I think I discovered a great new weight loss program today. It’s based largely on carefully selected seafood. Perhaps you’re thinking “Duh, we all know the benefits of seafood as a healthier, leaner protein source, rich in Omega 3″, right? Well this is a fairly new approach. It’s based on selecting seafoods that aren’t tainted with Mercury or other toxins, and that aren’t in danger of extinction from overfishing. Today I was making a simple Niçoise salad, something I enjoy once in a while. I only occasionally use a fresh piece of tuna, so today, as I opened the can of moderately high-quality tuna, I realized I hadn’t checked on the imperiled state of tuna populations in a while, and thought “Wow. What if this were the last can of tuna I ever opened?” So I did a little research. And after about fifteen minutes, I realized that if I commit to a seafood-only diet, and wade through all the conflicting and poorly-coordinated information available about overfishing and toxins, I should lose about ten pounds before I have it all sorted out. I’m not going to offer any advice here, beyond suggesting you do some research of your own before you order that Striped Bass special the next time you go out to dinner. But I’ve rounded up some good start points if you want to learn about the health risks or sustainability of your favorite fish. One lengthy but fairly easy to review summary is the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s 2010 Culinary Chart of Alternatives. It lists what to avoid, alternatives for each item, and has little red asterisks to highlight the ones that are the ocean equivalent of eating paint chips for dinner. This chart assembled by the Environmental Defense Fund breaks down how often you might want to eat some PCB’s and/or Mercury, based on whether you’re a woman, a man, an older kid, or a younger kid. Like we said, if the waiter recommends the Wild Striped Bass, call the cops. He’s trying to kill you. There’s also a wealth of information about seafood on the NOAA Fisheries Service FishWatch site, but personally, I’d take any US government agency’s “safe to eat” advice with a grain of salt, especially regarding the impact of BP’s use of Corexit on gulf seafood. In spite of their claims of rigorous testing, they’re talking about less than 2,000 samples being tested for a rather limited number of contaminants, and simply can’t speak with authority on long term impact, it hasn’t been long enough! If you’re interested in the process they use, which includes sensory testing, i.e. fish-sniffing, check out A Step-By-Step Journey: How Gulf Seafood is Deemed “Safe”. I wonder what a tofu Niçoise would be like?

If you don’t feel like drinking a lot tonight, we already suggested some excellent New Year’s Eve movies. But if you DO decide to drink a lot tonight, do me a couple favors: First, don’t drive. And second, don’t complain about your hangover tomorrow. Drinking to excess is all fine and dandy, but man up and do it right, or don’t do it at all. Although I kicked the habit a few years ago, I actually have considerable experience in this arena, so you can trust my expertise. I estimate that in the more productive period of my illustrious drinking career, I easily consumed over a thousand gallons of vodka. Which is my first tip. If you’re going to funnel poisons into your body for an evening, be scientific about it. Anything other than straight vodka may be tasty and enable a lot of highbrow banter about palates, noses, and finishes, but is frought with peril. Wine, beer, and whiskey are variously chock full of fungus and mold, cogeners, and fusel oils. It should be telling enough that the smoky and fiery character of bourbons are derived from something that in German means bad liquor. Some of us have understood this vodka trick for years, and now science has finally validated the idea.Speaking of science, I bet you didn’t know that there’s an enzyme in our systems specifically for breaking down alcohol. Well there is. So while you’re drinking the most-distilled vodka you can get your hands on to ensure that it’s almost entirely simple ethanol, EAT SOMETHING for chrissake. Russians have understood this for ages; they do a little shot, have a little Zakuski, do a little shot, have a little Zakuski… wipe, rinse hands, repeat. Until you’re grabbing everyone within reach (your reach will dwindle as you slump under the table) by the neck to kiss them and tell them how much you love them, goddammit. Oh, and have a glass of water now and then. This isn’t rocket science; it’s just science. And one trick I’ve never heard or read about but I swear worked flawlessly for me for years: eat a couple of eggs right before bed. And by “right before bed” I mean as you’re passing out on the way to it. And aspirin? Whatever. If you’re drunk enough that you’re already anticipating a brain-splitting hangover, your body is so busy detoxing already I doubt it’s going to notice you slipped it a couple puny aspirin. No, the end of a hard night of drinking is hardly the time to start taking medicine, unless of course by “medicine” you mean copious amounts of recreational drugs. In which case, have at it. I never understood the idea of ingesting intoxicants and then not ingesting ALL THE INTOXICANTS AVAILABLE. I mean, the objective here is intoxication, right? No sense mucking things up by trying to figure out ways to not be intoxicated. I mean, if you don’t want to be intoxicated, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU DRINKING? And that leads to our last little tip, which is dealing with the hangover if you fail to prevent it. Not to be insensitive or anything, but this part is pretty simple too. Either get up, have a bloody mary, and go on about your day, preferably engaging in difficult manual labor, or lay in bed swearing you’ll “NEVER DRINK AGAIN OH DEAR GOD I SWEAR IF YOU JUST MAKE THIS STOP“. If you choose the latter, take a cue from the movie Trainspotting, in which the character Renton shares a list that very nearly matches exactly what you’ll need to feel better: “one mattress; tomato soup, ten tins of; mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold; ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of; Magnesia, Milk of, one bottle; paracetamol; mouth wash; vitamins; mineral water; Lucozade; pornography; one bucket for urine, one for feces, and one for vomitus; one television; and one bottle of Valium“. Hopefully you won’t actually need the first and second buckets, but otherwise this list is just about right for a hangover. In reality, I in fact hope you’re smart and responsible enough to not get blithering drunk tonight, but if you must, do it with dignity, and tomorrow, accept the fact that bacchanalian revelry is in fact a pretty freakin’ stupid way to start the year. Whatever you do tonight, just don’t hurt anybody else. And truly, I wish you and yours and all of us on Earth a Happy New Year.

Flying The Crack

I’ve gone skydiving and hangliding, but this is INSANE in comparison. I’d still do it before I’d get a flu shot. The music’s a bit of an earworm; if you’re curious, it’s Chaiyya Chaiyya from the Dil Se soundtrack

Any of the bizarre cures featured in this amazing series of images on Totally Cool Pix

Watching The Eyeball Slicing Scene in Un Chien Andalou

Bungee Sledding Off A Roof In Russia

Listening to Bill O’Reilly reading the “steamy” passages from his book Those Who Trespass

Sample: “Say baby, put down that pipe and get my pipe up.”

More here.

New Anti-Smoking Ads Warn Teens ‘It’s Gay To Smoke’

The CDC’s new anti-smoking campaign effectively reaches teens with a simple message: if you smoke, people are going to know you’re totally crazy for butt sex.

This man in this image from the campaign bears a remarkable resemblance to….

…someone who had plenty of heart problems without smoking:

Maybe if the smoker thought about where their money was going:

I’ve been both a victim and a beneficiary of the self-help movement since the 1980′s. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hittin’ a self-help guru in those days; I even had a band manager/mentor (Hi Jim!) who simultaneously inspired my band with forward thinking, and tortured us with pleas to become his est podlings. While there’s a lot of self-improvement tripe out there, there’s also a lot of great stuff. Laugh if you like, but I can shamelessly say that I’ve found something useful in books by all the big names, from old school stuff like Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, and Norman Vincent Peale to the next generation biggies like Stephen Covey, John Gray, Eckhart Tolle, David Allen, and even Timothy Ferriss. But you know what I don’t derive any benefit from? Everyone with internet access who either read or skimmed these books and whose only resulting inspiration was to regurgitate everything they consumed in fragmented and ineffectual form on their blog as a list of “great tips” or “essential secrets”. The saddest part of what these self-improvement bloggers are doing is that they probably heard from some twit like Ann Sieg that you could make money that way. Ah well. It makes them no less annoying. I feel obligated to set the record straight though, with an authentic “10 Secrets” list. Enjoy.

10 Secrets To Being Happy, Healthy & Wealthy
	1.) Don’t Be Depressed One of the greatest obstacles to being happy is not being happy. So stop moping. Because if you keep walking around trippin’ on your lip like that, not only will people not enjoy your company, leading to loneliness and more depression, I just might smack ya.
	2.) Suicide Is Always An Option In many cultures, suicide is in fact highly respected. And it’s a well-established fact that depression can aggravate indecision, which leads to more depression. So if you can’t get over your weepy paralysis, kill two birds with one stone with this very decisive action. Or don’t.
	3.) Buy Something Nice For Yourself The old adage that “money can’t buy happiness” is disinformation spread by happy wealthy people to protect their slice of the pie. Money itself won’t make you happy, but it will buy everything that will. This step requires having some money, so be sure to check out our handy wealth tips below.
	4.) Don’t Be Sick Nothing is a greater impediment to excellent health than being sick, so don’t be. This requires little more in the way of explanation, but a key strategy here is avoiding doctors. You may have noticed their income is derived entirely from deciding you’re sick.
	5.) Don’t Die Of Malnutrition An estimated two-thirds of the world’s population is either under-fed or actually starving. Not eating is a surefire way to not get the nutrients necessary for good health, and not eating at all can kill you. So eat.
	6.) Don’t Sit On Your Ass All Day Eating Like A Pig This point really ties all the others together, and may in fact be the most important. First of all, if you’re sitting around all day, you’re probably not making money. And if you’re eating while you sit around, you’re going to end up fat, ugly, and unhappy, like a typical American. Which is a major obstacle to being accepted by the international jet set.
	7.) Be Born Into Affluence This is probably the easiest way to achieve wealth. When being born into wealth, an added plus is being born into royal families or American oligarchies like the Bush, Rockefeller, or Clinton families. This way you get all sorts of entitlements and pretty much don’t pay taxes.
	8.) Marry In, Or Build A Time Machine Okay, if you weren’t already born rich, maybe that last one is impossible because of the laws of time and physics. First of all, stop being so fatalistic. Inventing a time machine would solve all of these problems, so get to work! And if you’re too damn lazy to build a freakin’ time machine, just marry in. This works great for people like John Kerry and John McCain, so why not you?
	9.) Start A Successful Business You hear lots of stories about how people like Abe Lincoln and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales failed a lot before succeeding. This is obviously a waste of time. Start a successful business the first time. If AT&T can stay in business, anybody can.
	10.) Win The Lotto Wealthy and successful people who emphasize that hard work, persistence, and a positive attitude are essential to financial freedom have obviously never won the Lotto. Get scratchin’.

I must confess to having what you may consider a filthy, disgusting habit. No, not that one. I smoke. I’m not especially proud of it, and I may actually quit some day, but with no thanks to the US Government. If you don’t smoke, you may not have even noticed the results of the legislation recently enacted that restricts cigarette makers’ labeling of their packaging. So what were the results? Mostly the packages are just lighter shades or more colorful and appealing. In essence, the regulations just drove the tobacco companies to spiff up and contemporize their brands, while giving them incomprehensible amounts of free press. Aside from the fact that it has been recognized for some time that smokers engage in a high degree of cognitive dissonance it is now often argued that warnings can actually encourage people to keep smoking by stimulating their coping skills for dealing with the negative messaging. And it has also been suggested by marketers like Martin Lindstrom (in his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy ) that anti-smoking messages even go so far as to make a smoker want to smoke. The fundamental problem with the strategy of trying to convince smokers to change their behavior through packaging is that if you allow any package design at all, the manufacturer will win. As we said, the restrictions just drive brand innovation, and for an already addicted smoker, the creepy warnings used all over the world just become a sort of social object. My suggestion? Make all the packages white, with the requirement that all product names are randomly generated characters. No emotional connection to color, no evocative words or images that can operate as “hooks” of any kind. If you know any smokers and how addicted they are to their brand’s overall “feel”, I feel confident you’d see a measurable downturn in sales growth. Honestly, all this talk about cigarettes has made me want one. Care to join me? Maybe we could try one of those new Pall Malls.

Pall Malls have never looked more appealing:

The problem with conceptual anti-cigarette packaging like this…

…is that you can find the real thing on eBay:

When I’m in a hospital room, I usually have a
hard time telling which way the blood is flowing.

I feel sorry for Barack Obama. Not only will history likely blame him for the long tail of the bank failures and bailouts for which the Bush administration was actually responsible, it will also likely blame him (because of the passage of the health care bill that has divided the country recently) for the continued malignancy that is our decrepit, bloated, and corrupt “health care system”. I put that phrase in quotes because I believe that – as the late Walter Cronkite once said – “America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system“. While a bunch of Democratic congressmen who have nothing to worry about regarding their health care plans sit around patting themselves on the back for passing a health care bill that has supposedly been the dream of generations of Democratic politicians, the fact is that things won’t change for many, and we’ll still be left saddled with the most expensive and least effective health care in the developed world. The bill does NOTHING to fix what any intelligent person sees as the fundamental problem; it might in fact worsen it. Whether you describe the problem as being a result of government meddling and insurance, or as patient overuse of treatment because insurance will pay for it, or as a result of doctors requiring malpractice insurance, you will notice the word “insurance” keeps popping up. The fact is that the mind-boggling arrangements for billing and payment that exist today would be IMPOSSIBLE without the insurance industry supporting its piece of what really is an incredibly elaborate and blatant ponzi scheme being pulled off by an industry and a profession that operates under the ultimate smokescreen: an illusion of benevolence which implies that they are only here to help you, and perhaps save your very life. And what price can be put on that, right? Well, when you can float enough paper, a pretty high one, apparently. How about seven bags of saline solution for $1,757? Or $12 for a “mucus recovery system”, i.e., a box of tissues that retails for about two dollars? Or $57 for a “fog elimination device”, which is a 2×2 piece of gauze used to wipe down surgical equipment? This kind of billing is so rampant that there is another industry that feeds off the system; “medical billing advocates”. These are companies that will take your insane hospital bill, itemize and contest the bloat that typically contributes to a significant portion of the total, and then bill you for the service of correcting the amount with the health care provider. The entire health system is rife with over-billing, whether because of intentional fraud or the errors inherent in the complexity of how the billing is distributed amongst insurance providers, which all negotiate different deals. Apparently 8 out of 10 hospital statements contain multiple mistakes, overcharging consumers an estimated $10 billion a year. With a system built entirely on such a foundation, how could I possibly care if I have insurance? Someone will pay for it. Maybe me, maybe the government, or – if I receive care as shoddy as what I’ve seen family and friends receive over the past few years – maybe a lawsuit. Below is a quick list of some of the more absurd charges found in routine hospital billing. Have any stories of your own you’d care to share?

$90 charged for a 70¢ I.V.
$129 for a “mucous recovery system”, i.e.: a box of Kleenex
$251 for a bag of saline
$57 for a “fog elimination device”, i.e.: a 2×2 piece of gauze used to wipe down surgical equipment
$1,082 for two bags of intravenous electrolytes, each available online for $5
$1,269 for nine doses of the pain medication Demerol, a markup of 14 times above retail

Earthlings, a 2003 documentary written and directed by Shaun Monson and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. Although a bit monotonous and suffering from an almost amateurish voiceover job (Phoenix has a great voice but extremely uneven delivery), the film’s narrative is deeply thoughtful and the slaughterhouse images throughout the film speak volumes on their own.

Food, Inc., Which in their words “lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA” putting “profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment”.

Death on a Factory Farm, HBO’s 2006 documentary that takes a harrowing look at animal cruelty in an Ohio factory hog farm, as chronicled through undercover footage taken by “Pete,” an animal-rights investigator hired by the animal rights group The Humane Farming Association.

But alas, I’ve herd many are not mooved by these films, and in fact remain udderly indifferent to the issue. No matter. I will remain uncowed in my pursuit of a healthy new diet.

Years ago an acquaintance of mine, upon being diagnosed with cancer, made the joke that “no-one’s ever died of undiagnosed cancer”. Meaning, of course, that he was more concerned about the treatment killing him than the illness. He ignored his doctor’s prognosis of impending death, embraced all of the treatments he could learn about – both traditional and alternative – and took on a sort of punk rock attitude of “if all the other things I’ve done haven’t killed me, this won’t either”. Ten years later, he’s still alive and well. I personally hold the belief – in spite of any solid science to back it up – that mental attitude and spiritual discipline have as much impact on health and wellness as medicine. Which is why I found this New Scientist article about Voodoo fascinating. They actually touch on a topic that seems taboo amongst medical professionals – the powerful effect of placebo and nocebo. While there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence and popular belief that a good attitude can prolong life, it’s hard to find positive stories (from credible sources, that is) about the topic. This ABC story, for instance, focuses on the fact that support groups don’t seem to help cancer patients live longer, while overlooking the fact that these cancer patients are being treated in the same health care system that inspires movies like Sicko. I’d love to hear your story if you have one, especially one like this story about a man who was told by American doctors in the 70′s that he had just months to live. He’s alive and living happily on a Greek island today; all of his American doctors are dead.