Synova

In five days. Which isn't bad. My husband and I are doing the Atkins diet. (He's losing weight faster than me, of course.) In some ways it's actually easy. I'm not at all hungry, after all. But I do find myself wanting what I can't have rather badly. Just *one* cookie! In the beginning part it's really strict. As I understand it, and this makes sense to me, when we eat carbohydrates and sugars and fats and proteins our bodies (through insulin) signal ourselves to use the fast and easy carbs and sugars first and store the rest on our butt. So the usual sort of diet that eliminates fat and reduces carbs, doesn't leave us anything to store (like extra carbs and sugars). And on that sort of diet I wouldn't get a cookie *either*. In any case it's been less than a week. And according to the books after I'm done losing the weight I want to lose I'll get to eat more stuff... UP TO the "store the fat on your butt" level. Which won...

... at Whole Foods today .

Ann Althouse linked this commentary from the Washington Post today. “During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and ’70s to its success in Ronald Reagan’s era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.” Reading it I thought that the likely reason for an apparent lack of intellectual leadership in the conservative movement was because everyone was too busy trying to shut up the populists and remake the Republican Party or redefine conservative as something smarter by insisting that it shed the unwashed masses. Which is what I was reminded of when I saw this about McCain. (And “compared to what?” was a laugh out loud moment, Bruce...