Isaac Stewart pointed this out to me. Wow. And what a change. Farland’s got a whole new look and feel. I don’t know much about cover art/marketing and how well various colors and styles do in the book store (will buyers gloss over this because of its dark color?–I hope not). But however this performs on the shelf, it’s a great illustration.
See more images on Irene Gallo’s blog about it. Compare with the old style.
I have been giving a new way of eating a go for the last few months. It’s high-fat, medium-protein, low-carb (HFLC).
Zoinks!?
High freaking fat, you exclaim. Has he gone mad!
Well, possibly.
One thing I do know is that I’ve lightened the load my godlike thighs have to carry by about twenty pounds, which is a nice thing. Oh, and by the way, I’ve paired this with intermittent fasting.
Horrors!
Yes, it is Halloween. Or was a few days ago.
In a few more months, when I’ve given this method a good long test, I’ll explain exactly what this is all about. But I’ll tease you by saying that it seems the scientific community isn’t immune to bias and jumping the gun. Not even close. We’d like to think they are, all those men and women in their white lab coats, but they aren’t. In fact, there are a number of doctors and researchers right now demonstrating that the advice we’ve been getting about fat and carbohydrates since the late 1970s was wrong. Like 180 degrees wrong.
Let me point you to some presentations you can watch about this right now.
“The Two Big Lies of Type 2 Diabetes” by Jason Fung, MD
“Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines” by Sarah Hallberg, MD
“Therapeutic fasting” by Jason Fung, MD
Okay, so with that lead up, who’s up for a delicious, high-fat meal? Here’s one of my favorites.
I call it “Mexican Hummus.” I found it in Always Hungry? By David Ludwig, MD, PhD. He calls it “Cheesy Pinto Bean Dip.” Which isn’t a bad name, but isn’t inspiring. You might call it modern refried beans, but that sounds like something out of a can or glopped onto the side of your dish. But Mexican Hummus, that has some class. A little zip.
Whatever you call it, it tastes great.
Use as a dip for red, orange, or yellow bell peppers cut into strips. Or eat it as a side. I like it with baked chicken thighs. It’s also good with fajita veggies—sautéed peppers and onions cooked with lots of butter, salt, and a bit a chili powder—and some slices of avocado.
MEXICAN HUMMUS
HOMEMADE CHILI POWDER
I don’t like the chili powder you get in the stores—it’s too strong, overwhelms everything I put it into, and gives me heartburn. So I found a recipe that’s awesome and make my own.
Mix the following together. Choose the amounts in the ranges shown based on your tastes.
HERB-ROASTED CHICKEN THIGHS
This has got to be the easiest recipe on the planet for chicken.
Instructions.
Bon appetite.
Political TV ads can be fun. And annoying.
Debates can be fun. And maddening.
You can indeed learn things about the candidates from watching the ads and debates. But fifteen and thirty second snippets of information really don’t give you the full picture. And sometimes they actually hide the facts, producing nothing more than informational smog.
Recently, I decided I wanted to really know what Mitt Romney thought. What he was about. What he hopes to accomplish if he wins the presidency. If Mitt was someone in my neighborhood, I’d go visit the man, and we’d have a chat.
I’d ask him about his ideas and past. I’d ask him to give me examples. Because of the nature of the issues at stake and the number of them, I imagine our chat would probably last a few hours. It might stretch over a number of evenings.
Of course, I’d want time to consider our chat and determine where I did and didn’t agree with him. I’d want to hear what others thought. And I’d want to look into his history, his successes and failures.
But the first step would be to go to the man himself and hear him out.
I hate it when people put words in my mouth. I’m sure Romney, or anyone else running, hates that same thing. If I were running, I’d would hope folks would take the time to hear me out. They may ultimately disagree with me on many or a few things. But I’d hope, as they are gathering information, that they would take the time to actually go to the source and listen to what I myself had to say.
Unfortunately, I can’t walk around the corner and knock on Mitt’s door. But he did write a book that was published in 2010, and it’s probably the next best thing to talking to Romney at his kitchen table. The book is called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.
I’ll admit I thought it was going to be a dry guide book explaining his position on every hot political issue. It’s not a guide book. In fact, he leaves a number of topics out. Nor was it dry.
I also suspected it might be a scathing attack piece on the Obama administration. It’s not that either. Not even close. He does criticize some things where he and Obama differ, but he also commends him on a few things. Either way, Obama is a very small part of the book.
So what IS this book?
Romney states its purpose in the introduction: it’s “about what I believe should be our primary national objective: to keep America strong and to preserve its place as the world’s leading nation” and “the course I believe we must take to strengthen the nation in order to remain prosperous, secure, and free” (2). It’s about his ideas on how to make sure America does not falter as so many nations have, but remains wealthy, happy, and productive.
I finished the book yesterday. I found it interesting, personable, sometimes surprising, and insightful.
I found Mitt Romney to be a man self-deprecating humor. He’s also a thinking man, one who likes to look at data to see what it shows. It’s clear he’s a man who does NOT think he knows everything or has a monopoly on every good idea, but he’s also a man who demands evidence. I also saw a man who is kind. He doesn’t talk much about his 14 years of service as a lay minister in his church in this book, but you can see how those years changed him as he discusses helping the unemployed, out-of-wedlock births, and single-parent families. Finally, I saw a man who loves, LOVES, America and is convinced she can remain the hope of the earth, but only if we do things that foster our strength.
This book outlines what he thinks those things are.
The book is written in a conversational and easy style with many examples from his personal experience, studies, and history. Romney’s record of accomplishments demonstrates his skills and hard work ethic. This book explains to what end he would apply that skill and work.
If you’re planning on voting this November for the president of the United States, I think you’ll find this book very useful. You may end up agreeing with many things he says. You may end up disagreeing with him on many points. But before you can do either, you need to understand what Romney’s position actually is. And the first step in doing so is to fully hear the man out, in his own words, from his own lips.
As a result, whether you end up deciding he’s your candidate or not, you WILL come away with important insights into the issues discussed.
I want you to know that I do not worship George, Ben, Tom, Adam or any of the other guys who formed our constitution and started this nation.
They put their lives and fortunes on the line for what they believed in. And I am immensely grateful for what they did. I enjoy tremendous freedoms because of their courage, determination, and sacrifice. Those guys, by-and-large, rock!
But I do NOT believe that their words are scripture nor that their ideas are sacrosanct—merely to be accepted and not to be considered and questioned and disagreed with.
Even so, these guys were gutsy and brilliant. They attempted something everyone thought would fail. Something that HAD failed every time it had been attempted in their recorded history. But they pulled it off and changed the world.
These guys believed in the common man. They believed that the educated common man was the best person to hold the reins of government. Thomas Jefferson thought up a rhyme to make the idea easy to remember. He said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
I can’t argue with that.
Of course, we’re not going to become experts on every policy issue. But we certainly can become informed on the broad principles and issues. And we can certainly become informed about the candidates.
Because I found No Apology so useful, over the next few days I’m going to summarize Romney’s main points, chapter by chapter, here. I’ll also point out interesting ideas and facts he shares as well as share any questions, quibbles, or disagreements I have.
I hope you find it useful. More importantly, I hope you read the book and join in the conversation.
Everybody knows that we got into this recession because banks began lending money to people who had terrible credit ratings, right? People who didn’t have to prove they even had a job. I mean, how long are you going to stay in business when you keep handing out dough to people you never hear from again?
But is that all there is to it? And was it really just the fault of congress because they told Freddie Mac and Fannie May (the organizations that purchased loans) that they had to start purchasing these highly risky things? Or was it all those greedy Wall Streeters?
In this must-read article, “How it All Came Crashing Down,” BYU econ professors explain how we got into this mess—and what we can learn from it.
But that’s not the end of the story. Ira Glass and the folks at This American Life uncover deeper causes of the problem in their must-listen show “The Watchmen” (no, not the movie). I mean, come on, we were told these high-risk loans were as dangerous as milkshakes. Shouldn’t SOMEBODY have seen it?
President Obama keeps saying that the root of the problem was that there wasn’t enough government oversight. Sounds good, doesn’t it? We’ll get disinterested Uncle Sam to protect us from all these investment bullies. But if we dig a bit deeper, it appears that Uncle Sam was one of the major players at the root of the mess.
Ouch.
Read. Listen. They are two fabulous pieces.
My daughters have introduced me to Studio C, a comedy program that started with The Divine Comedy troupe on the BYU campus who all growed up and were given a gig on TV. They do these hilarious skits.
Like “Drivers Ed”
And “Blind Date“.
And “Shoulder Devil”.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. BTW, Studio C airs weekly on BYUtv.
My oldest daughter introduced me to Olan Rogers. Who is crazy. Here’s “Ghost in the Stalls”
If you loved that, I think you’ll enjoy “Midnight Claw”
Sock slouch . . .
Next is John Branyan’s brilliant “Three Little Pigs”. My family and I have been enjoying this for months.
Finally, here’s something to think about. You know I enjoyed Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind. Matt Wolfe pointed it out his TED talk to me. The one that preceeded his book. If you’re conservative, like I am, this talk will, at times, annoy you. But the ideas behind it are great.
If you want to be equally enlightened but less annoyed, let me suggest you watch Bill Moyer’s interview of Haidt instead.
My youngest’s birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year. We asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to go to a hotel to swim and then play a game as a family, so Nellie and I went to work. Nellie got the game. I got the hotel. Both were great.
The game was Last Word by Buffalo Games Inc. It’s fairly simple. There are subject cards with categories on them like “vegetables,” “breeds of dogs,” or “places you find water.” Then there are letter cards. Each player gets a subject card.
The round starts when someone flips over a letter card. If you can think of a word that starts with that letter in your category, you shout it out, slam your subject card down, and then everyone else tries to come up with words that start with that letter and fit the category. Or you try to think of words in someone else’s category if they beat you to it. There’s no order to it–you just shout out the words as they come to your head. The last one to come up with a word before the timer buzzes wins that round. The twist that makes it so fun, however, is that the timer is random.
You can play individually, in teams, or some mix (our youngest and I teamed up). Because of the random timer, anyone who can think up a word can play, which means our daughter who is eight could compete with the one that was seventeen.
We had a great time. One of the funniest things about it is that everyone is desperately trying to come up with words. Some fit, some don’t. Some don’t even exist. For example, when we did the category “male names,” number 3 shouted out “Mancake.” We couldn’t stop laughing. I think that one is going to enter the family vocabulary.
We also had a great time at the Park City Peaks hotel. As far as rooms go, they were good rooms. The bed was a bit too soft for me, but perfect for my wife. We got them for $65 a night, which isn’t bad at all. But it was the pool that made the experience.
The pool is an actual pool, not the big bathtubs some newer hotels offer. For example, the deep end is six feet deep. But the cool thing is that half of it is indoors and half of it is out. And the outdoor portion is heated. There’s also a large heated hot tub outside as well. In the picture it’s the thing producing the long row of steam in the back.
It helped that we didn’t have much snow so the place wasn’t crawling with skiers. In fact, we had the pool mostly to ourselves. So imagine: there we were on a November night in this alpine setting, the steam rising off the water, swimming and horsing around underneath the winter stars. It was marvelous. You can be sure we’re going back.
BTW, we had Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. Let me recommend this to you. It makes the day a breeze. You can still have your homemade turkey dinner, but picking up the turkey a few days after the holiday allows you to get them for cheap, cheap, cheap.
Do you regularly sit through meetings that seem to accomplish nothing?
Meetings where people drone on and on and on.
Meetings where people discuss and no decision is ever made.
Meetings that always slide off topic.
Meetings that should never have been held in the first place.
In many cases, the reason these meetings stink is because those organizing them are not aware there’s any other way to hold a meeting. But there is. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to it just out of college while working for a business consulting firm in San Francisco. (And why they didn’t teach this in my business degree I will never know!)
After learning the simple and powerful principles, I was eventually paid to plan and facilitate meetings for clients. In some of these meetings they were making incredibly important decisions. I remember a client flying me and a colleague from San Francisco to Delaware for two days of meetings.
You might be groaning at the thought. But they paid thousands of dollars to have us come and facilitate. And when we were done, the energy in the room was palpable. A number of those that were involved were astounded and said they’d never been involved in such productive sessions. They’d accomplished more in the hours we were there than in months of other meetings. They were happy and grateful we’d come.
Think of that—happy and grateful for a meeting that went on for hours!
When meetings are done right, the collaboration and synergy can be amazing. Now, you may think that some secret handshake is required to learn how to do this. Or that it’s only for those with some special knack. Or that it’s only for high-powered jobs. If you do, you’d be wrong.
And that’s because you can learn the principles all for a few bucks. They’re laid out in perfect clarity in How to Make Meetings Work by Michael Doyle and David Straus. This is the book that was the source of our training sessions all those years ago. And I reread it every few years to brush up. The principles work in everything from a family council to a board meeting to class settings. I know because I’ve used the ideas in all of them. And when I fail to take just a few minutes to prepare, that’s when the meeting becomes, well, just another (yawn) meeting.
If you hold meetings of any kind and want to improve them, give this book a try. I think you’ll be happy you did.
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I really prefer the new art. I actually resisted buying ‘RuneLords’ years ago because, I REALLY dont care for Darrell K Sweet. More than half the time I’m looking at Wheel of Time covers I ask myself what is he trying to say here? The most boring moment in the book? case in point ‘Knife of Dreams’. Yes he paints better than I can by a long shot, but I’m a writer not a painter. And if I can ever get TOR to take one of my books, I would rather have KK than Sweet.
Sorry just a little rant. I would prefer something like KK for
‘Servant of a Dark God’ too
It’s visceral. KK is like, holy crap, that dude is going to kill me!! Sweet is more tame. I don’t know if Disneyesque is the right term, but you don’t get the feeling of danger with Sweet.
Isaac, who brought this to my attention, suggested this feel matched my book. He’s the one who opened my eyes to the feel of my book, saying it reminded him of Braveheart, Patriot, or an early British Isles feel.
One thing is for sure–cover art marketing is an art. There are all sorts of factors to consider in addition to whether the illustration is cool. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with.
I’ve only read what you have posted thus far, but without tooting your horn too much, I really like it. I think the biggest moment of zing to me, the moment that has me wondering the most about was Sugars mother, how she got that strong and daring to stand by her husband. Is more going to be revealed there soon or did I read something into it that wasn’t there?
Not trying to be off topic, I just started wondering about the Braveheart and Patriot feel of things. I personally like the racist feel of things, the conflict between Koramites and the others, not because Im racist but because thats real. I cant recall which series it was,Im sure it was a bigger one; a friend of mine liked it because there were no race issues. To me in a world of many divergent nations for there to be no race issues is unrealistic. I just didn’t buy it. But Fir-Noy hating others, conquered peoples thats real, fantasy world or no.
So for an art cover comment, something dark and dangerous is better than Sweet and low.
Glad to hear it’s working for you. Yes, more will be revealed about her mother. Hopefully, many delicious moments ahead. 🙂