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Friday, January 05, 2007
A spoonful of oil makes the medicine go down. . .
I've been inspired lately by the high-quality blogs around me: yesterday I read a random selection from James Grimmelmann's six years of blogging, so decided to dust off this device originally for helping me study for generals.
Andrew Gelman wrote this April about his friend Seth Roberts's diet book. The theory is that eating flavorless foods makes your brain less interested in eating, so you're less hungry, as is described with high-tech graphics in this CBC mini-documentary on the diet. Seth is a Berkeley psychologist who does self-experimentation in his spare time: lately, he seems to be researching methods for overcoming procrastination through structured procrastination.
I'm not used to the idea of drinking oil, but I'm about to go traveling for 3 weeks without kitchen access. Oil and water are plentiful and cheap, as long as I bring a tablespoon to measure the oil. In keeping with the self-experimentation ethic, I want to produce some data. I can't travel with a scale, but measuring tapes are light. Look for dimensionless scatterplots at the beginning of February!
P.S. I suspect that there is a strong element of self-selection in this self-experimentation business. The people who are absolutely nauseated at the idea of oil or sugar water, who find that they are actually nauseated by oil or sugar water, will never stay long enough to register even as a failed diet participant.
Andrew Gelman wrote this April about his friend Seth Roberts's diet book. The theory is that eating flavorless foods makes your brain less interested in eating, so you're less hungry, as is described with high-tech graphics in this CBC mini-documentary on the diet. Seth is a Berkeley psychologist who does self-experimentation in his spare time: lately, he seems to be researching methods for overcoming procrastination through structured procrastination.
I'm not used to the idea of drinking oil, but I'm about to go traveling for 3 weeks without kitchen access. Oil and water are plentiful and cheap, as long as I bring a tablespoon to measure the oil. In keeping with the self-experimentation ethic, I want to produce some data. I can't travel with a scale, but measuring tapes are light. Look for dimensionless scatterplots at the beginning of February!
P.S. I suspect that there is a strong element of self-selection in this self-experimentation business. The people who are absolutely nauseated at the idea of oil or sugar water, who find that they are actually nauseated by oil or sugar water, will never stay long enough to register even as a failed diet participant.
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