January 4th, 2010, posted in Prose
Welcome to 2010.
So according to the movies I grew up watching, we are supposed to have interplanetary travel, contact with alien life, flying cars, and personal robots. Well it hasn’t come around at this point, but some goods things have, for me at least.
I just completed my first year trying to live a vegan life. It hasn’t been one hundred percent successful, I did have a few days where I consumed dairy products, but overall things are going well. I lost nearly 35 pounds just by eating vegan. I find myself more compassionate towards others, calmer, and thoughtful. I also completed my third year without a cigarette. This is awesome.
With 2010 here, I thought it might be a good idea to jot down some things I’d like to accomplish. These aren’t resolutions, but focal points of my time. So without further ado….
- Write more. The plan right now is to write one article every two weeks. Starting with this one. Some will be on tech/web issues. Others will be philosophical musings, Buddhist or vegan oriented. (Although I will post any recipes I come up with on my other site http://www.veganseat.info)
- Up my creative game. This one is a little tougher, but also a little broader. I want to produce one piece of creative content (not tied to a job) per week. This could be HTML/CSS, Javascript, a Wordpress theme, a full site, or a poster/wallpaper. The point is to push my personal envelope creatively and develop my skills.
- 365 self portrait. This is pretty straight forward: take a self portrait every day. See my progress on flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/urothane/sets/72157622992286695/
- Bike more. Do yoga more. I am trying to do one or both each day, along with meditating. I want to get fit, have more energy and maybe try to bike a century ride this year.
- Get more tattoos. If you happen to have a tattoo studio and need some web work, lets talk trade.
April 1st, 2009, posted in Vegan
Yahoo! is reporting on a “Dark Side of Vegetarianism” that points to young adults and teens that either are or were vegetarians may have had used other unhealthy ways to control weight. The conclusion of the study claims there may be eating disorders hidden behind the vegetarian diet. At the same time it points out that those that are or were vegetarian are in better health than those who were omnivores.
“The majority of adolescents and young adults today would benefit from improvements in dietary intake,” she said. The study found, for instance, that the vegetarians among the participants generally were less likely to be overweight or obese.
I think the study is missing the point. Many of us have grown up being told we were imperfect and had to lose weight. We grew up being told we should super-size our meals and thus learned to binge eat. Yet as we grew older, we realized we needed to change and take control of our lives. I have no doubt that many healthy and unhealthy ways to take this control back were tried. I tried “metabolism boosters” as I am sure many others did.
Then I learned, as the subjects of the study did, of a healthy way to lower my cholesterol, blood pressure and weight. Instead of claiming the vegetarian diet hid an eating disorder, couldn’t it be that the vegetarian diet was the dieter conquering previous eating beliefs and doing what was right and healthy?
Original link.
April 22nd, 2008, posted in Buddhism, Computers, Enlightenment, Parenting, Philosophy, Politics
Happy Earth Day! I thought I would take a few moments to detail those things that I have been working hard on this year to do in order to contribute to a greener world. I am not going to preach on global warming as I think we are only beginning to understand what is happening.
This past year I have been conscious of everything that I do and its effect on my surroundings. As such I have take the following actions and I encourage you to take similar ones for yourself.