You on a Diet: book review

During my various attempts to get in good shape over the years I've wasted my share of money on various diet & exercise books that try to tell you what exercise you should do, what muscles they benefit, what foods you should eat and why, and recipes that will make it more enjoyable. Big surprise, lack of willpower has tanked many of my efforts to stay on any kind of healthy eating program. But I really don't think that willpower is the whole story for me or other dieters. What about our ingrained habits of using food for reward, food to fix a poor mood, hedonistic eating, addiction to various kinds of foods (like my favorite, the Sticky Pecan Roll from Au Bon Pan)?

One diet approach that I thought took a step forward in talking about the psychology of diet was the Low-Carb diet (or "Atkins" in its most popular form). It talks about the role that carbs have in making us feel full, and thereby feel good. But I think you could do a lot better. I want to know the mechanics behind appetite, satisfaction and digestion: what actually occurs in the body to make you want to eat huge portions of your favorite foods, what happens as that urge becomes satisfied, and how you can use that knowledge to change your behavior.

I discovered the book You On a Diet while standing in line at a Jamba Juice one day. Using entertaining illustrations, it nails exactly what I was looking for. Some of the points in makes on the mechanics of body chemistry, food and appetite include:

• The lower gut contains 95% of the body's serotonin, which suggests that eating is self-medicating.
• Our caveman ancestors were more fit than us because the stresses of survival kept them lean. Stress, like fight-or-flight stress, means that Peptide NPY is inhibited and you don't feel like eating.
• When fat makes the liver work extra hard, it prevents glucose from getting to our cells, and produces hunger.
• Fiber is good for diet because it slows "the transit of food across the ileocecal valve, keeping your stomach fuller for longer." (p. 68)

The book identifies these foods that make you feel full, or suppresses appetite in some way:

• Nuts
• Cinnamon
• Whole Grains
• Fiber
• Red Peppers
• Smell of grapefruit (p. 88)
• Brightly-colored food
• Mint breath strips (p. 239)
• Fiber supplements (e.g. 1 tbsp Psyllium Husks with a glass of water)

Other eating strategies the book recommends revolve around easing the process of digestion. When the intestines are breaking down food, separating the good nutrients (to go into the bloodstream) from the bad nutrients (to be eliminated), a natural process of inflammation occurs. The intestines do their job well when that inflammation is kept to a healthy level. Bad foods increase the inflammation, and the separation of good vs. bad is impaired. Inflammation-fighting foods include:

• Lactobaccillus CG, a healthy bacteria found in yogurt
• Omega-3 fatty acids, such as Fish oil, walnuts
• Green tea
• Beer (hops)
• Tumeric
• Jojoba beans (available in supplements)
• Soybeans (isoflavins)
• Lignans, such as Flaxseed oil, rye bread
• Polyphenols, such as tea, coffee, fruit, vegetables
• Glucosinulates, such as broccoli, kale, cauliflower
• Carnosol, found in Rosemary
• Resveratrol, found in red grapes, juice and wine
• Dark Cacao
• Quercetin, as found in cabbage, spinich, garlic, capers, apples, tea, red onion, red grapes, citrus fruit, tomato, broccoli, leafy green vegetables, cherry, raspberry, and lingonberry
• Antioxidants, as in vegetables and fruits (especially bananas), Vitamin E, Vegetable oils, Tea, coffee, soy, fruit, olive oil, chocolate, cinnamon, oregano and red wine

The book covers some interesting facts on the mechanics of exercise and weight loss:

• Weight loss improves cholesterol by a factor of three. For example, a 7% weight loss leads to a 20% improvement in cholesterol levels. (p. 120)
• The beneficial effect of exercise in producing weight loss is greater than the detrimental effect of eating in producing weight gain. So even if you're getting in only a little exercise each day, the effect is significant. (pp. 141-142)
• Without exercise, we lose 5% of our muscle mass every 10 years after the age of 35. If you don't exercise (rebuild muscle) every 10 years, you need to eat 120-420 fewer calories a day to maintain your current weight. (p. 142)
• Focus on reducing the size of your belly, not weight loss. Exercise not only reduced fat but bulks up muscles, which can result in a net loss of zero.

The material on "good fats" vs. "bad fats" is helpful:

• Bad Fats are the ones that stay solid at room temperature: animal fat, butter, stick margarine & lard. Food manufacturers push these because they have a long shelf life.
• Good Fats are the ones that are liquid at room temperature are the good, omega-3 and -6 fats: olive, vegetable, sesame & canola oil, fish oil, flaxseed, avocados, nuts (especially walnuts). Nutrients that fight bad fats are: niacin and vitamin B5

Everyone know that whole grains are good for you, although we use the term so frequently it's helpful to review what this actually means. In a whole grain, "the grain still has all three of its original elements: the outer shell or gran, which contains fiber and B vitamins; the germ, which contains phytochemicals and B vitamins; and the endosperm which contains carbohydrates and protein." (p. 256) "'Refined' grains means only endosperm is enclosed." (p. 257)
Here's a fun subject the book covers: what gives you gas? It's important because it's a byproduct of the way you eat and what you are forcing digestion to do for you:

• Gas is a normal result of the intestinal inflammation during digestion, as good nutrients go to the bloodstream and bad nutrients to to the lower intestines (and produce gas). So bad gas can be attributed to too much bad foods in your diet. Also, when inflammation is too high, some bad nutrients get into the bloodstream, leading to cholesterol.
• Sulfur-rich foods such as eggs, meat, beer, beans and cauliflower make gas smell worse
• Drinking cola means swallowing more air, which means more gas

Other interesting things I found in the book:

• No evidence yet shows that artificial sweeteners are unhealthy (p. 97)
• It's the fat around our waist that gets us into trouble. Fat in other parts of your body cause relatively little harm to your health or eating chemistry. (p. 102)
• Alcholic drinks fight bad fats (p. 123)
• The liver is the heaviest organ in the body (p. 77)
• Your deoderant can make you gain weight, if it contains aluminum or polychlorobiphenols (p. 92)
• The more brightly colored the food, the better it is for you (p. 95)

So I can give a strong recommendation for You On a Diet if want to learn alot about the mechanics behind appetite, satisfaction and digestion.

More ways to lose Twitter followers

I read an article today called How to lose Twitter followers in 10 steps. I've probably read about 20 such Twitter Ettiquette articles, and most are pretty good. They don't even all say the same things, which means there are many, many ways to be an obnoxious Twit. Twitterer. Ahem.

And yet there are still more ways to lose followers, because they have yet to cover MY list. Here are things you can do to get me to stop following you:

1. Tweet long sentences over multiple tweets. Listen, it's a 140-character medium okay? Don't try to bypass it with a continuation.
2. Be a celebrity-turned-Twitterholic. Hey I love your movies, and hearing about your glorious life was fun for a while, but now you twitter every tiny thought and movement you make as if I have nothing else to do but follow your 140-character fanzine.
   
3. Tweet a link without information. People do this...a naked link, its identity obscured by a tinyurl, and you think we worship you so much to follow you into a blind alley.
4. Tweet linkless information that needs a link. The other day someone announced a really cool sounding conference but gave no link.
5. Make your followers listen to your side of the one-on-one conversation you're having with a friend. Hey get a room. A chat room. This is Twitter.
6. Twitter using a context that only a tiny number of your followers know about. Recently I stopped following a colleague who kept tweeting things like "is excited about the new website" and "posted my first article to the new site. Can't wait for the reactions." What website would that be?
7. Tweet with the same hyped-up, caffeine fueled excitement and optimism day after day. You got tickets to SXSW, FTW! You ate at a new five star on Randolph, FTW! You got tickets to Coldplay, FTW! Okay, okay I give up, I hate myself and I want to be you!
8. DM everyone on your list with generic messages. People tend to have their twitter set up to get emails when they are DM'd. How out of it can you be about Twitter that you immediately turn it into a vehicle for spam?
   

Read on Twitter today from someone at SXSW: "Everyone starts out on the internet as a douchebag. Then you do something to move above or below that line."

Urban Sketching - Misc

Here are a few sketches from a few years back.

This is of Chicago guitarist Eric Lugosch whom I sketched while he was playing at a restaurant in Lincoln Square maybe around 2003. That's his signature on the picture. While the detail in the hands is obviously a mess, I was pleased with the simple accuracy of his face and posture. His signature and his hair was done with a fading brown felt pen that didn't scan very well, so I enhanced these details a bit digitally.

This is a self-portrait sketched in pastels on paper at an open house at the Hyde Park Art Center in Winter '07. It was done in a room themed as Andy Warhol style portraits; hung on the wall were various classic Warhol portraits (Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, etc.) and we were encouraged to use bold, non-representational color to evoke the mood of the subject. At the time I was feeling kind of burnt-out about work, so I took the instructions pretty literally, as you can see.

Mastercard Commercial I'd Like to See

Karl Rove and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales found to be involved in a cover up of the U.S. attorney firings by the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Nice.




Valerie Plame to take CIA leak lawsuit to Supreme Court?
Sweet.




A democratic-controlled White House, Senate and Congress?

Priceless.

Claudia the Photographer

I'm pleased to announce my 4-year-old daughter Claudia's first photo gallery!

We let her run around the kitchen with the digital camera, and she took these shots. Keep in mind that she composed each shot by looking at it on the digital display before snapping it. (Except for the self-portrait, of course.)

As you can see, she likes closeups. Now is that just a kid being silly, or does it somehow reflect a child's view of her world?

'Rachel Getting Married' perfect...not in a good way

What Babbette's Feast did for dinner parties, Rachel Getting Married now does for music at weddings.

'Rachel Getting Married' depicts a wedding that raises the bar on having music at your wedding that is played by friends, where you have an endless number of music-playing friends, who play in an endless number of styles, except for any style one might consider classical or non-rootsy.

My friend Andrew, who earns part of his living playing classical string music for weddings, will now be getting all sorts of odd requests he won't be able to meet.

"We'd like a quartet consisting of lute, guitar, ethnic percussion and violin. They will play at each of our meals, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding and the wedding banquet. We want them there the entire weekend, from the first morning as the overnight guests trickle in, to the morning after the wedding while they are leaving. They should be sitting around everywhere, noodling around, tuning up, improvising, and never taking a break unless told to shut up. At the wedding banquet they have to morph into a backup band for an annoying folk-roots singer.

We also want a 'White Stripes' style guitar-and-drums duo that will play really loud, but far away across the lawn, so they don't hurt our ears. They need to be content with not playing any actual rock music, but standards such as the Wedding March in Hendrix-playing-the-National-Anthem-at-Woodstock style.

All the other musicians, however, will be playing in extremely cramped spaces like tiny dining rooms and small tents. But don't worry, this will not be your ordinary gig. Everyone is really going to have a good time. All at the same time, all the time. They will all sway together and sing. Nobody, not even the groom's family and guests who haven't met anyone before, will be withdrawing into a contemplative mood, or feel shy or disconnected to the group mood. Well, there might be one person in whom we'll concentrate all the types of dissatisfaction that someone at a wedding might experience. Because that would make a good story.

By the wedding banquet, it should seem to our guests like we've already reached our peak, but wait until the wild nighttime bachannale we'll have in a very cramped tent, with a soul band with five brass players and hot Brazilian dancers direct from Carnival de Rio. Can you supply that? By the way, the wedding is in Connecticut.

Bear in mind that our wedding party is extremely multi-cultural. The band should match this demographic, or if you can't do that, achieve it with outlandish costumes.

We're really looking forward to this!"

Grant Park Rally Report

It wasn't like a celebration after a Bulls victory or a Pistons victory in Detroit.

It wasn't like a Taste of Chicago or a Blues Fest.

It didn't lure hooligans or Obama-haters looking for trouble. They weren't in the neighborhoods either.

It wasn't a "complete mess" or any of the things some people said it would be. It was a gathering whose core was made of people deeply involved in the outcome of the election.

What it was, was an evening of watching CNN on a Jumbotron and then hearing McCain's concession and Obama's victory speech. And then it was time to go home. The Chicago Tribune has a time lapse photography video of the entire event in 3 minutes.

There were two high points for me. First, when at 10pm CDT, CNN announced a projected Obama win from Virginia, immediately followed by their projection of Obama winning the Presidency. The jubilation of that moment is something I will never forget. Next, and this is a funny one, was seeing Biden come out with that smile and his sky-blue tie. I like that guy.

The Chicago Tribune caught a pic of me in the crowd at one of the moments of jubilation. (It's pic #56 of this slideshow.)

The appearance of Obama himself was a bit anti-climactic. His energy level was not like the best we've seen from him, and his speech was more humility than jubilation. I was prepared for this by watching one of his campaign speeches earlier that day on the internet, where it seemed that fatigue from the final push was starting to get to him. Also, I already sensed a Barack Obama changed by his new responsibility. He knows his words aren't just for the purpose of bathing supporters and Democratic faithful in a warm glow. He's now on a higher plane, talking to all of America, the Congress and Senate, the World.

The majority demographic there seemed to be post-college people in mid to late 20's. One reporter described them as "poly-sci nerds." Plenty of people in their 30's, 40's and 50's too though.

There were a few negatives. The Chicago Tribune advised us to bring stuff to eat, but both our water and snacks were confiscated at one of the checkpoints. What's up, Tribune? The second is the standing and the waiting, which comes with the territory of course, but always requires some endurance. The third was the lack of cellphone signal (which everyone warned would be the case) so I couldn't do the Twittering I was hoping to do.

As previously announced, there was no live music (save for a solo singing of the National Anthem), but the choice of recorded music was very nice. Good mix of rock, blues, soul, funk and country, quality songs, but with none of the pieces being tired, worn-out overexposed classics. The African-American artist who sang the National Anthem sang in "the key of soul," but it wasn't one of those over-the-top, love-to-hear-my-voice Whitney-Houston kinds of renditions. The music that followed the Obama speech was of the same cinematic-sounding orchestral variety that was played after Obama's acceptance speech in Denver: a bit manipulative, yes, but not nearly as clicheic as actual movie music and not transparently patriotic sounding. I have good feelings about the music that will be associated with this Presidency.

For the walk back to our train, we were corralled by the police to go west on Jackson (although I needed to go north on Wabash). There the crowd really let some energy loose, whooping and hollering, where the echo from the canyon of skyscrapers was deafening.

Today, I can't find a copy of the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times...they were all bought up before 9am!

Congratulations to President-elect Obama and all his supporters!

Obama Election Night Rally in Chicago

For my friends outside of Chicago, you may or may not know that Barack Obama's campaign has organized an Election Night rally on the lakefront in Chicago. If Barack wins, this may be the most televised event of the evening, and the likely location of his acceptance speech.

If you're watching TV that night scan the crowd for me, since as you can see, I was able to get a ticket! (Sorry, I've blurred the bar code, so you can't make a counterfit.) There was a less than 24-hour window before they all got snapped up, but all you had to do was fill out a form on a website. To get a feel for how hot an item this ticket is, see these Craig's List ads, and these items on eBay.

If you use Twitter, follow 'gregsandell' and I will try to make updates throughout the evening. I think you can also read my Twitters from my facebook page.

Halloween in the Burbs

For Halloween this year we took our four-year-old old to the burbs for some daylight hours trick-or-treating in a neighborhood of lots of kids under 6.

My poker buddy Josh is shown at the left with his election-timely Paul Revere costume...with a beer in his hand of course. Other costumes seen:

• Ghostbuster with a beer in his hand
• Indiana Jones with a beer in his hand
• Wicked Witch with a beer in her hand
• Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell character in 'Semi Pro') with a beer in his hand
• Ozzy Osbourne with a beer in his hand
• George Michael with a beer in his hand
• Joe the Plumber with a beer in his hand

The suburbs are about beer, I guess. And kids of course. (Shown below.)

Urban Sketching Part 4: Uppsala, Sweden

This is Part 4 (and final) in my Urban Sketches series: Uppsala, Sweden
Part 1: Chicago Faces
Part 2: St. Petersburg, Russia
Part 3: Jyväskylä, Finland

The final leg of my 1997 trip was to travel to Uppsala University in Sweden to present this paper. First I had to get there from Finland, a journey I had left unplanned. My friend Mari advised me that I would have lots of fun taking the overnight ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. She was right; it was great food, an interesting look at how high-roller Scandinavians take their vacations, and good opportunities for sketching.

I don't recall the circumstances of this sketch, but I'm pleased with this sketch of a nicely tailored gentleman.
	I'm pleased with how I captured this smoker's relaxed posture while reading his book. I had a nice long chat with the fellow after I showed him the sketch. His name is Ingo Petry and is a composer and recording engineer.
One of my best executions, and also an example of how much detail goes into rendering hair.
	At this point I am already at the conference in Uppsala, having taken a train from Stockholm, and am sketching other participants. This sketch is of Christina Anagnostopoulou of Greece. While I overshot the length of her face by quite a bit, I still like this sketch.
Daniel Levitin of the US.
	Jörg Langner of (I believe) Germany.
After dinner the final night of the conference, a group of us including Girilel Baars of Sweden and Helga Gudmundsdottir of Iceland retreated to a bar, where Girilel was playing a gig that night. The writing on the sketch is Girilel's.
	My final sketches occurred on the train from Uppsala to catch my flight home from Stockholm. I remember the least about these sketches except that it was a hot sunny day, and this is a guy on the train.
Man trying his best to catch a nap in the heat.
	A young blonde woman.
Although a misplaced line added a few years to this young woman's age, I'm pleased with the details of the woman's outfit, and how it captures the wilting heat of that day.

I hope you enjoyed these sketches. See my sketches gallery for the rest of my drawings from this trip.

Urban Sketching Part 3: Jyväskylä, Finland

This is Part 3 in my Urban Sketches series: Jyväskylä, Finland
Part 1: Chicago Faces
Part 2: St. Petersburg, Russia
Part 4: Uppsala, Sweden

Part two of my 1997 trip, to travel to University of Jyväskylä (prounced 'gee-VASS-cya-luh') to give a presentation to the Music Department, produced a lot of sketches. The train trip on the way up there from Helsinki was full of lots of families traveling for their summer holiday and it was a gorgeous sunny day.

An unusual character wearing the t-shirt for a Finnish Football team (that's US football, not soccer).
	Sketched on the train from Helsinki. Once I botched this guy's eyeglasses, this turned into a cartoon, but I still like this picture.
Another train sketch. This mother reading to her child was actually a quite young woman, but a few botched lines aged her by 15 years and put on 25 pounds. (As my friend Mari told me, "the same is true whenever we put on makeup".) Usually I sketch inconspicuously, but in this case I was pretty overt about it since it was just me and the two of them in a passenger compartment. At the end, I felt compelled to show the picture, which I preceded by an explanation that I did a poor job and I didn't really think she looked like that. But I think she didn't understand my English so I got a blank stare.
	My first night in Jyväskylä I stayed in University guest housing and I was on my own, so I wandered into town. I found a bar where I made sketches of three students. This one had a confident smirk which I captured only semi-successfully.
Another student in the bar. I remember thinking he looked a lot like Mike Meyers' 'Austin Powers' which had just come out that summer in the US, but was probably unknown in Finland still.
	Another student in the bar. Notice the thing under his nose; that's called a philtral dimple. But when I showed them my sketches, the one in the beret pointed at it and laughed. I guess he thought it looked like his nose was running.
The evening after my presentation, my host Petri Toiviainen inited me to his summer home. He, his son and I enjoyed a hot sauna by their lake. Although it was well into the night, it was daylight out because of their land-of-the-midnight-sun latitude. We baked to unbelievably high temperatures, swatted ourselves with twigs, and jumped into the icy lake. I also learned about the mystical nature of the sauna, and also the correct pronounciation, which is "SOW-nuh."
	This was on the train back to Helsinki. This guy was kind of an Elvis/tough guy who was making himself the center of attention in the dining car. He seemed fairly harmless, although he did whip out a switchblade and started doing tricks with it. I'm pleased with the way this sketch caught his looks and self-styled coolness. His response to the picture was ambivalent, but he did ask if he could keep the picture. He declined to give an address for me to send a copy, but he signed his name himself ('suomesta' means 'from Finland').
I'm very pleased with the way I caught the hunched-over attention this woman was paying to her book, with minimal use of lines. Her name is Simi Kouri, and she was in the dining car with me and Vesa Attonen.

See my sketches gallery for the rest of my drawings from this trip.

Urban Sketching Part 2: St. Petersburg, Russia

This is Part 2 in my Urban Sketches series: St. Petersburg, Russia
Part 1: Chicago Faces
Part 3: Jyväskylä, Finland
Part 4: Uppsala, Sweden



In 1997, when I was doing research in Music Perception, I got a few papers accepted at the ESCOM conference to be held that Summer in Uppsala, Sweden. (ESCOM is the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.) Through my contact with researcher Mari Tervaniemi I was also invited to give a talk in Finland at the University of Jyväskylä. That led to yet another opportunity, to go a bit east from Helsinki and visit St. Petersburg, Russia.

Taking a train to Russia by yourself is a pretty daunting experience. But since I thrive on foreign cultures and like using my wits to make the best of foreign situations, it was an amazing adventure. It was a pretty slow train with lots of stops, so I had lots of time on my hands to sketch lots of faces, many of whom were very different from faces one sees anywhere in the USA.

	There were many businessmen on the train to St. Petersburg. I spoke at length with one of them (not this man, though). He believed that Russians would take very long to "get" capitalism...two generations minimum. That's how long it would take them to learn not to expect the government to provide them with everything.
This is one of my best likenesses. Later I talked with him and he told me he is a policeman. He and his friends got a good laugh over the pic when I showed it to them.
	Here's a few sketches of a very lean, athletic looking business man with a strikingly Scandinavian face. He and his colleagues got a kick out of seeing my sketches of them.
Another sleeping businessman who enjoyed seeing this sketch later.
	An accurate likeness of a woman with a very stark Scandinavian face. Made me think of the Finnish composer Jan Sibelius.
Helen, who was my guide to the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, and also showed me around town. That's her handwriting, with her name both in Cyrilic and latin characters. She's right, it was a bad cartoon of her face, but it still helps recall the memory of a nice afternoon.
	Young man with a very stark Scandinavian face.
Two sketches of a man from the dining car. Another unusually Scandinavian face...which reminded me of composer Richard Wagner's.
	I vaguely recall that this young man was part of a tour group, perhaps as a guide, which explains his very "on" expression.

See my sketches gallery for the rest of my drawings from this trip.

Urban Sketching Part 1: Chicago faces

A few days ago I started enjoying a new blog called Urban Sketchers. Urban Sketching is a name they're giving to a casual kind of amateur art emphasizing simple techniques like line drawing and water coloring, not making a big deal out of making a "finished product" or eliminating flaws, and emphasizing simple subjects found in ordinary life.

I loved this kind of art in Mollie Katzen's self-illustrated cookbooks The Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. And a few years back I found another fun book featuring a similar style: The Moonlight Chronicles. Also, there's R. Crumb's sketchbooks and "Waiting for Food" books.

Cartooning was an early love of mine, and in 1997 I returned to drawing to chronicle a trip I took to Finland, Sweden and Russia. During that time, inspired by the excitement of travel, and having a lot of time on trains, planes and boats, I think I became a halfway decent Urban Sketcher.

This is the start of a series of postings featuring some of my better drawings. I'm beginning with the pictures I drew around Chicago after I returned from that trip.

Other parts in this series:
Part 2: St. Petersburg, Russia
Part 3: Jyväskylä, Finland
Part 4: Uppsala, Sweden

	I sketched this woman on the Chicago red line el. I'm pretty pleased with the way I captured her bundled-up posture as she held on to her purse while trying to catch a snooze. People napping, or reading books are the best people to sketch, because they don't catch you in the act and make you feel self-conscious.
Another napper on the red line el. Generally I would start with the forehead, capture the indent of the eye socket, the nose, and the cheek of the subject. If I got that first stroke right, everything else would follow no problem. So that first moment would take incredible concentration and self-confidence, because I hated botching a sketch.
	Shannon Russell, my girlfriend at the time, at Heartland Cafe. It's not the best likeness of her, although it captures her beauty.
This is Bill Yost of Parmly Hearing Institute at Loyola University Chicago, where I worked at the time. I was able to sketch Bill because he was concentrating on a seminar speaker---which I was supposed to be doing too. :-)
	Yet another person snoozing on the Chicago red line el.

All of my sketches from 1997 can be found in this photo gallery.

Sarah Palin jazz singing?

Youtube user sailingandmusic must have heard something really different than the rest of us when he listened to Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric. Check this out.

Sarah Palin in Ten Years

If the polls keep going in the direction they are, knock on wood, we won't have to endure a McCain-Palin presidency, and our country will have a fighting chance of reversing the disastrous last eight years. But even if it were to head towards a landslide outcome, it probably continue to be one of the most interesting election years all the way to November anyway. And that's due not just to Obama being the right guy at the right time, but Sarah Palin as well.

The video in Gawker's recent post Palin's Failed Cute, although intended to make democrats cringe, is in fact a compelling portrait of Palin's skills. Watching how she paved the way for the corny line of "Say it ain't so Joe" with asking Joe Biden up front if "do you mind if I call you Joe", and then getting a 1000 watt smile out of Joe Biden with it, was both canny and charming. It was using charm to win minds. And although we can poke fun of her Beauty Pageant past and her Fargo-like accent, she demonstrated an incredible degree of control and finesse over a challenging situation. That's a gift on a JFK and Bill Clinton level. And don't forget that twice now she's surprised us, in the Republican convention and the Vice Presidential debate, in far exceeding our expectations. I even lost $17 on Intrade on the Sarah Palin to Be Withdrawn as VP Candidate Nominee Before the Election prediction market.

So I'll say it, hate me for it if you will, but Sarah Palin is not only a force to be reckoned with, but maybe even a positive one. Who's to say what she'll be doing ten years from now? How do we know that this role she's playing now, of appeasing the social conservative base of the GOP, isn't just a role? Maybe in reality she's only just to the right of center. The fact that she hunts and brought a Downs syndrome child to term may be a hallmark for social conservatism, but it's not necessarily a slam dunk.

I had a conversation recently with a conservative whose voting choices are driven by taxes more than any other issue. He said: "Obama, wow, what a great guy, fantastic speaker and inspiring. I say, God Bless 'im, give that guy a job. Just don't make it President of the United States." That's what I say about Palin. I'd like to see what she's doing in ten years. I'd just rather see her do something positive with those skills than give service in an administration that would most likely wreck the US beyond repair.

Top 150 Words during Palin-Biden debate

See the original post here on flickr: Top 150 words spoken at the Biden-Palin vice-presidential candidate debate

Bush economics: how many ways can you show it?