Champagne and Mars Bars

Yes, everyone is getting excited about our season ender 'Champagne & Mars Bar' run on October 29th.

Always the best attended run of the year, since everyone knows we only run for chocolate or booze.

The picture here has two of our trail kickers, Nancy and Angie, volunteering at the Vulture Bait Trail Races on the 15th sporting the swag from our sponsor Mountain Hardwear for the volunteers, a warm micro fleece toque.

Wet, cold and windy did not deter the sold out field to set new course best times.

Thanks to the volunteers who kept everything running smooth all day to the delight of the runners.

Losing Fat With Simple Food-- Two Reader Anecdotes

Each week, I'm receiving more e-mails and comments from people who are successfully losing fat by eating simple (low reward) food, similar to what I described here.  In some cases, people are breaking through fat loss plateaus that they had reached on conventional low-carbohydrate, low-fat or paleo diets.  This concept can be applied to any type of diet, and I believe it is an important characteristic of ancestral food patterns.

At the Ancestral Health Symposium, I met two Whole Health Source readers, Aravind Balasubramanian and Kamal Patel, who were interested in trying a simple diet to lose fat and improve their health.  In addition, they wanted to break free of certain other high-reward activities in their lives that they felt were not constructive.  They recently embarked on an 8-week low-reward diet and lifestyle to test the effectiveness of the concepts.  Both of them had previously achieved a stable (in Aravind's case, reduced) weight on a paleo-ish diet prior to this experiment, but they still carried more fat than they wanted to.  They offered to write about their experience for WHS, and I thought other readers might find it informative.  Their story is below, followed by a few of my comments.

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my kiddos got up at 5:15 today....i might need an inspirational quote to get me through this day......this one seems pretty good :)

*images courtesy of hearts at a carnival,  house of turquoise , middle child complex, one kings lane

Advice for new professors

A summary of advice I have for new professors.*

1) Delegate

Graduate students were invented for a reason. Delegate everything. Data analysis. Literature reviews. Writing. Teaching prep. If you don't have any graduate students, find some undergrads. A task you might find mundane can actually be "research experience". 

One of my colleagues laments that their students often mess things up, causing even more work than just doing it themselves. For some things this may be true, but thus far I've been pleasantly surprised with what happens when I challenge my students. Even if they don't do a perfect job they are still doing useful work for both of us.

For CS-type folks -- get someone else to manage your machines. I know it's tempting to spend hours and hours tweaking your linux box to play fur elise backwards every other Tuesday at 2:22pm and building That Perfect Windows Manager config file and whatever other fun hacky things you do, but try to resist the urge. Shell scripts won't get you tenure (damnit). 

2) Ask

I read Boice's advice for new faculty, and he implied "quick starters" ask everyone for help on everything - research, teaching, grant writing, etc. This is helpful to remember. Spending three hours trying to find an arcane policy statement on NSF's website isn't worth the time when a quick email to your university's research support office will suffice. 

3) Network

Don't forget to water your social networks, both in your department, at your university, in your town, and in your professional community. This is something you shouldn't delegate or put off. 

Of course you don't want to spend all of your time networking; I think Boice suggests about 2-5 hours a week. YMMV.

4) Dry Clean

Best. Thing. Ever. Absolutely worth every penny. To just wake up in the morning, go to your closet, have cleaned and pressed professional clothes ready to go is just about the best thing since fur elise.

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(*)  To be honest I just had one piece of advice ("Dry cleaning FTW!"), but I thought I'd throw the other ones in too while I was here. 

san fran

in case you can't tell, i went to san francisco....and obviously i had a blast eating and drinking my way through the entire city!!  i cannot thank y'all enough for leaving me comments on what to do while i was there.  i seriously took advice from everyone.....in case you don't believe me:
callie- i loved cow hollow and alcatraz was so cool, loved the audio tour
brittanie- i totally took your advice and made sure to eat susie cakes and pepples organic doughnut...i got salted cameral and man was it awesome!!
laura- i could live in the ferry building...and i did....i think i ate their 4x's....loved mission st- la taqueria and san jose were amazing...definitely authentic mexican vs. what we are use to here!
lizzy- went to every street you listed: filmore, chestnut, union....had a blast peeking in the small boutiques
megan- you know we had to go to wine country....although didn't do the marathon to get there :)  but enjoyed those wine tasting a lot!!
kasey- tartine- HELLO!!  fabulous!
teryl- i have to hand it to you- lunch at la boulange was the best ever....and the atmosphere was so inspiring!!
kelley p- again, can't say enough about the alcatraz tour (wish it hadn't rained on us but it made it fun) and chinatown was a great place to eat and get good gifts to take back for the kids
andi- all i can say is that "crossroads" is the BEST store ever....why can't i have one here?  seriously, best deals on major clothing labels...i had to set a limit or i would have bought the whole store!
caroline- so excited we made it to the farmer's market at the ferry building on sat. AM- it was the best meal we had all week....we had lox w/ cream cheese, dirty girl tomato, and it came on acme sourdough bread-OMG my mouth is watering...and of course i had to get a blue bottle dip coffee (in fact, i think i got one everyday)
i swear we did other things besides eat and drink- i hiked up to coit tower, ran up lombard street (and almost died from the hills), went to fisherman's wharf/ ghiradelli square, got a muni pass and road the cable cars (and all other public transportation...so proud of myself for figuring it out), went to beach blanket babylon, went to a book reading at city lights, rented a car and drove on route 1 and the golden gate bridge, toured vineyards, and mostly walked all over the city just taking it in.....i can't say enough about my experience.  i have to say a huge thank you to my brother for inviting me to tag along on his work trip.  colin, it was a true blast and one i will remember/ cherish forever!!  thank you.....