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Pastimes : My House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (6869)	4/15/2003 12:19:52 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7689

How can you speak with her? I'm sure the resort must be of the most common variety. Absloutely NONE of the right people will be there. What if somebody sees her? This matter is so distressing.

To: Poet who wrote (6869)	4/15/2003 9:41:51 PM
From: E	Respond to of 7689

Not long ago, the NYT had a series of pieces on Barcelona. I don't think it could not be a wonderful city to visit. I'm going to search their archives for those articles. I've always wanted to go to Barcelona, and almost used the AA FF miles for that, but decided it had to be Venice again first. Now I will have seen every city I REALLY wanted to. Not all I'd like to see, but all I've pined to see. I would like to see Victoria Falls again. Unbelievable. Really. Just... beyond description. And because it's the third world, you can go right up to the edge of the overlooking cliffs and scare yourself to death. I mean, they don't bother with fences. If you want to fall in, feel free. I almost passed out from the stress of the experience of watching children on the other side of the gorge playing at the edge, throwing things in, rolling rocks and logs over the edge. Little children, barely out of toddlerhood. I was screaming at them, though the sound of the falls is so loud you couldn't be heard screaming from six feet away, much less from across a broad gorge. I think they must do that all the time. They live near there, it's like their playground. Just remembering it frightens me.

To: Poet who wrote (6869)	4/22/2003 3:37:11 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 7689

April 22, 2003 COMMENTARY Eat Meat By LIONEL TIGER The modern body has become a temple to which people pay as deep attention as many in the past paid to the soul. Virtually every sentient person is on a diet or anti-diet. The national pantry is alternately filled or emptied with butter, then margarine, then olive oil, then nothing, then Olestra, then butter again. A vast industry thrives of entrail inspection for cholesterol, triglycerides and a burgeoning array of other inner substances. These purport to predict longevity, death or decent health. They reflect the latest putative certainty about feeding the perfect immortal body, and implicitly reveal moral character. Today we have not a backbone test but a cardiovascular one: puritanism on a platter. In this turbulent tale, diet doctor Robert Atkins was perhaps the preeminent individual player of our time. An immensely successful communicator and entrepreneur, and an intensely controversial (occasionally "alternative") physician, he departed the world last week from neither proof nor disproof of his argument but a concussive fall on April sidewalk ice in New York. No one can say "we told you so" as they did when Jim Fixx the jogger guru died young or Adele Davis the diet autocrat died at all. Dr. Atkins confronted the diet culture at a distinct time. The American food industry produces more food for less money than ever in history -- the value-meal consumption of it has yielded an ever-fatter population. His knack wasn't mastering the durable intricate research about the industry reflected in Marion Nestle's recent "Food Politics." But he scorned the U.S. government, whose department of agriculture approved a national daily menu (and school meals) which accepted refined grains and tolerated industrially processed foods. Only recently has the USDA acknowledged that "health food" may simply be mainstream good food. More intrepidly, he challenged the planetary medical profession which claimed that fat you ate became fat to hate -- resulting in arteries which clogged and hearts which conked. Low-fat, fake-fat, and no-fat foods from this dietary equation bestride the land. But the population scarfing fat-free foods grows plumper nonetheless. Dr. Atkins (among others) asserted that carbohydrates were precursors to obesity while protein, even in red meat, generated inner alchemy for longer life and more gastro-fun while living it. His proposal was drastic, counterintuitive, tempting, obvious and rebellious. He and his associates conducted research concluding the diet is safe. But only recently have there begun independent controlled studies to provide broader judgment than his "Yes!" and the conventional "No!" -- because the links between dietary fat and heart problems seem so clear. Critics worry that the diet may seem friendly while being potentially dangerous: Many people on the diet lose weight now (which itself often lowers blood cholesterol) whereas the grim cardiovascular results many experts fear are far in the dieter's future. One recent evaluation of his diet suggests it works when it does because any self-conscious diet is better than none. Eating less is an obvious start and so is permanently ignoring the breadbasket on the table, the freedom fries and all soft drinks forever. The diet is draconian about sugar and refined grains but the overall tone of Dr. Atkins' recommendations is seemingly non-censorious. And because fat is a principal conveyor of taste, his scheme appears more genuinely popular and durable than steamy regimes of endless grains, beans and greens. Once a dieter achieves comfortable equilibrium, usually after a 5-10% weight loss, there's an interesting selection at the O.K. Buffet. His "diet revolution" was far from perfect. Dr. Atkins failed to emphasize that cultivated meat like prime beef delivers a jolt of saturated fat far beyond what was provided by our traditional animal diet of fowl, wild ungulates and fish. He did not fully comprehend the enormity of our human shift from the million-year-old hunting-gathering diet with which our bodies evolved to the brand new one we obtained through agriculture and herding animals. He is unduly hostile to fruits, from which our survival clearly profited. And lame suggestions to park at the edge of the company parking lot encouraged exercise inadequate to an animal born to run. But necessary issues have been raised, always controversial because the temple-body is involved. Dr. Atkins sharpened the discussion and countless patients, most of whom he never met, will miss him at dinner. Mr. Tiger is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers. Among his books is "The Pursuit of Pleasure" (Transaction, 2000). URL for this article: online.wsj.com