Week of 2006-07-08 17:00 to 2006-07-15 16:59

Baseball-Reference.com

Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2006-07-12 12:08.

Major League Baseball Statistics and History

http://www.baseballreference.com/

Zenclavier: Extreme Keyboarding

Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2006-07-12 12:04.

I’m not talking about sitting for hours on end, clicking from one web page to the next as trivia trickles passively in. I’m talking about actually creating or seriously manipulating something, not just impersonating the couch potatoes down the hall in the TV room. You’re in the groove; you’ve got all the right moves down so pat you don’t even think about them. The world again fades away. There is the computer. There is you. There is nothing else. And this is good.

This blissful state of being one with your computer doesn’t actually have much to do with your computer. Paradoxically, the computer just gets in the way, a constant reminder of irrelevant physical constraints and realities. As long as your brain needs to spend time thinking about hardware, like the keyboard or the mouse or a flickering monitor or a groaning disk drive, you won’t be able to attain this special state of mind. That’s because it’s not the computer itself you’re trying to become one with. It’s the virtual world of software that you’re trying to enter. Only when the physical world recedes from conscious awareness can enlightenment become possible.

http://www.oreilly.com/news/zenclavier_1299.html

Dealing with high cholesterol via diet

Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2006-07-12 11:57.

While we’re on the dreaded topic of cholesterol, there are a ton of things you can do to help reduce it. Happily, they include things that are good to eat as well. :) This page has a good summary of diet-related things you can do: http://www.seniornet.org/php/default.php?PageID=5566

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Vegetarian diet as good as medicine in helping cholesterol?

Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2006-07-12 11:47.

A couple of stories from a few years ago about this topic. One would think that even just reducing the amount of (not cutting out completely) meat you eat would help significantly.

Buzzle.com: “Animal-Free Diet Rivals Anti-Cholesterol Medication”

Recent research by nutrition experts at the University of Toronto in Canada has shown that a vegan diet - which contains no animal products - can reduce cholesterol levels as effectively as the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering medications.

BBC News | Health: “Vegetarian diet ‘cuts heart risk’”

Eating more vegetables and soya-based products may be as effective at reducing cholesterol as medication.

Researchers in Canada have developed a vegetarian combination diet which they say cuts cholesterol by almost a third in just one month.

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Curses Programming with Python

Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2006-07-12 11:43.

This document describes how to write text-mode programs with Python 2.x, using the curses extension module to control the display.

http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/curses/