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Yael’s Variety Hour: Tools, Business & Media Woes

February 23, 2011 By Yael Grauer 2 Comments

Yay! It’s Variety Hour day! I get to share the assortment of funny, interesting, amusing or otherwise fascinating articles and posts I’ve found on the web for the past 7 days.

You Don’t Say?

Tools Never Die. Waddaya Mean, Never? is NPR’s exploration into tools that have gone extinct. Or have they?

Be Careful What You Pay For briefly delves into new research indicating that the more time you spend analyzing the features of a product, the less satisfied you’ll be. This research has been covered in books by Jonah Lehrer (or was it Malcolm Gladwell? Dan Ariely?) but is always a worthy reminder if you are already familiar with it.

Variety of Unsustainable Business Models Make Up Extremely Hip Neighborhood. News in photos, courtsey of the Onion.

Graffiti Artist Brilliantly Lets The World Know He’s Out Of Ideas. The picture says it all.

The Guy On YouTube Singing With His Daughter is an excellent article which gives some background information on Jorge Narvaez. Warm and fuzzy but real at the same time.

Media Woes

AOL Buys Huffington Post: Can You Spell B-A-C-K-P-A-Y? is the National Writer’s Union response to this development. Spot on, and complete with a cartoon. I’m a sucker for cartoons.

Is Border’s Closing A Store Near You? Here’s the full list.

Get Thee To A Bookery! (Or Borders Went Belly-up. Now What? Great rant by the book lady.

Freelance Writing Is No Job For Wimps is a lovely list by Michelle Rafter on what a freelance writer may need to chase down on a given day.

The Content Farm provides “informative articles about every topic, written by people with a passing knowledge.” Parody rocks. ‘Nuff said.

The Pros And Cons of Freelance Writing is my guest post for Daily Writing Tips.

Ethical Marketing (Really!)

How To Turn Dating Agony Into Sales Success is Pam Slim’s excellent guest post on Copyblogger, in which she breaks down the 5 natural steps in the business process.

How To Be A (Profiting) Truth-O’mmercial Rather Than A Slickster is Danielle LaPorte’s take on a similar theme. Brilliant, as always.

You Swine

What Not To Say About Lara Logan. “As news of Logan’s assault in Egypt broke, the victim-blaming machine kicked in,” Mary Elizabeth Williams points out on Salon.com.

Revisiting After Pat’s Birthday I recently watched the documentary The Tillman Story, about Pat Tillman’s death by fratricide and the smokescreen of propaganda and lies that followed, due to government corruption and cover-ups. I found this article by his brother poignant as ever.

Wrestling With Conviction is not about rape or fratricide, so it almost seems silly to include it in this category. It is, however, a great editorial on the decision of Joel Northrup to forfeit a wrestling match rather than face Cassy Herkelman…due to religious reasons. “He was the fifth-ranked wrestler in the state at 112 pounds. He was 35-4. He had a chance to win the whole thing. In Iowa, that means a lifetime of people buying you lunch. It’s corn-state royalty. To give all that up to protect a girl who loathes being protected? What a waste of a dream,” Rick Reilly wrote.

That’s all for this week! Feel free to add your favorite links from this week or share your thoughts on mine in the comments.

Dear Week: An Open Letter to February 20-26

February 22, 2011 By Yael Grauer 2 Comments

Dear Week,

We got off to a bad start. I do not love snow, and you dropping it in bucketfuls at the end of February seems like some kind of mean joke. You know what I really would’ve loved to do on Sunday? Go to Minneapolis, as planned. See friends, as planned. And then, in the afternoon, heading down to watch the Gophers wrestle Iowa. We even had tickets. And although I am trying my hardest to positively reframe my knee injury (and am learning a lot about anatomy–I now know what a popliteus muscle is, and all about the ACL and meniscus and such), not being able to train or even walk properly right now really royally sucks.

However, I will graciously accept some of the consolation prizes you have offered. I enjoy shoveling, but not the cold, and normally I have to take one with the other. At least being immobile got me out of shoveling. (This is probably no consolation prize to my partner in crime, who did ALL the shoveling, put together a book shelf, cleaned AND cooked dinner, but he now has even more good karma.) And even though it would have been a zillion times more fun in person, at least we got to watch wrestling on TV. We also saw 127 Hours last week, which made me feel grateful for having all my limbs intact. And we watched the documentary about Pat Tillman, which made me feel sad and angry, but also happy to be alive. I’m also very excited about getting bodywork tomorrow, and if I learn more about my own muscular imbalances it may even almost (almost!) be worth it. I’m looking into creative ways to spend my newly found free time (in which I would otherwise be training). IFurthermore, I am excited about some new work I’ve shored up in recent days, including some ongoing work with people I really look up to.

I’m not good at reframing, but I guess this gives me the chance to practice… Dear week, I really hope that there’s a method to your madness, and that you keep good things flowing–instead of just snow.

Love,
Yael

P.S. How has your week been?

Yael’s Variety Hour: Love and Health

February 16, 2011 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for me to pull together an assortment of interesting, amusing, inspiring or thought-provoking links from the interwebs for this week’s Variety Hour!

Valentine’s Day Aftermath

If Monday’s (anti-)Valentine’s Day post (and the “Pick Your Cupid” link I posted in the comments) wasn’t enough, here’s an NPR piece titled The Dark Origins of Valentine’s Day.

Buying someone flowers on Valentine’s Day? Not necessarily love. Rescuing a spouse from a dangerous animal? Now that’s love. Woman Rescues Husband in Tiger Attack has the gritty details.

Self-love is important! Since we needed the reminder, you actually do better work for others when you recharge and refuel. 10 Reasons Why Self-Care Is Good For Your Business, written by the brilliant Jen Hofmann of Inspired Home Office, summarizes it beautifully.

Staying Healthy

The public fervor may have died down, but many (me! me! me!) are still concerned about the health consequences of airport body scanners–and it looks like I’m not the only one. Airport Body Scan Radiation Concerns UCSF Researchers, too.

The vegans were right. Your body doesn’t necessarily get calcium from dairy. Why Calcium Is Complicated explains.

As if we needed a study to determine this, apparently higher levels of testosterone lead to less empathy in women. Testosterone Administration Impairs Cognitive Empathy In Women Depending On Second-to-fourth Digit Ratios has the scoop.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I’ve been doing my fair share of ghostwriting and magazine work this past week, so this section is admittedly anemic today. However, I will have a guest post up on Daily Writing Tips sometime this afternoon, and will post the link next Wednesday (and on my facebook fan page this afternoon).

Have a great rest-of-week!

(Comic) Book of the Month: 32 Stories (The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics)

February 15, 2011 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

When I was in middle school and high school, I really loved reading comic books. No, not your typical Spiderman or X-Men comics (though I did love the X-Men cartoon series), but strange comics without superheroes that focused on miscreants and disaffected youth. I read Hate, Eightball, Dork, Milk & Cheese, Naughty Bits, Meatcake, Action Girl and whatever local photocopied comics I could get my hand on. Some of these were only supposed to be sold to adults, due to occasional swear words or sexual references, but I learned that I could just keep going back to Legends and someone would eventually sell them to me.

One of my favorite comic books was Optic Nerve. Back when it was a mini-comic, I got my hands on issue #7. The stories presented in ink drawings and dialogue were moving, intriguing and a touch lonely. One was about a girl who kept grinding her teeth. One was about an old guy who went to the same diner every single night. One was about trying to exist without wasting time by sleeping. The themes, strange as it sounds, are universal. As a geeky, confused teenager I found them moving.

Optic Nerve was bought by Drawn and Quarterly and turned into a full-size comic. And so it was that I ordered Optic Nerve issues 1-6 at the front desk of Legends in the Willow Grove Mall in Pennsylvania, thinking I could snag some of the old mini-comics. Instead they ordered the new 1st issue for me and got irate when I told them I already had that one. They didn’t understand what “I wanted the old 1st issue” meant.

And so I was thrilled to learn now, many moons later, that all 7 issues were available as a box set. Like, in a box.It also includes a supplementary booklet with some unpublished photos and artwork, as well as a long-winded introduction by Adrian Tomine who appears self-conscious about his old work for reasons I simply cannot comprehend. I found it in a comic book store in Minneapolis and snagged it, rambling wildly to the dude at the cash register while he stared and smiled politely and nodded and pretended I wasn’t crazy (a reaction many Midwesterners have to me.)

I don’t know if anyone reading this has been pining for long-lost issues of Optic Nerve, but even if you aren’t, maybe you should be. Anyway, you can buy it (and Adrian’s newer work) at Drawn and Quarterly. Or check out Adrian Tomine‘s website…and let me know what you think!

Gluten-Free January: My Experience

February 11, 2011 By Yael Grauer Leave a Comment

I elected to participate in Gluten-free January because I came to the sad realization (while doing a 30-day Paleo experiment) that I do better when I don’t eat wheat. Although I don’t count myself among the small percentage of people with celiac disease, who experience a severe immune reaction when consuming gluten (that is, wheat, barley and rye), many people have noticed negative effects including gut irritation, poor digestion and weight gain.

Although I think most people signed up for Gluten-free January to find out if gluten was a culprit in their health woes, I signed up to see if incorporating non-gluten grains (such as rice, corn, oats and beans) on occasion would stymie my fat loss and recovery. Here’s the observations I made:

The dose makes the poison. I could eat small amounts of rice, corn chips, etc. with little, if any negative effects. However, larger amounts made me feel all sorts of hypoglycemic-like hunger pangs.

Wheat is the worst culprit. As much as rice, corn, etc. have negative effects, nothing messes with my emotions or digestions like wheat… though it doesn’t seem to have that effect in the tiniest of doses or when consumed immediately post-workout.

It’s a slippery slope. Start eating delicious gluten-free baked goods, and it’s easy to slip into wheat. Staying away from grains completely is a lot easier.

It’s a lot easier to stay on the bandwagon. Aside from beer (see below), there is almost nothing with gluten that doesn’t have equally delicious gluten-free substitutes.

Gluten-free beer can be tasty! Specifically, Bard’s Tale Beer Company‘s sorghum beer is tasty.

No real changes in body composition. In comparison, I lost about 4 pounds on a month of the Paleo diet.

Aside from specific substitutes (like gluten-free pizza and gluten-free pastries), gluten-free is affordable.

Conclusions? The Paleo diet is the best for me, wheat as a cheat meal is tasty and gluten-free cheats are slightly more expensive but the side effects aren’t as bad. They must be used with extreme moderation. I can’t promise I’ll be gluten-free for life (including cheat meals), but I’m working on staying close to it.