How Much to Feed Kitty?

Source

Tonight I was bedevilled by a cat begging for food.  We couldn't give her food since she was chubby already. How much food should a cat eat?

Calorie intake depends on activity but 25 calories per pound of body weight is often cited, or sometimes a range of 20-30 cal/lb.  This site has calorie content of different brands and flavors of cat food. Cat food flavors vary from by 20% so it is hard to be accurate unless you want to feed kitty only one flavor.

We have two cats who are both about ten pounds, so they should have 250 calories a day. Fancy Feast varies from 23.2 to 31.9 calories per ounce, and the cans are three ounces, so about 83 calories per can. 250/83 = 3.0 .   So unless I want my cats to lose weight, they should get three cans a day.

The variability per can is a problem, since it varies by 31%.  If I were to skip 31% of my calories in a day or about 730 calories -- I'd notice it.  If I decide to give one on the low end like Grilled Salmon flavor Fancy Feast instead of Classic Salmon flavor Fancy Feast, the cat gets many more calories and would lose weight.

The variability of canned food is a good reason to feed dry food.

How Much Running is Too Much Running

I ran a Halloween race today. This guy captures the
spirit of the event. Source

I ran a 5K today, and after the race I met an old guy who ran 80 races this year so far, and plans to do two more this week. There was a woman there who does more than he does.

I have always thought of running as healthy, in part because I feel it should help me lose weight, but sadly the data does not always support that. One has to exercise a lot to receive weight loss from exercising -- 6-7 hours a week.

I keep looking for data that shows a graph of miles run against life expectancy, and I am certain nothing like that exists. It seems that very long races can weaken the heart, and the heart adapts by changing shape: enlarging here, thickening there.  On the other hand, running clearly helps; it is just that too much running stops helping -- and there may be a best point.

Too much exercise can be damaging to the heart as well as the joints, and it can lead to atrial fibrillation, something that I am worried about. Atrial fibrillation is five times higher in endurance athletes.

Thus site discusses the changes in endurance athlete's hearts after an event -- for example a professional cycling race. The athlete's right ventricle function decreased, but it self-corrected after a week. This may reinforce the benefit of rest to prevent permanent scarring.

Spoilt Corks and Smell Wine

Trichloroanisole is found produced by fungus, often on
corks. 

Ever bought a bottle of over-price old wine and found that the bottle was spoiled? The fungus growing on the cork produces trichloro-anisole which wine-jocks say smells like wet dog or damp basement.

This brings up several issues: why arn't the corks sterilized? And where does the chlorine come from to make the trichloro-anisole? And most importantly, how poisonous is trichloro-anisole?

Why are natural corks sterilized? I am sure people try but cork is even worse than wood for sterilization. Cork might be quant, but it isn't a very good material, and probably should not regarded as food grade. Old fashioned traditionalists need to grow up.

Some say that the source is chlorine-containing air pollutants on the trees that grow the cork. It is more likely that it is due to the wood preservative trichloro-phenol that is used with wood barrels. Another source of chlorine is from the use of bleach and related oxidizers as cleaning agents.

Chlorine bleach reacts with wine residue and living microbes to make chlorinated byproducts -- some of which may be carcinogenic. You need to rinse a lot after using bleach, and dirt that reacts with bleach may be hard to see -- but still could contain chlorinated compounds that are harmful. Trichloro-anisole is not carcinogenic however -- so don't worry.

Is Violence Decreasing?

It is an article of faith among some that modern society is a perversion, and that we need to return to the simple pastoral existence where life was pure and good. This romantic idea has roots in the Industrial Revolution when the changes in society prompted a backlash.

Psychologist Steve Pinker did a history of violence called The Better Angels of our Nature. A good summary of the book is here and here.  It is in my queue to read this 862 page book -- I'll let you know when I finish it.

I like the optimism, and the rational reason for being optimistic. It shows that a combination of cohesion by kings and governments, combined with a higher-standard of living and greater communication has been good for people collectively. While modern society has problems, other societies had problems too.  

Promised Land - the Anti-Fracking Film: Financed by Oil Rich Foreign Investors

Films can have political views -- fine. Films are often anti-business and especially anti-chemical industry & anti-oil industry. I am used to that.

What is so bad about the Matt Damon movie, Promised Land is that it is a blatant advocacy movie backed by OIL RICH FOREIGN INVESTORS. Foreign oil investors don't like America becoming energy independent, and are financing movies to fight it.

Check this out: Link

Outrageous.

How long does it take the moon to go around the earth?

In August there were two full moons. In September there was a full moon today, Sept 29. Since the moon goes around the earth in 28 days, why weren't there two full moons in September. The answer is that the number of days between full moons is 30, even though the moon orbits in 28 days. To understand this detail, takes some time.

Astrologers have known this for 6000 years, but I never understood how long it takes the moon to go around the sun.

I remembered from school that the moon goes around the sun in 28 days. It is actually 27.3 days, but close enough. On the other hand, the new moons are 30 (29.5) days apart. What is going on?

The time for the moon to go around the earth is called a sidereal month, and the time between new moons (or full moons) is called a synodic month.

Here is a good illustration from AstroGirlWest on YouTube. Notice that the earth's movement around the sun causes the relative position of the sun to change.

Paleo Diet

Got a look at a diet based on pre-civilization human diets. The big difference is no grain, no legumes, and no dairy, so it is an unusual diet. The study was published in 2009, and it was done by five guys at UC-San Francisco School of Medicine with Frassetto as first author.

Generally I am skeptical of "the past is better than today" diets. My knowledge of hunter gather culture is that people at a narrow variety that varied with the seasons. Frassetto's point was that some foods we have not evolved to eat. (This contradicted by the widely accepted notion that the ability to metabolize lactose post adolescence was a genetic adaptation to dairy farming.)

From Frassetto (1992) Euro J Clinical Nutrit. 1-9

As you might expect the people on the diet got healthier. Lower blood pressure, lower blood glucose.

Robots and Your Christmas Gifts

Here is an interesting video about industrial robotics that enable order picking in a so-called fulfillment center -- like Amazon has. Each individual shelving unit has a little computerized controller than moves it around on the work floor like a giant gameboard. The computerized shelving units are less robots than drones controlled by a master program.
 

This product, from Kiva Systems, is used by Toys-R-Us, but it is owned by Amazon. Presumably Amazon will use this in their new distribution centers. Amazon appears to be expanding it; Massachusetts-based Kiva has dozens of openings.

Mitt Romney's company Bain Capital was/is an investor in Kiva.

OS X Mountain Lion:

I upgraded to Mountain Lion OSX 10.8. It is the update of the Lion release, and has a minor upgrades and bug fixes. Lion was a major release and it obsoleted a lot of old software. This is mostly little stuff. Maybe that is why it is only $20.

The most notable thing is in Safari -- where the address window now accepts searchers just like Chrome.  A minor feature, but it was one of the reasons that I liked Chrome.

It has scrollbars that hide themselves. I think of them as less convenient, but I seldom use scroll bars, almost always using jesters on the touchpad.

Another little thing is some new desktop pictures and a screensaver.

Another feature is dictation, which still needs some work: here is the transcript for the first dictation:

"Just got him McNab OS X Mountain I am on my night I was upgrade his computer version it's just needed a dude he's my computer working well am anyway so Duncheon any differences really I would've this dictation since I'm taking dictation right now that you write up this blog post will see how it works the first time, and that I was going to what update the mountain on my way to bed."

My policy is to keep the computer up-to-date with the latest revisions. I think it saves me time in the long run.

Diving Off the Fiscal Cliff

I am really tired of politician that can't get anything done. At the end of the year, we have a chance to rid ourselves of all of it. When the tax cuts end and the govenment programs get cut, we just need to embrace it.

We need to get excited about it. I call it Fiscal Cliff Diving.

People get excited about it since it will contract the economy due to the higher taxes and job cuts in government. I say suck it up.