Josh the Aspie’s Blog

A myth that I have heard making the rounds lately is that if you find “Natural Flavoring” on a product, that this product is actually a brand name of an artificial one. After looking into it I’ve found that this is most likely a case of information decay.

The long and short of it, is that “Natural Flavor” or “Natural Flavors” represents flavors that the USDA considers to be natural - which may not be all that natural after all.

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I’m nearing my second 10 lb goal as a part of joining weight watchers. There are so many rewards for loosing this weight and exercising. I look better, I feel healthier, I am in less pain, and I have greater endurance. Even thinking seems easier, though that’s more likely attributable to the exercise and the decreased stress, as well as the altered blood flow to my brain than the decrease in weight.

A month after starting my 3 month journal with weight watchers I find that I have also dropped an inch and a half off of my waist line, and half an inch off of my hips, actually putting me at the point where my waist is narrower than my hips, and I can rely on that fact. Not only is this a great for my appearance and comfort, but it means that I have transitioned from having an “apple” body shape to having a “pear” body shape. While both body shapes are a negative indication for your health, the apple body shape is far more so.

I definitely intend to claim an extra reward sticker at weight watchers later this week.

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Also known as Acupoint Pressure Therapy, Acupressure is the art of manipulating pressure points with one’s thumbs and fingers, rather than with needles as is done in Acupuncture.

I recently took an Acupressure course from Doctor David Bole, a former Tibetan Buddhist monk who became a Lama at the Kagyu retreat. He holds two doctorates, one in Psychology from the University of Florida, and one in acupuncture from the College of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture in Oxford, England. The course was about 7.5 hours long after taking the lunch break into account.

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For those of you that have been paying attention, I have recently joined Weight Watchers, and while my morning weight at home was 275, I weighed in there as 280.4.

Well today I weighed in at 274.8, a loss of 5.6 lbs, and my first 5 lb goal met in the Weight Watchers program in only 2 weeks! Read on for how I did it, and how it feels!

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Well, as some of you may remember, it’s been nearly a year since I moved into my apartment. And yes, my apartment still isn’t entirely clean.

Between my Job, learning how to live on my own, and a host of other things that needed to get done “clean” has described the areas I let others into in my apartment for perhaps a month full of days. I realize that this will likely sound like whining. After all, many of you likely manage to get your homes clean and keep them that way within a week or a month of moving in. Right?

Unfortunately I have several things working against me in this particular endeavor and despite that fact I am grateful for many of these factors.

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H4×0r — also called Haxor, leet speak, and 1337 sp34k, among other variations — is a slang word which is used to represent a kind of letter replacement code frequently used on the internet.

In this code, letters are replaced by numbers and other special characters in order to make the characters look more or less like the host language (usually English). This was originally done to throw off non-techies and try to hold secret conversations without actually having to learn another language. In order to further the confusion people purposefully or idiomatically mis-spell words, often inheriting idioms from net speak. Unfortunately, like with net speak, most of the time the spelling skills in question are poor anyway.

The non-standardized nature of the replacement means that inevitably, to be understandable to other users of H4×0r, the replacement code had to look enough like English that anyone could figure it out given time and a touch of practice. This seriously diluted it’s value to the point that no serious techies use it any more.

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Many people who want to punish free speech hold up the example of how “You can’t shout Fire in a Crowded Theater,” and according to some of my friends, now many are trying to use this example to impinge upon other rights as well. Well even according to Messrs Justice Douglas, and Justice Black, the speech in which one calls fire, and the resultant acts which descend from one’s speech are inextricably linked, and it is the resultant actions for which the speaker is responsible that he is tried. Yet if there is no resulting action worthy of being tried — perhaps because there was an actual fire, or perhaps because everyone ignores you — there is nothing on which to try the person calling out “Fire!”

Liberty is a two edged sword. One edge is called freedom, the other is called responsibility. For in order to gain and preserve freedom, someone in our society must shoulder the burden of defending our way of life. Those people are the armed forces. Further, anyone who exercises their freedoms needs to own up to the consequences of their action… because if we expect other people to bail us out of our mistakes not only are we demeaning ourselves, but we are trying to remove the freedoms of others.

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Net speak, sometimes spelled netspeak, is a sub-dialect of English which uses replacements for words or syllables and abbreviations in order to speed the typing of common phrases or words. This is nearly indecipherable to those not used to the abbreviations and codes, but when used sparingly the meaning can usually be inferred from the surrounding context, and is simply a component of casual online conversation between netizens - citizens of the internet.

Like many things, however, it is best used in moderation, occasionally sprinkled into one’s speech. If used to frequently other netizens will not take the user of net speak seriously, and may shun them as being childish and unintelligent.

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I’d like to share a recipe that I created today to help myself stay on track with my Weight Watchers plan in a healthy and delicious way. I did get some of the recipe off of the rice box, but I adapted it.

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Hello all!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted here on My Blog and I’m rather excited to be posting again. Due to my move, combined with my new Job, combined with cleaning and sorting items, and being in various stages of “catching up” with things I needed to do to take care of my new apartment, as well as being ill a few times I’ve been a touch neglectful.

Also a constant annoyance is the huge amount of spam I have to slog through each time I come back to my blog, just to make sure that I haven’t missed one of the rare and special comments from a new commentator. Any time a new commentator decides to comment, or an old commenter changes their contact information / commenting name I need to approve their first comment before my blog lets them comment freely. As a result, I get many spam comments submitted for every non-spam comment.

Now, a bit more detail on what I’ve been up to while I’ve been away from my blog.

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