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French Fries and "Gotta Have" Food

May 23, 2007 08:25 AM

This was my dinner. Two pieces of Mahi Mahi done on the grill with olive oil and Teriyaki with broccoli and grilled squash. I put some olive oil over the squash during the grilling to keep it moist. A big salad. It was so much food that I did not finish it and will have the leftovers for lunch.

I do think that reminding yourself that the part of the meal you do not eat is as important as the part you do eat. Since you can have the rest later, there is no temptation to eat it all at once. Over eating is so harmful that it ought to be considered to be dangerous. Metabolism is stressful and many people who die do so after a large, carbohydrate-laden meal. The body mounts a stress response to the high blood sugar that occurs after a high carb meal.

Wonder Woman's meal is grilled salmon with the rest the same as mine. She calls the grilled squash her "french fries" and they have completely replaced any thought of actually eating a french fry in her mind.

So, you don't really "give up" things you think you must have. You find something that replaces and eventually surpasses it. This true of bread and other things that people seem to think they cannot live without. There are real foods that a good substitutes and that you will eventually see as far better.

If there is anything "you can't live without" you may actually be allergic to that food. An allergic response to a food will release adrenaline so that you feel a hit that is like a reward when you eat it. Bread is particularly allergenic if you are moderately celliac, yeast intolerant, or inflammed due to insulin resistance or obesity. These are all inflammatory processes, even obesity (which may be the worst), and are, therefore, allergenic. You are setting off your immune system and may suffer collaterol damage as it begins to attack your own tissues in addition to the alllergens.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (6)

Reader Meals

May 21, 2007 08:31 PM

Readers are getting into this Evolutionary Fitness meal preparation. These meals are from Chris with his very nice comment:

We've been enjoying your recent meal pictures and have been doing our best to cook the EvFit way. For fun, we took our own pictures of lunch and dinner yesterday. We thought you might be interested in seeing them.

On picture #1, the meal on the left is steamed broccoli over a bed of spinach, with chunks of red apple and avocado and some cuts of chicken sausage. A little lemon-tarragon dressing on top. On the right is steamed broccoli over a bed of romaine lettuce, with chunks of apple and avocado, all sprinkled with a small amount of Parmesan cheese. In the center of the plate is some chunks of roast beef with a good quality
mayo.

On picture #2, for dinner, we had a little steamed broccoli (I had carrots as well), along with a nice cut of salmon marinated in white wine, topped with Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and sun-dried tomatoes.

Thanks for the inspiration!

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (1)

Black Swans and Evolutionary Fitness

Nassim Taleb understood instantly when I told him a few years ago that his exercise and diet were not good. He was living in Mediocristan when he should have been living in Kurtocristan. He was training in the central part of the intensity distribution, too much "average" activity and too little "out in the tails" rest and intensity. (Remember, the distribution has two tails, one with languid rest and the other with high intensity activity. You have to spend time at both ends.)

In plainer tone, he was doing the same diet and exercise that chronic bicyclists seem to do: high volume, mild intensity, repetitious, over-training with no real intensity. Worse yet, this is what the "traders" whose charting, self-deception and other foolish activities he exposes so accurately and caustically in his Fooled By Randomness.

Yet, he was the founder and architect of trading strategies at the hedge fund Empirica that sought low probability, high-consequence events out in the tails of the distribution; those Black Swans that he so ably describes in his latest book, The Black Swan. He just didn't apply those ideas to his training. I told him he had to use kurtosis in his training, just as he did in his trading.

I think you will enjoy Nassim's discussion with the blogger at KnackeredHack.com during his Lunch with Taleb. I did.

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Meals 2

May 18, 2007 10:21 AM

A light breakfast. Just fresh fruit and some bacon (we didn't eat all of it and will use it to crumble over a salad).

Then a simple steak dinner, a small New York steak. Some grilled squash and spinach done with garlic and hot little red peppers. A small salad and then an experiment in the form of red and white cabbage, cut in chunks (I like to crunch things when I eat them) along with some fresh leeks and a bit of white vinegar. It was really good.

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Meals 1

I am adding another topic for the archives entitled Meals. I will include each meal under that topic for those meals I put up on the site. Eventually, the previously posted meals will be archived there as well.

Here is dinner.

Barbequed pork ribs, cut thin to cook through, broccoli, shrimp, salad with leeks and red cabbage. That is a bit of hot sauce for the shrimp and some zesty ranch dressing with a bit of horse raddish added.

Here is lunch made with leftovers from the dinner.

I put just a bit of Italian dressing over it all.

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The Cost of Eating

May 17, 2007 01:22 PM

My daughter had some thoughts on my recent meal posts. I agree with them though I won't be putting the cost of meals up here. She has known for years how I eat, but it seems the pictures have helped her see more clearly what a good meal looks like. The picture series is popular; yesterday there were 60,000 hits on the blog.

About the blog. I have been really sticking to the meats, fruits and vegetables for the last four days and all ready I am seeing a change in my body. However, you have some people concerned with the overall cost of making the change to better eating. Please somehow incorporate the cost with your photos as people think it is expensive to eat better. I should know, since we have a house of seven people it is less expensive to feed them just meat, vegetables, and fruit as you really are more satisfied. Yes, you could be right about expense if you are eating way more meat opposed to vegetables. Once you get the portions worked out it is more expensive to eat poorly.

Also, if you want to look at it this way, you pay (a bit) now or you pay later for bad eating habits. If you would invest in a doughnut and a coke or coffee you could just as easily grab some fruit and water or coffee. This is new to my family and I do realize change is not easy but we decided we love our family and ourselves enough to REALLY make changes in our eating habits as we are not happy how we look but mostly how we feel. I do also see just what your readers mean when they state photos really do help. Somehow simplicity is so far removed from our minds we have a hard time visualizing how easy this can be.

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The New Skepticism on Global Warming

May 16, 2007 08:30 PM

Now the skeptical scientists are having their say about global warming.

Its about time. Mercury and Neptune are warming too. But, you already know that. Even more, no climate scientist is able to assess the risks and costs involved and ought not to be prescribing policy. Chicken Little has had his run. Now the science must take over and skepticism is in order. The modest warming will soon pass according to the solar energy hypothesis and it is not that difficult to clean up some of the mess caused by incomplete property rights. Adding some green to cities would easily offset the modest warming that has occured and would make all our cities more liveable.

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Visceral Fat

From my friend and blog reader Dr. Robert Krikorian come these thoughts on the toxic fat deep in the viscera, even in "skinny" individuals:

Robert Krikorian, PhD Department of Psychiatry University of Cincinnati College of Medicine 231 Albert Sabin Way Cincinnati, OH 45267-0559 http://www.psychiatry.uc.edu/cdc/

I saw the reference on your blog entry of May 11 (Fat and Thin) to the article entitled, Thin People May Be Fat Inside. I am particularly interested in this phenomenon because it highlights so many important health issues in our society, and they are framed by the apparent irony that thin-appearing individuals can have toxic fat deposits. As you know, visceral fat in the omental depot drains into the portal vein that infuses the liver. This fat is much more insulin resistant relative to subcutaneous fat. And, it stimulates the liver to generate inflammatory enzymes that circulate throughout the body, increasing risk for all sorts of conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer's. Of equal importance (and the issue that the "thin but viscerally fat" person exemplifies) is the loss of conditioning, sarcopenia, and general ill health that are linked in these individuals. In my lectures on lifestyle and age-related memory decline, I have use the attached image (Gustav Klimt, Three ages of women) to discuss frailty. The older woman on the left shows signs of the frailty syndrome – decreased muscle mass and excess abdominal fat. Frailty and high visceral fat tend to occur together, especially in aging adults. Unfortunately, in our times, it is beginning to appear in younger people and even in some putatively elite athletes, ie, the heavy mileage runners with little muscle who get old quickly and sometimes die young, as you have noted. I also suspect that some who practice calorie restriction also may have this syndrome.

I believe this has become a crucially important issue in our culture and that it's related to many if not all of the chronic diseases of civilization. The antidote of course is the right kind of exercise to increase muscle mass and strength. I see a fair number of late middle-aged and older adults who have developed mild to moderate depression, poorer memory function, and problems multi-tasking and organizing their daily affairs. We diagnose the neurocognitive problems, but there is no silver bullet pharmacology to help them. It comes down to altering diet and doing the right kind of exercise. Many are deathly afraid of Alzheimer's (and, indeed, they do have increased risk), but few are able to commit to changing lifestyle habits to try to save their brains and improve quality of life. It's difficult for me to imagine why anyone would not follow these suggestions, but they don't. It's almost as if they are trapped by their lifelong habits and a sense of incapacity to change.

This is the amazing image by Klimt "Three Ages of Women" Robert sent.

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A Big Breakfast and Light Dinner

This was breakfast; two large links of hot Italian sausage and two eggs with some fruit. Quite filling.

This was a somewhat light dinner of orange roughy and spinach with a large salad.

For some reason readers like to see these meals.

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Calories

May 15, 2007 05:03 PM

Some of the comments on my meal posts question how I can keep my body weight at 200 pounds when I appear to consume too few calories to do so. Today I weighed 197.5, a bit above the 195 I decided to put my weight at several months ago. So, rather than lose weight, I actually gained just a little on the meals you saw posted along with the other meals and foods I eat.

I have eaten this way for so long and have weighed between 195 and 208 for over 40 years, so whatever I am eating and doing, I am in no danger of losing muscle mass or getting fat. Right now, with the hot weather coming and the way I feel at this weight, I am quite satisfied at weighing between 195 and 200.

So, what are we to think of the calculations that tell us how much we must eat to stay in energy balance? Not much, in my opinion. As you may know, I never calculate my energy expenditure or my energy intake. I couldn't care less about these numbers as I think they are very unreliable. Here are some objections or reservations on that subject.

1. Calorie measures of various foods are taken by burning them in a bomb calorimator. That has little to do with the calories the body might extract from the food. It is, after all, a biological process, not an unreal firing of the food in a vessel. There is reason to be skeptical of caloric values as published.

2. Caloric intake in a day (not a biologically relevant time interval may I say) is notoriously hard to measure. There is close to zero compliance in diet studies and only heavy water measurements reliably indicate caloric intake. People forget, misrepresent, fail to record, and just mess up their food and energy take big time.

3. Even when you know what you ate, you may have a faulty measure of energy intake. For example, the bacon strips you saw in the last breakfast I put up were at least twice as thick as the usualy bacon strip. Instead of 75 calories, they were more like 150 to 200 calories each. I had 4 of them, so the bacon alone probably contained 400 more calories than you might calculate. The eggs were huge too, another source of mis-estimation.

4. Few studies find that individuals remain at steady state weight when the calculated energy intake and expenditure are equal. That at least some of them do provides some support for the energy body weight homeostasis theory, but there are so many counter results that one must be skeptical. Scientists may blame their subjects for failing to lose, maintain, or gain weight on various diets and work out programs by saying that they "cheat" or fail to follow "protocol" (a euphisim for a sub-human intervention that few free-living humans ever live by). That is just scientists (using the word loosely) trying to get published and getting their flakey study past the referees. It is not science. If the metabolic researchers were to seriously address the calorimic measures and energy intake and expenditure measures, they could not get published. Well, at least I think so. Admittedly, just my hypothesis.

5. Why is it that so many body builders, who try to remain in positive nitrogen balance, are so fat? Have you thought about this? I have little doubt that it is true, having spent 50 years in gyms. The measurements must be in error, for all measurements are. They go far over caloric balance as they try to remain in positive nitrogen balance. So, lets face it, most "body builders" only look "good, reasonable, ugly" depending on your point of view (and I have seen a lot of them in the gym or on the beach) when they are in dehydrated, starch deprived (and they need this stuff, that is why the overdose on cookies when the contest is over) when they are in "contest" trim. That means an over lean, dehyrated condition in which they are capable of sub-optimal, non-survival modes of response to stress. They are already so over-stressed by getting into contest trim that they could not respond to other, life-stressing stresses.

5. I could go on, but why bother. You wil make up your own mind. My caloric intake is 1. unknown, 2. adequate to maintain my optimal body composition, the only verifiable measure of survival and functional value.

Lesson? You are probably eating too much. The charts on energy intake and expenditure may not be right for you (we are unique). I easily maintain my weight at my intake. The meals I show are only part of my intake. I do have some meals that are "over the top" in intake (like whole rack of ribs with no sauce and vegetables). Intermittency is the only rule. So, that means no rule can prescribe a steady intake or expenditure. Think about the idea that I am eating too little, by conventional ideas, and yet my weight and, more importantly, my body composition, is ideal by my standards.

As always, do what you think is right. This is not advice. It is skepticism, science, and (perhaps most of all) my take on what is right.

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Wintercrest

I had a line drive hit me in the shin the last day of the softball tournament (Friday). It swelled instantly and by the time the game ended I had a large hematoma on my leg. It so happens that the sponsor of our team is Wintercrest. It is a healing balm with DMSO, oils and propolis in it among other ingredients. Most of the guys on the team use it, but I have been skeptical.

I had a sample and put some on the hematoma right after the game. By the time I had driven home, about 45 minutes, it was gone. The swelling had diminished completely and I had only a skin abrasion to show for the painful injury. Even now, some 4 days later, you would never know I had such a painful and disfiguring injury. I have never had a hematoma heal so quickly or show so little sign of injury so soon after it occured. And I have had plenty of them from dirt biking and other sports. Usually I put ice on them to lessen the swelling. This time I used no ice and the swelling just went away with Wintercrest.

I had earlier become less of a skeptic about Wintercrest when I tried it on an inflammed tendon in my knee, the one at the lower end of the ilio band that I injured when I was listening to a trainer and doing something I should have known I ought not to be doing. It killed the inflammation overnight, though there is still some soreness because of the tightness of my ilio band even now, some 14 months after the injury.

Now I have tentatively accepted the hypothesis that Wintercrest is effective in modulating inflammation, at least in those areas where cutaneous application has the potential to deliver the oils and antioxidants contained in the balm to the injury. The DMSO (a solvent) and oils in Wintercrest do have the ability to penetrate deeply into the skin and may go deeper to the underlying injured tissues.

One of the ingredients in Wintercrest, propolis, has been shown to alter gene expression of tumor necrosis factor, a primary agent in inflammation. It is a very powerful antioxidant too, which may account for some of its gene signalling effects. A hematoma produces a lot of free radicals and the immune system adds to the burden. Yet there is little potential for an infection to occur if the skin is not broken, so the immune system response may actually increase the injury of tissues.

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Veto and Consensus

May 14, 2007 12:15 PM

Given the evenly divided Congress, nothing much is going to get done and a lot of it will entail back room deals and a lot of pork.

I think if I were President I would be vetoing just about every piece of legislation that reached my desk until the Congress got it right. This would force consensus in the Congress as they would have to find enough votes on each bill to over ride the veto.

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Dinner

What you see here iis dinner for WW and myself. Crab legs, on sale for 7.99 a pound, broccoli, a big salad for me and a smaller one for WW. That is balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dressing, along with the same ingredients mixed with Italian spices in the smaller bowl. Alongside that is some slightly hot cocktail sauce. My salad has fresh leeks, tomato, avocado, red cabbage, celery and a bit of spinach greens over romaine.

The two pounds of crab was more than enough and there are leftovers for my lunch today. So, the meal was not expensive. More expensive than, say, two plates of spaghetti with salad, but less expensive than two restaurant meals or even a couple of decent (there are none) frozen dinners. The cost per unit of good nutrition is very low compared to any of these alternatives.

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Some Meals from this week

May 12, 2007 01:40 PM

I know there are many new followers of the blog. They tell me their most difficult problem is knowing what to eat. Partly this is because after years of eating more common foods, packaged foods, and restaurant food one experiences a loss of imagination when it comes to food. The most reliable aesthetic for a good meal (for me) is color. Next comes texture. Then aroma. One must not have too many separate foods in a single meal; ordinarily three to four foods create a nice color and texture contrast. And no more than one or two spices. Beyond that point flavor, color and texture are lost.

My lunch today. Left over baked salmon, fresh leeks, tomatoes, celery and a few grapes along with the ever popular Budweiser.

WonderWoman's lunch today. Some canned crab, leeks, tomatoes, celery, and leftover spinach aioli with a few grapes. She put some balsamic and olive oil on the celery and tomatoes.

My dinner last night...

Read More »

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Thin and Fat

May 11, 2007 04:34 PM

I had read this article and thought little of it. Then Tim sent it to me and I decided that it is worth my readers time to have a look. See Skinny Outside, Fat Inside.

You know how I feel about BMI (misleading, though of some value). Most warnings about BMI are for people who are obese are headed there. Yet, there is another group of people with low BMI who are fat where they should not be and it is unhealthful. They are fat inside even though they appear to be thin (even models have this problem).

Their organs are surrounded by deep, internal fat and are themselves streaked with fattty deposits. If you diet aggressively or deliberately under eat (or even practice caloric restriction somewhat seriously) you may still have a large amount of internal fat. It is more dangerous than surface fat because it so strongly affects your metabolic profile.

Dieting can reduce internal fat, but most people go for appearance and may appear to be thin (super model) and yet have a lot of internal fat. Appearance or BMI are not reliable guides. In order to assure that you have little internal fat, you have to exercise. If you are slender and muscular, then you will have little internal or subsurface fat. Lean and muscular is best of all, even if your BMI is high (as mine is).

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Yet Another Breakfast

May 10, 2007 08:19 PM

This one was so easy and delicious, healthful too. Smoked salmon and a bit of fresh fruit. Light, but nourishing. I know several of my readers who eat this for breakfast, one who lost 12 inches off his waist.

Some people seem to have an aversion to combining fruit and meat, as Charles Staley noted in his comment. Aside from what you are used to eating, I know of no reasons not to combine them. Some may have read the book by the Diamonds a few years back that cautioned against combining fruit and meat on the grounds, if I recall correctly, that this mixture would contribute to putrification of the meat. This has not been demonstrated. It seems in the colon some degree of putrification may take place, but that is not harmful. It is due to the bacterial colonies in the colon and a slow transit time through the gut.

Fresh fruit provides roughage to speed transit and, on the whole, is beneficial in other ways. The French and Italians often eat fresh fruit for dessert. With a moderate amount of meat, I see no problem with this. Surely, mashed potatoes are not better. Nor is bread. These mushy foods slow transit time and alter gut bacteria adversely for digestion in all parts of the gut.

On the other hand, if it doesn't feel right and leaves you bloated or suffering poor digestion, then listen to your body and don't combine fruit and meat in a meal. Break them up into separate meals. Before I began Evolutionary Fitness I ate breakfast cereal and had a sore or troubled stomach later in the morning. Possibly, I was a bit adverse to cereals (maybe moderately celiac, as many are without knowing it) and I do know that I was lactose intolerant or learned that I was because when I cut the milk, all my digestive problems went away. Had I listened to my body I would have dropped milk and cereal far earlier than I did.

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Another Breakfast

May 7, 2007 08:46 AM

I am always amused that readers have such a hard time preparing breakfast. The cereal advertisers have been at it so long it is hard to get past one's own history of browsing over the cereal box and its ads.

This time breakfast was part of a grilled ham steak and some fresh fruit. It had an attractive appearance and was filling and nutritious. Try it. Give up that cereal with the banana and watch your fat melt.

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Leftovers for breakfast

May 6, 2007 11:37 AM

Here is my breakfast this morning. Not really leftovers per se, but things I keep around for a quick meal. I think it looks great, with lots of color and texture. Plenty of variety too.

Roasted turkey breast is a great snack and I always have some around. There is a Hebrew National hot dog and a little piece of Jarhlesburg cheese too. The leftover part of the meal is a bit of pork loin roast that I made two days earlier. The fruit makes it look good and has those valuable antioxidants and plant-based substances that are still being discovered.he fruit is red grapes, strawberries, cantelope and apple. This was a very filling meal. I may not eat lunch.

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Silver Mines under the Receding Alpine Glaciers

Reid Bryson, one of the most distinguished climatologists, is interviewed here.

They have found a silver mine emerging from one of the receding glaciers in the Alps, the tools stacked neatly as though they would return next spring to continue their work. Bryson stresses climate variation, as any one with a historical sense and appreciation for the natural variation that complex systems display (and require to operate).

At 86 years old and still working and this witty? Amazing. I would still be at it, though retired, were not economics so boring compared to what I am doing now. Well, maybe I am still at it, but on a different range of topics.

LINK · Complex Systems ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (3)

New Evidence on Intermittent High Intensity Training

This NYT article is a little breathless in its praise of interval training. This kind of result has been around in the literature for a long time and you know well from Power Law Training that intermittency is the stuff of life. But, for doubters, the article does review some recent research on the power of intermittency. Note the dramatic increase in fat burning from the higher intensity work. This kind of work can only be done in bursts. Yet, in the same amount of time you might walk on a treadmill at a moderate pace (in the "fat burning zone" all the charts and trainers say) you can do far more work and burn far more fat by doing hard intervals within that same time period. High intensity bursts, as documented in this article, promotes a higher level of fat burning (36% more in the research reported here).

"Metabolic stalling" is a nice phrase one of the authors uses to describe the accumulation of fats and glucose in the blood, largely because muscle tissue is filled with glycogen and triglyceride. When the muscles are full there is no place for them to go but into fat stores. Note also the subtle questioning of relying on glucose for sustained energy expenditure; muscle triglyceride is a surer and safer source. More soon on that.

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An Odd Thing

I was in Las Vegas last week to get my Rover serviced and I saw an odd thing. A large white van was parked in a strip mall and it had a big caved in section up front from an accident. On the side of the van it read Fortune Telling. Shouldn't the driver have known?

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Glutathione

May 4, 2007 11:05 AM

Here is part of an article posing an hypothesis regarding the role of reduced glutathione and aging. Whether you accept the hypothesis or not, and that is all it is at this stage, you will find the many functions of glutathione of great interest. Small wonder I take it. One of our commenters pointed out how the HMP ultrathione may have helped to detoxify his liver which was harmed by chemical exposure. Now, you know I generally do not buy the theory that hormones, enzymes, etc decline with age (chronological age). They do decline with biological aging though. Biological aging, I suspect, is partly cell senescence (nearing the Hayflick limit on division) but inflammation is deeply involved at all levels. This is why glutathione supplementation makes sense. But, the precursor and promoter of inflammation is the loss of metabolic fitness. Generalized inflammation depletes glutathione.

Read More »

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Hollywood and Communism

May 3, 2007 10:42 AM

A superb review of Hollywood's strangely ambiguous atttitude towards Communism in Reason Magazine.

LINK · The Movie Business · Comments (2)

Egg Yolks

An inquiry over my suggestion that obese individuals who are trying to lose weight try a breakfast of fruit and egg whites.

"Egg whites and fruit? I would like to know where in the extensive research that you have obviously done did you find any high quality evidence that egg yolks should not be included in that breakfast."

Many obese individuals suffer lipotoxicity of the beta cells of the pancreas and an excess of calories. The breakfast I suggested in only a suggestion, not a prescription. It happens to be one I eat now and then if I feel I want a light breakfast.

By dropping the yolks you do two things that are helpful to someone who is trying to lose fat: you reduce the total caloric intake and you reduce the fat intake that is adding to the overload on the beta cells that comes from the excessive adipose tissue in the trunk area.

Here is a reference with a title that spells it out: Bollheimer LC, Skelly RH, Chester MW, McGarry JD,
Rhodes CJ. Chronic exposure to free fatty acid reduces
pancreatic beta cell insulin content by increasing basal insulin
secretion that is not compensated for by a corresponding
increase in proinsulin biosynthesis translation. J Clin Invest.
1998;101:1094 –101.

A doctoral thesis published in SPORTS SCIENCE &
MEDICINE
VOL.2 SUPPLEMENTUM 1 2003
ROLE OF PHYSICAL EXERCISE, FITNESS AND
AEROBIC TRAINING IN TYPE 1 DIABETIC AND
HEALTHY MEN IN RELATION TO THE LIPID
PROFILE, LIPID PEROXIDATION AND THE
METABOLIC SYNDROME *
David E. Laaksonen
Department of Physiology, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, 70211 Kuopio,
Finland

This comprehensive review points, among other links, to the active ways through which dyslipedemia (poor control of fatty acids) contributes to the development of the metabolic syndrome, the precursor to outright diabetes. A key factor is the oxidation of blood stream fats. Fat oxidation damages beta cell response. It promotes inflammation everywhere, not only in the beta cells.

Now, must you avoid egg yolks?

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Four Fat Millionaires

May 1, 2007 09:24 AM

I saw Wild Hogs the other day. What a waste. I give it four bombs. I have learned now that what Wonder Woman hears from co-workers about a movie is not useful. Here is a review I agree with by Buttersworth.

I actually find few movies I enjoy these days, though I keep trying. My question is why spend the money to put Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence (the only one in the group who can act and is naturally comedic) and the over-rated William Macy in a movie with such a bad script? Ray Liota makes a bad boy appearance too and fattened up for the part. Does he look bad. Which reminds me. Have you seen any of the current generation of actors with their shirts off? Every one of them is larded over and completely off-putting in their incipient obesity. When was the last time you saw a lean actor look like Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke"?

The movie has grossed a bit over $135 million in its seven weeks. It can't make money with the cost of that cast.

What was the producer thinking when he/she cast these fat old-looking millionaires in this bad movie? It is the usual inside thinker blindness: they see these four guys as a casting coup that will create industry attention. Maybe, but that doesn't matter when the film hits the sprockets.

Travolta, as it happens, is one of the least profitable actors to appear in movies. Among his more unreasonable contract demands is to receive 8 Armani T shirts ($200 to $300 each) every day of filming. The reason: he is religiously opposed to wearing washed clothing. Even though he owns 5 airplanes he is an environmentally deep thinker, having been quoted somewhere by the dumb media on our need to explore other planets when our world gets too hot to live in. Never going to happen.

Here is an excerpt from an article I reviewed entitled "A Different Tale: Hollywood's unresolved business model" that calculates Travolta's share of revenues of his movies. His pay, relative to the grosses of his movies, is beyond belief. I don't know the author's name as the review process is anonymous (I recommended that it be published with some fixes).

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Germs

Peter Huber is an exeptional writer and thinker. I know him from his work in spectrum and his book Gallileo's Revenge, which showed how junk science had entered the court room. He is a lawyer practicing in intellectual property and a Ph.D. in engineering. His book Hard Green is shows a way to clean the environment.

Now he turns his eye to germs. This is a deep and utterly chilling look at the new environment of public health that germs will exploit to our peril. Germs and the City.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (0)