Author: Mark Linton

I was trying not to say anything about this whole Mad Cow thing… but seeing this bit of confidence building news just pushed me over the edge.

Investigators Say Cow’s Birth Preceded Effort to Stem Disease: “[Dr. Ron De Haven, the Agriculture Department’s chief veterinarian,] said there was no reason for Americans or people in other countries to question the safety of American beef, since mad cow disease is not found in muscle tissue, which is the source of roasts, steaks and other cuts familiar to consumers.”

At least now we know where meat comes from. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/slant.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-/" />



Oh&hellip; and apparently a cow cannot get <acronym title="bovine spongiform encephalopathy">BSE</acronym> more than an instant or so after birth&hellip; because, you know, that cow was <em>born</em> in Canada.

Breakfast was a glass of orange juice and two refrigerator cookies. I weighed in at 161 pounds.



<ins datetime="2003-12-29T17:55:00-05:00">Lunch was a ham sandwich on a <a href="http://www.panera.com/familynutritionalprofile.aspx?familyid=98" title="Panera Bread® // Nutrition Information">nine-grain</a> bread I got at <a href="http://www.panera.com/" title="Panera Bread® // Home">Panera</a> and a <a href="http://www.saranac.com/paleale.html" title="SARANAC">Saranac Pale Ale</a>&hellip; that I got from <a href="http://www.nittanybeverage.com/" title="NittanyBeverage.com - Welcome!">Nittany Beverage</a>. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/wink.png" height="18" width="18" alt=";-)" /> I had another <a href="http://www.saranac.com/paleale.html" title="SARANAC">Saranac Pale Ale</a> sitting on the front porch while reading the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/home/us" title="WSJ.com - U.S. Home">Wall Street Journal</a> this afternoon. Dinner was chili and a slice of that bread, another <a href="http://www.saranac.com/paleale.html" title="SARANAC">Saranac Pale Ale</a>, and two <a href="http://www.godiva.com/welcome.asp" title="Chocolate Gifts from Godiva">Godiva</a> chocolates. Gretchen made the chili this summer using tomatoes from our garden and froze it. Even months later it still has a wonderful fresh tomato flavor that could not be matched with canned tomatoes or even the little red rocks they sell in the grocery store.</ins>

No breakfast this morning. I weighed in at 161 pounds. Lunch was a couple of slices of ham and a stale dinner roll.



<ins datetime="2003-12-28T18:40:00-05:00">Dinner was whole wheat spaghetti with pork sausage and tomato sauce, a small Caesar salad, two glasses of Freixenet Brut, a Godiva chocolate, and several pecan crisp cookies.</ins>

<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107238531439890200,00.html" title="WSJ.com - Tastings">Easy-to-Swallow Resolutions</a>: &ldquo;<strong>Visit a winery.</strong> There are wineries in all 50 states, but most people we know have never visited a local winery, and, in fact, many look down their noses at them. However, not a day goes by that we don&rsquo;t get a note from someone saying, &lsquo;Hey, I happened to visit a local winery the other day and the wines and the people were great!&rsquo; These letter writers have immediately become convinced that this is the greatest little winery in America, although, in fact, it&rsquo;s the only one they ever visited. That should tell you something about what a special experience this is.&rdquo;

You may <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/2003_11_01_journal.html#id106847240357567848" title="How big is a serving of soup?">recall</a> I wondered how big was a cup of soup. Well, it turns out that a cup of soup is a cup &mdash; that is, eight ounces.



Well, Gretchen got me some <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000636VM" title="Amazon.com: Kitchen &amp; Housewares: Emile Henry Couleurs 12-Ounce Individual Souffle Dish, Set of 2, Red">ramekins</a> for Christmas, and when I opened them, we both thought they looked a little small. We were almost ready to send them back, when we decided to conduct a little experiment.



<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/bowls.jpg" width="341" height="256" alt="Three soup bowls, apparently of different sizes, all hold the same amount." />



We took one of our cereal bowls (top left), one of our soup bowls (top right), and one of the ramekins (bottom center). We filled the ramekin with water, then poured it into the cereal bowl. It just filled it. Then we took the cereal bowl and poured it into the soup bowl. It just filled it.



So I guess the perception of size is just an illusion.

Breakfast this morning was a slice of left over pumpkin pie and a glass of orange juice. I weighed in at 160 pounds.



<ins datetime="2003-12-27T19:35:00-05:00">Lunch was more ham and cheese finger sandwiches and a glass of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=6" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna</a>. Dinner was ham and cloved onions and au gratin potatoes, pumpkin pie, and two glasses of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=6" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna</a>.</ins>

Our cat Minbi likes to chase reflections — “light things” — around on the floor.

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&amp;node=&amp;contentId=A13511-2003Sep2&amp;notFound=true" title="Dirt Matters (washingtonpost.com)">Dirt Matters</a>: &ldquo;Near the end of the 19th century, German scientists found the amount of iron in spinach to be comparable to that in meat: some 3 milligrams per 100 grams. But in reporting their findings they put the decimal point (actually in Europe, a comma) in the wrong place, making the amount of iron appear to be 10 times greater than what they had intended. (No, Arthur Andersen was not their accountant.) The error was corrected some 40 years later, but not before Popeye decided to adopt spinach as his power food. After all, iron is strong, right? 



The irony (honest, that was an accident) is that whatever iron spinach does contain is not very absorbable by the body because spinach also contains oxalic acid, which ties up the iron into an insoluble form, ferrous oxalate. So only a fraction of spinach's modest amount of iron is available for our metabolism.&rdquo;

Breakfast this morning was a leftover piece of the Christmas day coffee cake and a glass of orange juice.



<ins datetime="2003-12-26T12:43:00-05:00">We are working through the leftovers and so today&rsquo;s lunch is a little more elaborate then normal. We started with finger sandwiches made from the bread rolls and ham from last night. We had a <a href="http://www.godiva.com/welcome.asp" title="Chocolate Gifts from Godiva">Godiva</a> chocolate afterwards, then we remembered that there was still torte left and that it probably would not keep too long, so we had a piece of that, too. I washed it all down with a Beck&rsquo;s Dark Beer.</ins>



<ins datetime="2003-12-26T18:50:00-05:00">Durring the afternoon, I had a Harpoon India Pale Ale. Dinner was macadamia nuts, dates, more <a href="https://hbf.honeybaked.com/ohio_secure/" title="the Honeybaked Ham Company">Honeybaked Ham</a>, au gratin potatoes, and green bean caserole, with a glass of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=6" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna</a>.</ins>

Here is an interesting — and not as cynical as it sounds — look at why people engage in gift giving…

So, Scrooge was right after all: It’s a little-known fact that the first economic rationalist was Ebenezer Scrooge. That’s because economists simply can’t understand why people would do something as stupid as giving presents at Christmas.