The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

I am so proud of my wife - she is charging back into fitness like geeks charged the iPhone display at Macworld. The only problem is the discrimination she suffers - when she puts her tape player on the treadmill, not only do people with slim pure white mp3 players strapped to their arms sneer in disdain, but the treadmills no longer have a slot wider than an mp3 player! To celebrate her return to fitness, I bought her an iPod for her birthday yesterday.

I must say, I’m impressed with the advances Apple has made since I looked at them last. Dynamic playlists, assign playlists on the device itself instead of relying on iTunes, firmware updates through iTunes itself - I think this is the right player for her. (Well, it would be anyway - she adores the iPod and Mac commercials.) I still wouldn’t trade my Sansa though, for one feature above all others - flash drive. I still disdain having a moving-part hard drive in my mp3 player, and I suspect it’ll be a couple of years yet before 30GB+ flash drives are cheap enough to replace mp3 players based on hard drives. The Sansa is perfect for me - I listen to podcasts, not music, so my library is constantly changing and doesn’t require mass storage. The iPod is perfect for her - she listens to music, and likes to shuffle her fitness music.

Our main stereo CD player recently died as well; to replace it, I thought I’d take a look at some kind of iPod dock thing. I bought a Griffin TuneCenter and so far, I’m pretty impressed with it. I’d like to have digital audio out, but I realize that’s a pipe dream for a device like this. Not only does it serve up iPod tunes, but it also streams ShoutCast servers - there’s no way that I see to input a URL, but the main directory gives a semi-wide variety of stuff to listen to. If you like techno and rave, you’ll definitely find something to listen to.

Of course, a new iPod means she’s gotta have some new music. We LOVE Norah Jones - well, she’s not fitness music really, but we both want her new album. Remembering my soapbox about the RIAA, I decided to check Norah out on the RIAA Radar - crap! Blue Note Records shows a warning; a little more digging reveals Blue Note is owned by EMI Group. So now what? Is Norah worth subsidizing RIAA’s legal battle to whittle away both my rights as an “owner” and artists’ compensation all in the name of those same artists? That’s a tough one.

I wrote down another artist that I was interested in - Deviations Project, someone I heard in Barnes & Noble the other day. They sound a lot like Vanessa Mae, who I’ve seen in concert and is an incredible artist. Vanessa’s Angel Records and Deviations’ Neurodisc both come up with warnings; some investigation reveals EMI owns those two as well. Even Dar William’s indie label Razor & Tie comes up with a warning on RIAA Radar - does EMI own them as well? Thank goodness our new-found love for The Weepies (an absolutely FANTASTIC group, both in concert and on CD) is not mis-placed - Nettwerk Records looks safe.

Now that I’ve used RIAA Radar a little, I like it - it’s like the FitDay for my music consumption. I like that RIAA Radar has a link for finding similar “safe” music for RIAA-infested artists; I wish RIAA Radar had more information about infested labels.

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Keeping pace: Do TVs, iPods help or hurt your workout? (@ cnn.com)
Here’s the gist of this article:

“If you want to maintain a high level of intensity, you pretty much have to focus on your body,” he said.

This is related to the belief that noisy gadgets interfere with the intensely focused mental state many athletes refer to as “flow.” For instance, visitors to the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, are encouraged to leave the headphones behind. Jennifer Young, director of healthy living programs, said she wants to keep visitors’ mind-body connections strong.

“Don’t turn out and turn off,” Young said, “because then there’s that underlying signal, ‘Oh, working out is something I don’t want to do. I’m escaping it by doing this.”‘

My personal opinion - isn’t it fascinating what we study?  I wonder who funded this research.  At any rate, I love listening to music or podcasts as I bike ride, walk or otherwise exercise, and I think whatever makes it easier or more fun to exercise is worth doing.  This “be in the flow” stuff is for the people who get a kick out of exercising, and you’re not going to force that enjoyment on people who don’t naturally like running marathons.

Hope over ‘obesity busting gum’ (@ bbc.co.uk)
Still looking for the magic bullet.  Still not going to find it - the more unnatural crap you add to your body, the less healthy you are.  This gum is supposed to work by adding levels of pancreatic polypeptide, a hormone your body naturally makes that induces the feeling of being full.  I say, eat less and move around more instead of messing around with your body’s chemistry.

Cancer Deaths Drop for Second Year (@ cnn.com)
Here’s CNN’s story highlights for this article:

• U.S. cancer deaths dropped by 3,014 in 2003-2004
• Second straight year of declines, Cancer Society says
• Early detection and improved treatment credited for drop

The numbers focus on the amount of people dying of cancer, and are derived by studying death certificates.  Shouldn’t we also be looking at the cancer death rate, and look for correlating trends in the number of elderly people or other groups of people with a higher-than-normal rate of cancer?  Personally, I suspect this number will go back up as the baby boomer generation ages, and can’t help but think this number may be somewhat misleading.  I don’t discount the work being done on cancer research, but I can’t help think the buzz about these numbers is somewhat overstated.  On the other hand, it is nice to see good news about cancer.

Low-stress Life May Be Best Way to Prevent Colds (@ npr.org)
The article talks about an untested product called Airborne that multitudes of people buy to treat the common cold.  There must be some psychological reason people turn to medication rather than make lifestyle changes that actually do help.  Is marketing and advertising really that effective?  It sure has created an entire culture and industry around diamonds.  Whatever it is, it’s unhealthy.