Days When People Die

I have just been to The Age and on the first page alone there is so much reference to death. Have a look at the image below, which is a screenshot of The Age website with the death-related headlines marked in red.


This is not meant to prove anything. It's just an interesting observation. The news of Michael Jackson's death seems to have overshadowed all other news. I happen to think that Michael was a great singer and dancer, and I especially liked his music when I was a child.

Increasing Bedtime Volatility

Above is a time series chart of when I go to bed. The date is on the horizontal axis and on the vertical axis is the hour at which I go to bed. Zero is midnight, -1 is 11:00pm, 1 is 1:00am, and so forth.

You can see from the chart that a major change in average bedtime occurred at the beginning of February 2009. This happened because I changed jobs from working part-time during the afternoon to working 9 till 5.

Normally what happens is I wake up at 6:30 in the morning on Mondays to Fridays. However, on weekends I normally stay up late, which is what causes those spikes to appear. About a week ago I went to a sleepover, and I stayed up till 5:30 in the morning for that. This explains that major spike towards the end of the chart. As you can see, I adjusted for that by going to sleep really early the following day.

What I have only just noticed from plotting the data is that the volatility of my bedtime seems to be increasing over time. My sleep is becoming more and more erratic, which may not be good for my internal body clock.

Losing Motivation to Exercise

The chart above shows how much aerobic exercise (on my exercise bike) I have actually done (in blue) and how much aerobic exercise I think I should be doing (in pink). I assume that I should be getting 30 minutes of exercise per day.

The chart shows that lately I have been doing very poorly and I no longer have an aerobic exercise surplus. Rather, I am in deficit, and I will need to do a lot of exercise to get back into the black.

The chart shows that in the early days when I started recording exercise data I did much more exercise than I should be doing. These were the exercise boom times. In fact, I used to weigh about 82 kilograms and now I have gone down to 72 kilograms. I am 1.82 meters tall, so that is a BMI fall from 24.8 to 21.8. I do not exercise to lose weight. In fact, I think that now I am a little bit on the skinny side, so weight loss is not something I consider.

The chart shows that this boom gave way to a recession at the start of 2009. I started working full time at February 2009 and my exercise picked up again but now you will notice that the lines aren't smooth anymore. The lines seem to resemble stairs. This occurs because, during full-time work, I only had time to exercise on the weekend, so instead of doing 30 minutes of exercise per day I would do about four hours on the weekend. Lately, however, my exercise has completely fallen flat. This latest exercise recession is nothing like the one I experienced at the beginning of 2009. This recession is seeing no growth in exercise duration whereas the recession at the beginning of 2009 saw exercise duration increasing very slowly.

Vitamin D Supplements

For a long time now I have been taking Cenovis multivitamin tablets. Each one of these tablets contains 200IU of vitamin D3. I have recently read that scientists are starting to believe that 200IU per day of vitamin D (the amount recommended by the U.S. government) is not enough. Many scientists now believe that 1000IU of vitamin D3 per day should be the new recommended intake.

I began recording my vitamin intake from November last year (2008). At around April of this year (2009) I started taking pure vitamin D3 supplements (Oste-Vit-D) in addition to my normal Cenovis multivitamins. Since I take both Oste-Vit-D and Cenovis multivitamins, this means I get 1200IU of vitamin D3 per day. However, because I don't always remember to take these tablets every day, I am confident my intake of vitamin D3 will average out to about 1000IU per day from now on. My graph below confirms it. It shows how much total vitamin D3 supplements I have taken since November last year.


Many people are curious to know why I take vitamin D supplements. They tell me that spending time in the sun gives enough vitamin D. Spending time in the sun can give you vitamin D, but spending time in the sun also increases the risk of skin cancer. Many people laugh at me because I have dark skin. They claim that because I have lots of melatonin in my skin that I have lower risk of getting skin cancer. That is true. However, just as dark skin reduced the probability of getting skin cancer by blocking UV rays, it also reduces the ability the body has to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight since UV rays are necessary for vitamin D synthesis. Hence skin darkness is irrelevant.

Further Reading: Skin Color Matters in the Vitamin D Debate

Big Sugar

I have just watched a documentary on Google Video called Big Sugar. I have embedded the video above.

Big Sugar talks about how important sugar is as a commodity. The documentary also looks into how sugar suppliers corrupt politicians in the United States. Also highlighted is the poor labor conditions that workers face in sugar plantations.

I have always dreamed of owning a large plantation where I could grow coffee, sugar, or some other important crop. I believe that the best way to help the poor is to give them a job. Poor people tend to be unskilled and less education, so a simple job, usually in agriculture or manufacturing, is best. How much to pay workers and how well to treat them is a tough issue. If you pay workers too little, some people may see this as unethical or cruel. If you pay workers too much, your business may no longer be profitable, which means you cannot expand the business, which means fewer people are employed.

Capitalism Magazine Praises James Bond

Capitalism Magazine's article Why Do We Love James Bond? praises the character James Bond in the movie Casino Royale.

In case you're wondering why a capitalist is praising a public servant, here is one reason the author, David Gulbraa, gives: "Bond is a good guy, fighting on the side of freedom and Western values."

Capitalism Magazine supports a political ideology similar to libertarianism, which states that government interference in citizens' lives should be minimal. Government should protect the lives and property of individuals and should not be e.g. protecting them from themselves, going to war with other countries, etc. James Bond, as a character, has a license to kill, so already this is a violation of libertarian ideology. A license for one person to kill or murder also seems to go against freedom. So much for the idea that Bond fights on the side of freedom.

For anything, James Bond is the personification of socialism. He is the ultimate example of effective government interference.

If you read David's article, you'll notice that he doesn't really address this issue. Rather, he seems to be more preoccupied by the idea that the Bond character looks good, does great stunts, drives great cars, etc.

Gore: Ultimate Soldier

I am so glad it is Easter! This means I get a four-day weekend. Today I downloaded the game Gore: Ultimate Soldier. The ISP iiNet allows me to download this game through their freezone, which meant I didn't pay for bandwidth costs. The game is free.

Gore is a first-person shooter. It has a single player mode as well as multiplaying capabilities online. I tried the single player mode and thought it was enjoyable. The graphics were good, the control was good, and the weapons were good. I am currently stuck at a level at the moment, so it is quite frustrating. I find that the game is quite difficult. At this level at which I am stuck, I don't seem to have enough ammo or health.

The Gamespot review for this game claims that Gore is a plain and ordinary FPS.