Nutritional data means what?


Musings on this article:

Like cabbage? Bet you have an innie.

Data can mean anything

I work for the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University Medical School. I have at various points crunched food diary data (when the article says food diaries generate a lot of data, they aren’t kidding), filled out food diaries of my own, and processed samples of folks who participate in our diet and exercise studies to see what happens to their metabolic processes when they eat (or don’t eat) certain foods. Sometimes we control exactly what they eat; sometimes they report it themselves.

Misrepresentation in reporting food is easy to do, and most people don’t do it on purpose. How do you know exactly what’s in that yummy fancy restaurant food? Is it summer when your favorite foods are in season so you eat them all the time? Do you not want to look bad on paper so you don’t eat that second slice of pie when you normally would (or eat it and not report it)?

Basically this means that you can gather up whole reams of data and then compare it with whatever you want to, and come up with some pretty silly conclusions, like the picture that accompanies this entry: if you eat cabbage, you probably have an innie belly button. What? While it’s possible that cabbage has some effect on the position of your belly button, this is probably not true. So don’t trust what the media says is the next new food thing guaranteed to make you lose weight and avoid cancer forever, because it may be based on faulty interpretation of data. Do your own research.



I used to be able to play piano pretty well, but I could never just sit down and play with someone else. Also, Paris has the coolest train stations around, what with their free pianos just hanging out, waiting for someone to play on them… #paris #piano #ishouldpracticemore #Ishouldpracticeatall

Paris in five minutes


I love Paris and I want to go back something awful. But until I do, there are videos like this.

Paris Day & Night from Teeter-Totter-Tam on Vimeo.

EN. This video is a 5-minute visual journey through Paris in technique of hyper lapse and time lapse. When the city and the weather become the movie directors, and the time becomes the main actor, wonderful views are opened. Turn Captions On, we signed places. Read about creation of the video clip:

FR. Cette video à durée de 5 minutes est le voyage visuel à travers Paris en technique hyperlapse et time-lapse. De merveilleuses vues s'ouvrent, quand la ville et le climat deviennent metteurs en scène, et le temps – un principal acteur. Lire de la création de la vidéo :

You can find music theme in iTunes / Vous pouvez trouver le sujet musical à iTunes

Shooting and video editing
Сonstantine Konovalov and Irina Neustroeva

Music and sound design
Fab Martini

Help in video editing Sergey Akimov

For cooperation please contact us by e-mail:

Dinosaur kid


JURASSIC PARK was the movie that started my love of soundtracks. It’s the first movie I could remember coming home from the theater and humming the score. Thank you John Williams.

I went through the “I’m going to be a paleontologist!” phase hard when I was a kid (oh yes, I went to Dinosaur Day Camp–my first sculpture, which my parents still have in the basement, was a papier-mache triceratops), and I loved JURASSIC PARK. I don’t recall being scared by it, though maybe that’s because I read the book first (you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?). So perhaps JP was also my first experience with “the book is better.”

I’m looking forward to seeing JURASSIC WORLD this weekend, and I hope it’s good. I can’t help but feel a little manipulated, though, feel that my childhood nostalgia is being taken advantage of. I’ll just have to console myself with oogling Chris Pratt in that case.

What will be the “Hold on to your butts!” quote of this movie?



I don’t think I could ever actually live in a house this small (it could never fit all my bookshelves) but this one has a really interesting design and lots of nice touches.