Crustypunks - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Harrowing portraits of homeless kids and travelers in New York City.

I can't stop reading these tales of drugs and violence, ex-cons, drop outs, and the unwanted; people who are just socio-pathic enough to fall off the edge. Philosophically, they fall somewhere between Dharma Bums and Milch's romanticized notion of the artist as psychologically damaged outsider.

It's amazing how people can so thoroughly mess up their lives, rationalize those mistakes as virtues, and yet still be asking some of the right questions. Which is to say: what is the life that's worth living? What is freedom? What is society? What does it mean to be true to oneself?

Wow.

Pynchon Speaks

I'm willing to buy the idea that TP is the narrator in the video trailer for Inherent Vice. Hippie dippie gumshoe man.

Fat Gets Pwned

Just what everyone needs to hear (assuming you needed to hear something depressing and WTF). According to an article in New York, exercise, while healthy, doesn't actually help you lose weight:

If we’re fat or fatter than ideal, we work out. Burn calories. Expend energy. Still fat? Burn more. The dietary guidelines of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for instance, now recommend that we engage in up to 60 minutes daily of “moderate to vigorous intensity” physical activity just to maintain weight—that is, keep us from fattening further. Considering the ubiquity of the message, the hold it has on our lives, and the elegant simplicity of the notion—burn calories, lose weight—wouldn’t it be nice to believe it were true? The catch is that science suggests it’s not, and so the answer to all of the above quiz questions is “no.”

Arrgh! This can't really be true can it? Is this sound science or just an insidious way to get everyone back on Atkins:

To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, it’s carbohydrates—particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars—that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. “Carbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,” as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not.

Round and round we go.

Either way I'm still happier with my regime of yoga in the morning and running in the afternoon than I was when I was sitting around all day.

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Listening to: Oasis - She's Electric
via FoxyTunes

Crystal Skull

When I heard about the new title for Indian Jones IV, I thought it was a joke. This is probably why:

As announced by Shia LaBeouf during last night's silly awards show, the upcoming fourth Indiana Jones film will be called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In the film, the famed archaeologist will likely battle snakes and Nazis on a quest to unravel the mystery of why anyone would pay $100 million for Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted-skull thingy.

This picture really sells it, heh: