October 14, 2004 Archives

I'm slowly getting my Fedora box resurrected. After spending a couple of weeks and fitful starts getting FC3 Test 2 loaded back on, the box is finally running. Still working on getting it back to useful shape. The last couple of days have been spent downloading and installing the new packages associated with FC3 Test 3.

Problems like the X.org server refusing to start with build 1.603 of the 2.6.8 kernel, but working fine with builds 1.607 and 1.541. Gnome not being able to open the X display. Messy things like that.

Next task will be to get all the server apps reconfigured to the way I like them and installing stuff like needed Perl modules and stuff. And then there's the task of restoring databases and web pages I was working on before.

Much work ahead that will have to be squeezed in during my spare time between my real work.

Today's lunch time discussion centered on food and weight gain. The question that was posed was this: Neglecting influences such as metabolism, exercise and such, if you eat a pound (or kilogram) of food and nothing else, can you gain more than a pound of weight.

The actual answer to the question itself wasn't important. What I thought was more interesting was the distribution of answers. One of my friends at work asked a few random people in the cafeteria at lunch. Almost all the men said no, if you eat a pound of food, the most you could gain was a pound of weight.

However, the women that were asked all responded by saying yes it was possible, and that it was the calories that mattered, not the weight. Most of them quoted the rule of thumb saying 3500 food calories = 1 lb, so if that 1 lb of food you just ate had 5000 calories, then you could gain more than 1 lb of weight.

Interesting. So if eating 1 lb of food can make you gain more than 1 lb of weight, where does the extra come from? On the other hand, if calories is the only thing that's important then eat as much as you want as long as it's low-caloric density food.

Of course to really answer the question you need to factor in variables such as metabolism, physical activity and the like.

So how would you answer? Based on the trend from my friend's informal poll, you'd say no if you were a guy, and yes if you were a woman.

"They're scary. You know, the extreme right wing are...are...are scary because they are very extreme in their beliefs" - Alberta Premier Ralph Klein speaking about the Alberta Alliance Party