Hi there, my name is Ian Usher, and I have had enough of my life! I don't want it any more! You can have it if you like!

No, I'm not contemplating suicide, I am going to sell my life!! I have my reasons, for further details click the "Why" tab below. However, I am still not sure whether this is inspired madness, complete foolishness, or just some sort of mid-life crisis.

Whatever it is, it's all going up for sale in one big auction. Everything I have and everything I am.

On the day it is all sold and settled I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all, and get on the train, with no idea where I am going or what the future holds for me.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/the-worst-foods-in-america/index.html?hp

March 18, 2008,  4:18 pm

The Worst Foods in America

We’ve all seen examples of fat-laden, high-calorie foods. But now a popular new nutrition book has picked the worst of the bunch.

The book, “Eat This, Not That!” by Men’s Health editor-in-chief David Zinczenko, has become one of the hottest selling nutrition guides in book stores. The diminutive volume is filled with pictures of what not to eat and photos of better substitutes. It compares food choices at favorite restaurants, supermarkets and holiday items. The comparisons are always interesting and often surprising. Who knew a Starbucks Black Forest Ham, Egg and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich is a better choice than the chain’s Bran Muffin with Nuts?

Chances are you won’t agree with every item. For instance, in a comparison of choices for a child’s Easter basket, I can’t figure out why Jelly Belly Jelly Beans, with 150 calories, are an “eat this,'’ while Marshmallow Peeps, with 140 calories, are a “not that.'’

The book includes a clever ranking of the country’s 20 worst foods in various categories. Here are some of them:

• Worst Fast Food Meal: McDonald’s Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips with creamy ranch sauce. Chicken sounds healthy, but not at 830 calories.
• Worst Drink: Jamba Juice Chocolate Moo’d Power Smoothie. With 166 grams of sugar, you could have had eight servings of Ben & Jerry’s.
• Worst Supermarket Meal: Pepperidge Farm Roasted Chicken Pot Pie. It packs 64 grams of fat.
• Worst “Healthy” Burger: Ruby Tuesday Bella Turkey Burger. With 1,145 calories, not a very healthy choice.
• Worst Airport Snack: Cinnabon Classic Cinnamon Roll. Packed with 813 hot gooey calories and 5 grams of trans fats.
• Worst Kids’ Meal: Macaroni Grill Double Macaroni ‘n Cheese. With 62 fat grams, it’s the equivalent of 1.5 full boxes of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese.
• Worst Salad: On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef. A salad with 102 grams of fat and 2,410 mg of sodium.
• Worst Dessert: Chili’s Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream. At 1,600 calories, it’s like eating the caloric equivalent of three Big Macs.

The Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Ore. — A pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost an Oregon man much of what he owned.

The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.

But Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave. The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.

On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.

More..

http://www.ishafoundation.org/index.php?option=com_program&task=details&program_id=565

Such an interesting place, only 3 hours from Seattle but still so different in many ways.
For one it looks like a real big city, Seattle is small in comparison. It has so many interesting neighborhoods, it will take months to check out all of them. The view from the hotel I am staying at, Blue Horizon on Robson is amazing, its the 24th floor with panoramic 3 window walls looking over the entire skyline, its looking at brightly lit streets and a great skyline for 24/7, its awesome.



Highlights:
1. Stanley Park - just brilliant, they really take care of this place. As Connie described it "its like disneyland for parks" . Even though its freezing, walking around it warms you up. We even had ice cream at the end of it, they have best mango ice cream there.



2. Shoe stores on Robson, how can you not buy shoes from here, they are staring at you...

3. Boutiques in Yaletown, very cute little place with no attitude stores. They are expensive but not in a ridicullous way, there are some with sales where things are really cheap. Some interesting book stores too, they love graphic novels around here.



4. Tandoori place in Little India. Even though the place is not too impressive, they have the best gol gappas and supposedly chicken that i have ever had in a while!  
http://www.virtualvancouver.com/indiatown.html

I Love You, but You Love Meat

SOME relationships run aground on the perilous shoals of money, sex or religion. When Shauna James’s new romance hit the rocks, the culprit was wheat.

“I went out with one guy who said I seemed really great but he liked bread too much to date me,” said Ms. James, 41, a writer in Seattle who cannot eat gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye.

Sharing meals has always been an important courtship ritual and a metaphor for love. But in an age when many people define themselves by what they will eat and what they won’t, dietary differences can put a strain on a romantic relationship. The culinary camps have become so balkanized that some factions consider interdietary dating taboo.

No-holds-barred carnivores, for example, may share the view of Anthony Bourdain, who wrote in his book “Kitchen Confidential” that “vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”

Returning the compliment, many vegetarians say they cannot date anyone who eats meat. Vegans, who avoid eating not just animals but animal-derived products, take it further, shivering at the thought of kissing someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea.

Ben Abdalla, 42, a real estate agent in Boca Raton, Fla., said he preferred to date fellow vegetarians because meat eaters smell bad and have low energy.

Lisa Romano, 31, a vegan and school psychologist in Belleville, N.Y., said she recently ended a relationship with a man who enjoyed backyard grilling. He had no problem searing her vegan burgers alongside his beef patties, but she found the practice unenlightened and disturbing.

Her disapproval “would have become an issue later even if it wasn’t in the beginning,” Ms. Romano said. “I need someone who is ethically on the same page.”

While some eaters may elevate morality above hedonism, others are suspicious of anyone who does not give in to the pleasure principle.

June Deadrick, 40, a lobbyist in Houston, said she would have a hard time loving a man who did not share her fondness for multicourse meals including wild game and artisanal cheeses. “And I’m talking cheese from a cow, not that awful soy stuff,” she said.

Judging from postings at food Web sites like chowhound.com and slashfood.com, people seem more willing to date those who restrict their diet for health or religion rather than mere dislike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/dining/13incompatible.html?_r=1&ei=5070&en=3607fefe7202acc7&ex=1203656400&oref=slogin&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

Art can be found in the most unusual places~~~~




 






 






 






 






 






 






 






 






 






 






 






 






  




 









This is ONE  Awesome Water Closet:

Awesome toilet!
This is a picture of a public toilet in Houston :




Now that you've seen the outside view, take a look at the inside view...










It's made entirely of one-way glass! No one can see you from the outside, but when you are inside it's like sitting in a clear glass box.

Now would you... COULD YOU Use it? : )

MUMBAI: Yonatan Gher and his male partner plan eventually to tell their child that it was made in India, in the womb of a woman they never met, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked out from an Internet line-up of candidates.

The embryo was formed in January in an Indian fertility clinic about 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles, from Gher's home in Tel Aviv, nurtured by a team of doctors who have begun specializing in surrogacy services for couples from around the world.

As they waited to see if the fertilization process had been successful, Gher, 29, and his partner sped around the streets of Mumbai in the back of an autorickshaw, drinking in scenes of a country they had never previously visited, staring at the unfamiliar faces of Indian women and children and "trying to imagine our child," he said.

"The child will know early on that he or she is unique, that it came into the world in a very special way," said Gher, a communications officer for the environmental group Greenpeace. "But as it grows up and asks questions about the birds and the bees, then we will need to go into more detail."

Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India's combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in U.S. states, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost of the medical procedures, air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby) comes to around $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=10690283

LAS VEGAS - Nearly 40,000 people learned this week that a trip to the doctor may have made them sick. In a type of scandal more often associated with Third World countries, a Las Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of medication for nearly four years. The shoddy practices may have led to an outbreak of the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and exposed patients to HIV, too.

The discovery led to the biggest public health notification operation in U.S. history, brought demands for investigations and caused scores of lawyers to seek out patients at risk for infections.

Thousands of patients are being urged to be tested for the viruses. Six acute cases of hepatitis C have been confirmed. The surgical center and five affiliated clinics have been closed.

"I find it baffling, frankly, that in this day and age anyone would think it was safe to reuse a syringe," said Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One of the infected patients is retired airplane mechanic Michael Washington, 67, who was the first to report his infection. On the advice of his doctor, he received a routine colon exam in July at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

In September, he started to get sick. He was losing weight fast. His urine turned dark. His stomach hurt. By January, it was clear what had happened.

Washington describes his virus as a "creeping death sentence" and worries that others will hear his story and think twice before getting preventive care they need. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080306/ap_on_re_us/hepatitis_exposure;_ylt=AgDb1acg9zxwTnEVcUcaBdKs0NUE

Pregnant woman uses train toilet, baby slips out

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - A newborn baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving Indian train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday.

"My delivery was so sudden," said the Bhuri Kalbi, the mother of the infant, born two months prematurely. "I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet."

Kalbi, a 33-year-old woman from a village in Rajasthan, fainted on the toilet seat after the birth for a few minutes before waking up and alerting her family.

"They stopped the train and ran on the tracks to find the baby," she said, speaking from her hospital bed in the western city of Ahmedabad.

Railway staff at a nearby station were alerted and soon found the newborn girl lying uninjured on pebbles by the track. She is now in intensive care because of her premature birth, doctors said.

Most toilets on Indian trains are filthy chutes emptying directly onto the tracks.

(Reporting by Rupam Jain Nair; Editing by Jonathan Allen and Sugita Katyal)

Bollywood dialogues of yesteryears still tops: Study

Ajita Shashidhar

Mumbai , Dec. 8

BOLLYWOOD dialogues of yesteryear such as `Tera kya hoga kaliya' from the Ramesh Sippy blockbuster of the 1970s, Sholay and `Main aur meri tanhai aksar yeh baate karte hain... . (Me and my loneliness often talk to each other... had you been here it would have been like this, had you been here it would have been like that... you would've laughed on this... you would've been amazed on that...), from the film Silsila, still continue to have a much higher recall than the dialogues of the more recent Bollywood blockbusters.

Similarly, most of the favoured dialogues happen to be from the films of Amitabh Bachchan — `Rishte me hum tumhare baap lagte hai, naam hai Shahenshah (Shahenshah); `Tumhare paas kya hai? Mere paas Ma hai (Deewar)'; `I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English, because English is a funny language (Namak Halal ).'

Cogito Consulting, the brand consulting arm of FCB Ulka, has come up with a study on how the greatest movie quotes have become a part of the Indian vocabulary.

Sharing excerpts from this study, Mr V.M. Wabgaonkar, Vice-President (Planning), FCB Ulka, said, "The impact that Bollywood dialogues have had on the society can be gauged from the most used dialogues. They show how we have reinforced our beliefs, derived inspiration or even given vent to bugging issues through their words, style and impact."

Mr Wabgaonkar said the study has proved to be a barometer of several key issues, beliefs and inspirations that reside in an individual's mind. "Two key issues have been frustration with red tape and even today, anxiety over family's sanction for love. It reflected belief in platonic love and also in superior heroic powers that could save the day against the evil elements."

For instance, the most highly recalled quote to express frustration over red tape, has been `Tareekh pe tareekh milti rahi hai lekin insaaf nahin milta. Milti hai to sirf tareekh... .' (People are being given dates (in this court) but not justice. The only thing they get are dates. The law agents (lawyers) have used dates as a weapon in courts.), from the film Damini. Similarly, the popular dialogue from the film Mughal-E-Azam — `Anarkali, Salim ki mohabbat tumhe marne nahin degi aur hum tumhe jeene nahin denge.' — is quoted even today, when one wants to express family's sanction for love.

The study also brings out the dominance of male dialogues over female dialogues. "The paucity of female dialogues in the winning list is reflective of the distance we are yet to travel in making our archetypal women `equally strong and independent' as men (barring exceptions)," said Mr Wabgaonkar.

He said the study also revealed that today's new millennium and its tech-intensive life have not managed to dilute many of the age-old, powerful symbols such as the Ganges and the righteous Indian mother.

The dialogue, `Mera paas ma hain, tumhare paas kya hai', from the film Deewar, which resolves the conflict between ethics, family ties and unethical short-cuts to wealth, for instance, is a hot favourite among the SEC-B section of the population.

But how has the study been useful in terms of understanding consumer behaviour? "It tells us the styles of delivery that resonate with consumers. It tells us what resonates in their psyche; it is a dispassionate barometer of what is enduring and what is ephemeral of the prolific creations of Bollywood. Variously, it tells what else may endure and what won't," said Mr Wabgaonkar.

Spud we like

Feb 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition

In praise of the humble but world-changing tuber

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

IT IS the world's fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any other plant. It is, of course, the potato.

The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato (see article). It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato's unusual history (see article) means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist—because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.

Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its “historically revolutionary role”.

The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain's Corn Laws—the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition—and more's the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1m Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.

This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, “rotten potatoes have done it all.”

In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th-century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato's many admirers, observed at the time, “The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable.” Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.