This week I read a number of interesting articles. The first was in the NY Times Sunday Magazine by Michael Pollan (the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire") on the Food vs. Nutrients debate. It's a little long, but certainly worth the read -- though often after reading his works, I find that he hasn't really said anything terribly new to me (especially since for the most part he is preaching to the choir in my case), but he is able to put things in much more eloquent and convincing ways. Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ei=5087

I also read a 3-part series of Wall Sreet Journal articles by Charles Murray who makes interesting arguments about IQ and how we should devote our resources and efforts at different levels of schooling. I don't completely buy by his arguments but they were very provocative. The links are:
Intellegence in the classroom --http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25452,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
What's wrong with Vocational School? --http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25464,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
Aztecs vs. Greeks --http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25474,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Lastly, a number of my friends & I have been discussing the issue & theory of Peak Oil lately. Basically the peak oil theory is the belief that future world oil production will soon reach a peak and then rapidly decline.Here are some links to related articles on that front.
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak
Paul Krugman "The Sum of All Ears" http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/01/paul_krugman_th_1.html
Beyond these nerdy readings I did for fun, I did manage to also do a bit of PhD related work, like work on my IRB (Internal Review Board) form, my proposal presentation, play around with a population projection program written by one of my professors (I tried a "hostile takeover of Italy by the Vatican" scenario and ended up with interesting results), read for class & some more background reading for my dissertation.

On the frivolous front, I watched Thursday's episode of "Grey's Anatony" at Whitney's place and "The Devil wears Prada". We ended up giving "Volver" a skip because Whitney decided it was too yucky to go outside (it snowed on Thursday AM and the continued to rain all day long afterwards). I also learned that my tulips are actually daffodils despite both Marc & I remembering that they were advertised as tulip bulbs... oh well! :P

Marc got back last night -- Yay! I suspect he will post a few pictures from his trip on this blog shortly.

~ Shuwen