dprecosk

I have recently completed In the Shadow of the Pomegranate by Tariq Ali and am currently reading The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel. Ali’s book is set around 1500 in Spain/Al Andalusia and tells of the final days of Moorish presence in Spain. It paints a picture of an almost edenic Islamic society being put to the sword by a horde of bloody minded Spanish catholics. Werfel’s book is set in 1915 in the former Ottoman Empire and is about the persecution of the Christian armenians by the Moslem Turks.
Both books are exercises in demonizing the “other” while telling the truly sad story of the victimization of one’s own group. The Islam/Christianity conflict is so ancient that it will probably never go away. It is older, even, than the two religions and goes back to the Greek/Persian conflict of antiquity.
My conclusion? The best that can be hoped for is a truce. Not peace, love, and understanding. Just a truce.

Our government liquor store has begun holding special promotional events which feature wines from different places. So far we have had events for Bordeaux wines, Chilean wines, and (the latest) wines from British Columbia, where I live.
Real wine experts would dismiss such events as blatant consumerism on the part of the store and as a sign of amateurism on the part of someone like me. So be it! I find them an excellent form of guided learning. I supposed I could spend a lot of time and money trying out a lot of different wines (sounds like fun, actually), enjoying the good ones and hating the bad. But this way, with a bit of preselection from experts, I can try a variety of good wines set at a variety of price points.
I’m not going to buy the $1,300 Bordeaux and I’m smart enough to know that the $20 Sauvignon Blanc from BC is probably not going to be as enjoyable as the $40 Pinot Noir from Chile (Cono Sur 20 Barrels Pinot Noir—it was fantastic).

I’ve became serious about this one in late September. All I have done is to make small adjustments to my eating habits, and I have been able to lose an average of a pound per week since then.
Changes include cutting out orange juice with breakfast, limiting the size of lunches, taking only a single helping of dinner (but a generous one), and not snacking after dinner. I have also tried to drink a minimum of one litre of water per day.
I weight myself daily, but don’t get bent out of shape if I go up on any particular day. The important think is for there to be a downward trend.
In the past, I have lost large amounts of weight with the Atkins Diet, only to put it back on again. Any diet is hard to stay on because, though they might be scientifically balanced, they are not affectively balanced. You always feel deprived, limited, or controlled. Perhaps, for me, weight loss is tied into emotional control and the need to be the one steering the car.