Do you push or pull?
As I was leaving the international clients area of Den Danske Bank, I faced a pair of ambiguous door handles and had to decide whether it would be right to push or pull the door. This time, I pulled the door towards me, but noticed that it would probably have worked either way. And so I thought to myself, it would be really interesting to see a psychological profile on people who choose to push or pull these doors.
When I got home, I faced very similar door handles in the building where we now live, and immediately went on to push the door open. So now I’m confused and think there is no real pattern. Or did my subconscious deliberately decide to confuse my conscious self by changing just because I had thought about it? Does my subconscious perhaps hate my conscious self? That would explain a lot of things…
Things I did not know about apples
A few days ago, I mentioned to a friend that Michaela and I fairly easily go through two bags of apples per day. I knew that an apple a day keeps the doctor away (Or “ate an apfel avore gwain to bed makes the doctor beg his bread” (No, it’s not Swedish, it’s old English.)), but I was a bit curious to find out what six apples a day would do, so I did a bit of research on the subject of apples.
It turns out that while they may keep the doctor away (or begging for bread), they are likely to get you a closer relationship with your dentist, increasing the risk of caries significantly. On the other hand, they improve your gums and reduce the risk of mouth cancer. As always, there is not a simple black and white answer.
But on the subject of cancer, apples provide flavonoids and other fun antioxidants that will take care of free radicals and stop the general destruction they can cause. It turns out, though, that the more traditional variants (I can’t get used to the word “cultivars”) of apples are better than the modern ones and so I’m starting to believe that the mass-produced all-equal-size pip-less Braeburns that I’ve got into the habit of buying at Sainsbury’s will do absolutely nothing for us. It’s encouraging to see that another favourite, the Egremont Russet, scores very high on some compounds.
As an aside, it’s interesting to find that apples contain cinnamic acid, which is otherwise normally found in the oil of cinnamon. It’s like nature has known all along that apples should be eaten with cinnamon.
The conclusion of my quick research (also known as googling) is that the kind of apple we should really be eating, which would battle various cancers, contains the antioxidants that we have all learned to love and in addition to all that actually battles caries instead of causing it is called “dark chocolate”. Apparently, cocoa beans contain antibacterial agents and the cocoa butter coats the tooth to prevent plaque. But then I guess the fat contents of chocolate might be bad for the diet, so I guess what I’ll do is what we all like to do most: Resist change and continue as before. Or maybe brush my teeth a bit more regularly.
Updated dlade.net
So with my new goals in mind, I have finally got around to updating dlade.net for the first time since 1999. Yes, the last time I actually built something to put there was a bit over 7 years ago. It’s true that since then the server that it lived on went down and I put up another “temporary” page in 2005, but this time there’s something real there, with updating content.
Still, it’s really quite a quick little hack that lives there. I’ve spent a total of approximately three hours writing python to aggregate different sources of activity that I do already produce on the net, and another hour enhancing those sources to the point where I feel they are actually somewhat valuable.
I’m feeling somewhat exposed right now, but I’m hoping I will get over it. I can’t keep my head in the sand all my life.
Communication
I’ve been thinking quite a lot about my future lately and what I want to do about it. No matter what angle I approach it from, I always end up realising that I need to work on my communication skills. It’s not that I don’t communicate, it’s just that I choose very carefully who gets to share in my communication. That’s not going to work if I want to break out from my current circle and into a new one. So, look forward to some more communication from me in the future…
