard. Reading a novel takes weeks, and long ones are intimidating. I remember when I was about 13 reading "Magician" or something fat like that, and being very impressed that I could read such a long book. But in French, I find 300 pages intimidating, and in Italian, even 50 scares me. But, it's not only reading books that's hard - I run my computer in French and it's much harder to read dialogue boxes and menus. I spent ages yesterday trying to figure out how to resize an image in Gimp. Whenever a dialogue box appears, it's no longer a case of "yeah yeah, go away", it's a case of "oh dear, now I have to figure out what that means". I can fully understand how someone less stubborn than me would (a) not read novels, (b) or the newspaper, or (c) use a computer, if they had learning difficulties.

As for writing, I know I'm making mistakes. I just don't know where they are. I've had pen-pals tell me "I have no idea what you're trying to say there". It's only because I have no sense of shame that I continue posting my particular gibberish in on-line forums, and writing incomprehensible messages to friends with French-sounding names.

If I didn't know I had English to fall back on, I wouldn't have as much confidence as I do, and my world would be very different.

Les Langues, les Gènes, et les Vecteurs Propres

Nous parlions ce matin au Rendezvous de Conversation Française des interdépendances des langues indo-européennes. Je me suis souvenu d'un livre par Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza qui s'appelle "Genes, People and Languages". J'ai voulu expliquer le projet où il a fait une matrice des occurrences des gènes des peuples d'Europe, puis il a trouvé les vecteur propres de cette matrice. 

D'abord, je n'ai pas su les mots "vecteurs propres", j'ai dit "eigenvectors". Puis, le mot "eigenvector" est plutôt effrayant aux gens qui ne sont pas mathématiciens. Et encore, je ne peux pas l'expliquer facilement. C'est peut-être plus facile de parler de l'analyse en composantes principales. C'est à dire, quand on une grande nombre des données, on veux les résumer afin de les pense plus simplement.

Voici une image de Wikipedia (crée par Ben FrantzDale). Il y a beaucoup de données, illustrées par les points gris. Mais, on peut dire simplement, ils restent autour d'une ligne qui va en haut à droit. La grande flèche montre le plus important caractéristique des données. Mais encore, elles ne sont pas toutes précisément sur la ligne - elles s'écartent un peu. Donc, on peut caractériser les différences avec la petite flèche - en général, les données s'accordent avec la grande flèche, mais elles dévient avec la petite flèche. 

Les flèches, elles sont les vecteurs propres. N'y pensez pas, ce sont les mathémagiques. On peut trouver les vecteurs propres des données de tous genres. C'est peut-être dénué de sens, mais c'est possible, c'est une formule.

En tout cas, Cavalli-Sforza a trouvé les vecteurs propres d'une matrice des occurrences des gènes dans une grande nombre des gens européens. Le premier vecteur propre (la grande flèche, le plus important) représente les gènes d'une personne européenne générique. Puis, il a calculé combien différe tous les gens dont il a sondé les gènes, et il a mis en graphique la différence entre les personnes individues et la personne générique. Il a trouvé que la différence grandis avec la distance du Moyen-Orient. Ça lui suggère que les gens européens vient du Moyen-Orient il y a longtemps, et au mésure qu'ils ont migré vers le nord-ouest ils ont divergé de la générique, en métissant avec les peuples indigènes.

Et puis, Cavalli-Sforza a calculé le deuxième vecteur propre (la petite flèche). Il montre la différenciation selon un axe nord-sud. C'est peut-être une migration de l'Espagne vers le nord, ou peut-être de la Laponie vers le sud. C'est peut-être variation génétique à cause du climat. 

Le troisième vecteur propre (encore une plus petite flèche) suggère une expansion des gens de la region au nord de la mer Noire. Et peut-être, c'est cette expansion, peut-être facilité par les premiers chevaux domestiqués, qui a peut-être emporté la première langue indo-européenne à l'europe.

Si vous avez lu jusqu'ici, je vous recommande le livre. Il est fascinant. Genes, Peoples, and Languages.

 

Reading in 2010 and Beyond

It seems unlikely that I'm going to finish reading any more books between now and the end of the year, so now's as good a time as any to look back on what I read. My goal at the beginning of the year was to read at least one French novel, to match the time that I read "Tartarin de Tarascon" in high school. In fact, I read 32 French books for the year - novels, and a variety of others, and I only read 24 English books, and then another 5 which were in English but which were about French. And indeed, one book in Italian. So I guess I've achieved what I set out to do.

I started the year reading Shamini Flint's "Inspector Singh" novels. I like detective stories, and Inspector Singh is somewhat like Hercule Poirot but less dapper. She's now released three, I've read three, and I'll get the next one as soon as it come out.

"Le Petit Prince", or in English, "The Little Prince", is an absolutely wonderful book. That's what everybody said before I read it, but being the cynical type I didn't expect much. I was absolutely charmed. I read this on my birthday and the day after, on the iPod that Scrabblette gave me, even though I already had a physical copy of the book. Highly recommended, in any language.

"La Femme de Boulanger", or "The Baker's Wife", is a screenplay by Marcel Pagnol. I knew nothing about Marcel Pagnol at the start of the year, now I'm a huge fan. I've seen half a dozen of his movies, but just read the one book so far. The story is tight and clever and funny and sad, and I think I would have liked it more if I'd been able to read more fluently. I don't know if the book has been translated, but his movies have been released with subtitles.

If I'd written an article like this last year, I would have mentioned Peter M. Ball's first novella, "Horn". In fact I may have mentioned it in a previous blog post. In any case, "Bleed" is the successor to "Horn". These are adult fantasy detective stories, and if that genre sounds hard to understand, imagine how hard they are to write. I've become a fanboi of Peter as well.

"Le Tsar" is a children's novel, in French. I don't know whether it's a great story, although I enjoyed it, but it was the first French novel I read in one day. That somewhat opened the floodgates, and greatly encouraged me in my quest to read French. I recommend it to all beginning French readers.

Somehow I managed to read "The Erotic Potential of My Wife" in English, even though it was originally written in French. I try to avoid that! In any case, it was a great, sexy, fun book, and maybe the best novel I've read this year.

I read a fair few graphic novels this year, including "Nuit Blanche" and "La Bête de Gévaudan" in French, the Buddha series in English, and a couple of old Tintins which I've previously blogged about. Of all the stuff I've seen about La Bête (think werewolf legend) this BD was probably the most factual. The beast's rein of terror was astonishingly bloody, and went for a long time.

Finally, here's the Italian book I read, "Il Piccolo Principe". Yes, it's cheating to read the same book in Italian just months after you read it in French. But reading Italian is pretty hard as I still don't know enough grammar (we haven't even done the imperfect!).

So, what happens next year? Well, I plan to read at least one book in English. Actually what has been happening is that I've been looking for French novels, discovering exciting ones that are translations of English books, and reading them in English instead. Translations are often translated to a very anglicised French, which isn't useful to read, so I avoid them on purpose. In fact, I've got to read at least one of Kylie Chan's books, and probably even one of Marianne de Pierre's, so there's two! I also plan to finish reading the Garin Trousseboeuf stories in French, then move on to Maigret, of which there are about 50. And, I'd like to read at least one more book in Italian, and in fact I have it already - "Il Medaglione" by Andrea Camilleri, the guy who invented Inspector Montalbano.

In other news, I made certain commitments earlier in the year with regards to not buy more books and movies unless I watch / read the ones I have already. Those commitments have been honoured, in spirit, if not in every exact detail. However next year is a whole new ball game, and there's a lot of stuff I'm really hanging out for. Just as soon as the credit card recovers from Christmas, I'm going to visit the Amazons and see what they've got for me.

Trees / Les Arbres / Gli Alberi

When reading English (as in, from England) or French novels, I've always had a problem with trees. They refer to oak trees and beech trees and poplars, when in my country we have gum trees and poincianas and frangipanis and jacarandas. Consequently I have no idea what the tree they're referring to must be like. Of course now that I'm getting quite old I've got them figured out - chestnut trees are spreading, oaks are mighty, and I found some poplars in Coonabarabran. But in any case, using the magic of Google images I've done some research and found some images of northern hemisphere trees.

My motivation actually is that I've now started reading about these trees in French, so I now need to know the French words for the trees that I only have a vague idea of. And while I'm on this project, I might as well do Italian as well. So I present here a catalogue of trees with their names in English, French and Italian.

Baobab / le baobab / il baobab

Banyan / le banian / ????

Beech / le hêtre / il fagus

Birch / le bouleau / la betula

Chestnut / le châtaignier - le marronnier / il castagno

Elder / le sureau / l'acero (m)

Elm / l'orme (m) / l'olmo (m)

Fig / le figuier / il fico

I included figs as representatives of the types of really big trees that are found where I live.

Fir / le sapin / l'abete (m)

Maple/ l'érable (m) / l'acero (m)

Oak / le chêne / la quercia

Plane / le platane / il platano

Poplar / le peuplier / il pioppo

Sycamore / le sycomore / il sicomoro

Willow / le saule / il salice

Yew / l'if (m) / il tasso

If you notice any mistakes, or think of any other trees I need to add, please let me know.

Vive la France!

I kinda love it that in this illiustration of a woman being attacked
by a wolf (La Bête du Gévaudan), her breast is exposed. Was she trying
to feed it, maybe? Or seduce it? It occurs to me that this sort of
thing occurs in French art a lot, but this is the most egregiously
misplaced breast I can recall.

Bleed

This is a book review of "Bleed" by Peter M. Ball, but before I start I should warn you I'm a fanboy. I briefly met the author at Gencon last year, was very impressed and a little bit shocked by his first book, and have been following his blog ever since, observing the process of the production of a sequel. I even read the publisher's blog for a while. The process of making a book doesn't seem to be as bad as those for laws and sausages, but I do sympathise with everyone involved and thank them for their efforts and persistence. 

"Bleed" is the sequel to "Horn", known locally as Peter's unicorn porn book. Yes, you read that right. Although it's fantasy, it's not the fantasy of Lord Dunsany or J.R.R. Tolkien, it's more like the fantasy of Dashiell Hammett or James Hadley Chase. Not known fantasy authors. "Horn" introduced the detective Miriam Aster, a hard-boiled gumshoe who's been dragged into a world she'd rather not know about, and has regretted it ever since. She's bitter and has a bad attitude and isn't happy that these things keep happening to her. She's a great character. As this is not a review of "Horn", I'll just tell you my 14 year old's summary of it: "it's messed up". Warning: these books contain adult concepts and high level coarse language and high level coarse faeries.

"Bleed" is the second story of this reluctant heroine, in which once again her past comes back to haunt her. Aster has had dealings with the land of faerie, and has learned that as much as humans can be sordid and exploitative, creatures with magical powers can be even more so. May Gibbs would be shocked. Few people other than Aster understand how the world of faerie interacts with ours, and even fewer want to know, so when there's trouble she has a hard time avoiding it.

 

Another fun part of the book is that the author lives in the same city as I do, and the story is consequently set in somewhat familiar locations. I had fun trying to imagine what part of town he might have been thinking of when he wrote a particular scene. I was also very impressed to see a jacaranda tree in the story - I don't recall ever having noticed a jacaranda mentioned in a novel before.

I'd love to tell you more about what happens, but I don't want to spoil a single thing. The author tends to write tersely, letting you read between the lines to understand the background, and figuring out what's going on and how the universe works is part of the fun. Most of the folklore about the world of faerie seems to be true, but the tales never seemed to mention the yukky bits... like the bit about the unicorn, for example. It seems to me that writing in the hard-boiled style must be a difficult art - one false image or poorly chosen word can lighten the tone and detract from the story - but Peter seems to have it nailed, and it's a pleasure to read. Not pretty, but pleasurable.

I'm very impressed with this new genre of hard-boiled fantasy noir, of which "Horn" and "Bleed" are stunning exemplars. It revives the hard-boiled genre with a splash of fantasy to liven it up, whilst remaining dark in the hard-boiled tradition. The other story I've read in this genre is Tansy Rayner Roberts' "Siren Beat", also published by Twelfth Planet. I'm not so much of a fanboy as to be up-to-date on everything that's happening in Australian SF, but I feel that as a casual observer I'm seeing great things happening.