Lauren Wu dot com

I passed the CFA Level I exam. Everybody is asking me whether I will take Level II next year. I'd rather wait (if I decide to take it at all) until 2005 when the format change occurs and 100% of the exam will be "item set" (multiple choice). Currently, only 50% is multiple choice, and the other 50% is essay/problem format. Ugh.

Now that I've passed, my company will reimburse me for the money I spent OUT OF MY OWN POCKET (what was I thinking?) in CFA registration fees, enrollment fees and study materials. The downside to passing is that I now have an illogical urge to register for Level II. Must... resist....

**This post contains spoilers for Tour de France Stage 15**.

Now that I have my very own bicycle (have yet to ride it), I'm trying to motivate myself by watching the Tour de France on OLN (Outdoor Life Network). I especially like Bob Roll's informative commentary. Bob does a great job of explaining race rules, strategy, bike mechanics etc. It's perfect for newbies like me.

Hubby messaged me this afternoon, "Lance was taken down by a spectator". No! I told him not to tell me what happened afterwards and I waited to watch Stage 15 on our trusty TiVo. TiVo is EXCELLENT for watching sports - you can zoom through commercials and less interesting parts, allowing us to watch the 2 hour Tour programming (with the woefully indadequate description of "Bicycle Race" on the TV guide) in 45 min-1 hour.

We fast forwarded a good chunk of the race until we saw the part where Lance was indeed taken down by a spectator. I'm not surprised. Every time I watch the Tour, I'm horrified at how close some of the spectators get to the riders. A lot of them actually run onto the road waving flags and banners. I know they're trying to be supportive, but it looks dangerous.

My stomach was in knots when I saw Lance fall. And it lurched again moments later when his foot slipped out of his pedal as he was trying to catch up to the front of the pack. As impressed I was with Lance's recovery and ultimate stage win, I was most touched by the fact that the pack WAITED FOR HIM TO CATCH UP after he fell. They even showed the segment where Tyler Hamilton (my personal hero) signaled the leaders of the pack to slow down and wait for Lance. Even 2nd place cyclist Jan Ullrich [German website] "the big man from Germany" waited, even though he could have easily sped on ahead to victory.

I've come to appreciate the sportsmanship in professional cycling that I have never witnessed before anywhere else. In any other sport, a fallen participant would probably get a swift kick in the head by a fellow competitor to make sure he/she would stay down. In professional cycling, however, you're not supposed to take advantage of another rider's misfortune or mechanical difficulties; you win based on your own merit. What class. This is truly a gentlemen's sport.

As I was reviewing Slashdot's daily newsletter, a post about Larry Wall's annual State of the Onion address caught my eye. In case you're wondering, the Onion refers to Perl, and not to be confused with TheOnion.com).

I know nothing about Perl, other than it's a programming language (I think) scripting language, but I still found his address humorous and interesting. It almost made me want to learn Perl. In his speech, he referred to a saying that I saw on a poster a long time ago:

We the unwilling,
led by the unknowing,
are doing the impossible,
for the ungrateful.
We have done so much for so long with so little,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

How true.

I'm very frustrated when I call a customer service representative and instead reach a voice response unit asking me to "Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Support, ...". Fortunately, the Wall Street Journal has discovered some shortcuts to reach a live person (subscription may be required). I've pasted them here:

A friend emailed me a link to a "Cool web page for kids, artists, athletes, medical folks, mechanics". The statement is true, but I'm having trouble describing what the page actually shows. I only managed to come up with the title of the post only after looking at the name of the relevant HTML file. Check it out.

I read food labels carefully, and thus appreciated this Wall Street Journal article (subscription may be required) about how food labels legally mislead consumers. Here are some common tricks:

• Misleading serving sizes. Savvy consumers read food labels to determine the nutritional content for each serving. Even smarter consumers go a step further to read the fine print that indicates how many servings there are in the package. As the Journal states, "In the real world, a bag of chips or a bottle of soda is one serving. But on the food label, it can be listed as two or three servings. The result is that calorie information on the label often understates how much you're really about to consume."
• Inconsistent labeling. Serving sizes may differ across products. Here's an example used by the WSJ, "A serving of regular Chips Ahoy! cookies has 160 calories while a serving of Peanut Butter Chips Ahoy! has just 80 calories. But look closely. There are three cookies in a serving of regular Chips Ahoy!, but just one cookie in a serving of the peanut butter variety."
• Mystifying ingredient claims. I spend a lot of time choosing which brand of cranberry juice to buy, because some are made with 100% juice, while others are merely cocktails primarily made with flavorings and sugar. This example uncovered by the Journal made me angry because there's no way a consumer would have figured this out just by reading the information provided, "Smucker's makes a brand of spread called Simply 100% Fruit. But the strawberry version contains just 30% strawberries (the rest is fruit syrup and juices). You wouldn't know that by reading the label, because the FDA doesn't require packages to list the percentage of ingredients. The CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) discovered the fruit content from a jar of spread purchased in Thailand, where labels list the percent of key ingredients."
• Inaccurate weights. "One study found these packages [single-serving baked goods] can contain 25% or more of the product, and thus more fat and calories, than promised on the label. "

I love Krispy Kreme doughnuts (donuts) and was quite disappointed to find out they are made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, i.e., EVIL TRANS FAT! I emailed them a few months ago to express my concern, and they sent me a form email in return. Now that the FDA now mandates trans fat disclosure on nutritional labels, I emailed them again, attaching a Wall Street Journal article on the topic. Here is the second email I sent them [sans Wall Street Journal article]:

With regards to a previous email I sent you regarding trans fat in Krispy Kreme donuts, I am forwarding this Wall Street Journal article to you (see attached, I have ommitted a table) that highlights the dangers of trans fat and also documents the new labeling requirement that will come into effect 1/1/06.

The article specifically indicates that donuts have a significant amount of trans fat in them, and the table I ommitted lists Dunkin' Donut Glazed has 4g of trans fat, 2.5g of saturated fat, for a total of 6.5g of "bad fat".

I look forward to seeing an announcement from your company that you will be switching from trans fat to a healthier alternative in your baking process.

This time, they took the time to send me a more detailed response:

Dear Ms. Wu,

Thank you for your email.

We highly appreciate your feedback as well as your continued loyalty to Krispy Kreme. We do understand your concern for the way that Krispy Kreme makes our doughnuts and we thank you sending us that article.

Regarding your previous email, our doughnuts are cooked in 100% vegetable oil shortening, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil. We quickly cook our doughnuts for just 45 seconds on each side.

Hydrogenated vegetable oils are an essential ingredient in many cereal and baked goods. In addition, trans-fatty acids, which are a result of hydrogenation, occur naturally in meat and milk. The use of a non-hydrogenated oil would generate a product noticeably different, in taste and texture, to the Krispy Kreme doughnuts our customers have enjoyed for sixty-five years.

We definitely have noted your concern and your request for Krispy Kreme to change the way that we make our doughnuts. We do thank you for your concern and we hope to be able to serve you again in the future.

I dispute the fact that trans fat is an "essential ingredient" in many cereal and baked goods, given that there are manufacturers who make these items without it. I hope the take my recommendation seriously.

There was a funny article (subscription may be required) in the Wall Street Journal titled "Office Untouchables: They Kiss Up to Boss and It Really Works".

To the annoyance of those around the panderer, i.e., those who aren't the ones being flattered, it appears that kissing up works:

"One of the most intractable problems of corporate culture, kissing up can tilt the playing field, torch a meritocracy and ego-stroke management senseless. Some of the bamboozled are hardly aware they're being rolled, while the bamboozlers climb the corporate ladder and saw off the rungs behind them.

While I cringe when I see "backslapping bootlicks" (love that phrase - got it from the article) in action, I also fault the flatterees for being so oblivious as to allow themselves to be played. Insecure individuals are the easiest targets, but Stanley Hertz believes that most people are less immune to these maneuvers than they think. Mr. Hertz owns his executive-recruiting agency, and he says "...even the biggest CEOs need to be loved. 'It's like fungus,' he explains. 'It grows on you.' "

If it grew on me, I'd cut if off.

If you're looking for my posts, I'm temporarily blogging to a TypePad hosted site since I'm beta testing their new software.

I hope y'all had a great July 4th Independence Day long weekend. Once again, I completely forgot about Canada Day (really Dominion Day) which is on July 1st. Doh!

There were only a couple of dozen messages in my inbox upon returning from my road trip with hubby down to Santa Barbara, and the most exciting one by far was from Benjamin Trott with the words Good news! You've been chosen for the second round of TypePad beta testing. Good news indeed! I am absolutely ecstatic... and simultaneoulsy concerned with how excited I am to be chosen to beta test content management software. It's almost as fantastic as winning the lottery. Almost :-)

As a TypePad beta tester, I have agreed not to publicly discuss details about TypePad or the beta testing process, but I'm allowed to indicate that I am a beta tester (which I have) and link to my TypePad weblog (which I will). The problem is, I can't think of anything to write! Not for a brand new blog anyway. So I may just temporarily post to TypePad and provide links from here. Stay tuned.

If you remember the cartoon "Road Runner", you'll appreciate this online catalog of ACME products! Curtesy of this MetaFilter thread.

The word "irony" is often misused (abused!), so I was interested in reading this Slashdot commentary about an article in The Guardian explaining what it means.

It's a long article, so if you give up reading it partway, here's an excerpt of a post from Slashdot reader lgordon, who provides a definition of "irony" from the book "An Incomplete Education":

"Unlike wit, its meaning, or rather bundle of meanings, has held fairly steady over time: Always it's implied that there are two sets of listeners keyed in to the same statement, story, or piece of information, and that one of them gets it--sees it for what it is, in all its poignancy or complexity or awfulness--and the other one doesn't. If you're in the former set, congratulations: The ability to recognize irony, expecially in writing (where there are no facial expressions or vocal inflections to help it, and you, along), has for centuries been regarded as one of the surest tests of intelligence and sophistication." -- An Incomplete Education, J. Jones & W. Wilson, (c) 1987

According to lgordon, the book defines the five types of irony: Socratic, dramatic/tragic, romantic, cosmic and verbal, which he summarizes:

Socratic : asking pointless, naive questions while feigning ignorance to blast holes in the victim's belief system, dogma, etc.

Dramatic/tragic : The audience knows something that the character's on stage do not. Ex: Oedipus vows revenge on the murderer of his father, and everyone in the audience gasps. (In case you skipped fourth grade that week, Oedipus killed his father without realizing it...)

Cosmic : God mocks or sports with mortals. Like in "Clash of the Titans," where Zeus and Hera are playing games with the little clay figurines...

Romantic : Where the author reveals that the characters are fictions created and manipulated by him. (Sort of jumping back to the meta-level while in narrative). I wonder if the woman at the beginning of "Hitchhikers" (whose story it was not about) would qualify as this...

Verbal : Using juxtaposition or understatement to say something which (sometimes) may be vague enough to leave you wondering exactly what the intended meaning is. Ex: Calling a 500 pound athlete "Tiny" is irony, in and of itself. It would be "extra special ironic" if you were calling him "Tiny" when the prevailing rumor says that he has undersized genitalia. It would be even more ironic if "Tiny" called himself "Tiny" without knowing about the rumor.

I also liked the example Slashdot reader xYoni69x provided from George Carlin's book "Brain Droppings":

Irony deals with opposites, it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same home-town, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is coincidence ... If a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a truck, he is a victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of irony.

I've been trying to find a suitable deodorant/antiperspirant. There was an old rumor that using these products may lead to breast cancer, but this urban legend was debunked. Now people are worried about antiperspirants containing aluminum, which has been linked to Alzheimer's disease, although the research has been inconclusive.

Even forgetting about these dubious scares, I'm concerned about any product that blocks my body's natural cooling mechanism. Antiperspirants work by plugging your pores so you don't sweat. Sure, I may smell better using them, but given how much I work out, my body would probably overheat. Not acceptable. Plus I have yet to find a commercial deodorant/antiperspirant that doesn't have an overpowering smell. Most fragrances, including perfumes, give me a headache.

Following the advice of a fellow group exercise instructor on Turnstep.com, I bought a Crystal Stick from Whole Foods. It's AWESOME! I can't recommend it enough. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, it's fragrance free (yay!), non-sticky, non-staining, eliminates odor, leaves no white residue and environmentally safe. According to the website, it's "made of 100% mineral salts with no artificial coloring or ingredients, chemicals or dyes". It works by killing the bacteria that causes the odor, as opposed to masking the smell. Makes sense to me!