Monday morning roundup

A conservative on health care reform.

The perils of trying to capture the complex nuances of human emotion through binary code:

“Sentiments are very different from conventional facts,” said Seth Grimes, the founder of the suburban Maryland consulting firm Alta Plana, who points to the many cultural factors and linguistic nuances that make it difficult to turn a string of written text into a simple pro or con sentiment. “ ‘Sinful’ is a good thing when applied to chocolate cake,” he said.

The simplest algorithms work by scanning keywords to categorize a statement as positive or negative, based on a simple binary analysis (“love” is good, “hate” is bad). But that approach fails to capture the subtleties that bring human language to life: irony, sarcasm, slang and other idiomatic expressions.

I've half-joked about my struggles with portion control, but I've actually embraced it of late... not in a measure-and-weigh-your-food kind of way, but more simply, eating slowly and not eating more than I need to/want to. This is much easier in the absence of my mother and away from situations that encourage overeating, but even in restaurants and events where tempting food abounds, it's just somehow hit me--all of a sudden, really-- that too much of a good thing isn't worth it. There will always be more of that good thing, at times when I actually feel like partaking. Which is why, as I read this, even before they quoted the author of "French Women Don't Get Fat," I thought "portion size." I agree with the other stuff she said, too--walking more, eating more fruits and vegetables--but what really hit me in the first half of the article was, there's only so much of that that one's body will want to consume. It would be hard to eat a lot of something with that much butter, and so on. So just have a little.

As for me, I won't be buying "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Too meat-focused, too labor intensive. My next cookbook purchase will be Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," and that will only happen once I actually need yet another cookbook.