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Sandy Kumskov

AUSTRALIA


Joined November 21st 2007

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Off topic - Tech Woes

September 7th 2008 01:05
I've had a bit of a disastrous month technology-wise.

First I got a nasty Trojan virus either from a friend through MSN or by opening the attachment to an email purporting to be from UPS - I was expecting a parcel so didn't really think about it :/. My big-name-brand virus scanner cleaned up the MSN one. Except that it didn't, as I found out a few weeks later when my computer started to do some really strange things. The upshot of googling and forum reading was that the trojan had opened a backdoor to some others to download and install themselves, and yes, the big-name-brand virus scanenrs weren't picking them up.

In the middle of all this, just a week away from launching howtoloveyourbody.com, my 6 week old portable hard-drive died. I mean dead. It was a mechanical fault with the arm that reads the disk (apparently), and when my heart stopped trying to bash its way through my chest (yes, I did tap ), I was able to get the data recovered with medium-damage to my wallet (nearly $1200). Mostly I only needed the howtoloveyourbody folder in it, but had to pay for everything to be retrieved, no option to select just the new stuff, argh. While I waiting for my data to be recovered, I went back to the trojan situation and was able to finally clear the little bugger out using the strategy below.

Sadly Windows was a bit of a mess by then and it took hours and an eventual phone session with a really excellent Microsoft tech to get it sorted. And all this after nearly 12 years of such minimal computer problems that I can't even remember them! Post-Windows-reinstall I've had to reinstall my printer, scanner, ITunes and I'm sure repair more software as I find I can't use it, just a monumental enormous waste of time.

The reason I'm telling you this is to suggest a strategy you might like to follow:

1. Don't accept jpgs from friends on msn, unless you talk to them first! Cancel the file request until you can talk to them.

2. Don't open any emails that purport to be from FexEd or UPS

2. Get Trojan Remover. Install and run it, and let it clean up anything it finds. I used the free version, it did a great cleanup, but I think I will register it, I want the protection! Then do the next step.

3. get ESET Nod32, it's *the* best anti-virus, confirmed by the really excellent Microsoft tech, and comes with a free trial, which cleaned up my problem. I have since registered it. And it's Australian! I've uninstalled my big-brand-name antivirus, there's almost nothing on their site about the UPS mess, and certainly it wasn't there when I needed it!

4. get a data backup strategy in place. The one I settled on is called GoodSync, and it also comes with a free trial! I do love software that you can try-before-you-buy, saves it gathering dust in my cupboard when I decide I don't like it! Actually now I look at the website again, there's a permanent free version, with fewer features obviously, but it keeps your hard disk and your backup synchronised with one another, so they're both always current. My six week old backup cost me $1200 A one day old one would have been a real walletsaver!
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What Men Really Want

September 6th 2008 21:23
Ahhh Cosmo - now and then in your pages there's something worth reading, around all the glamour ads and how to be sexy guff.

This month (October 08 issue) there's the results of an online survey of over 500 men, asking them what they think of women. Why is this important? Because women diet and cut and exercise and stress their bodies into disordered eating and ill health, in the name of being attractive, presumably for guys (though there's other research... another time)!

Cosmo's results are repeating what the men I know also say. Most of them, anyway.

Mostly what it says is summed up by a comment in Ariel Levy's excellent book Female Chauvinist Pigs, made by a boy whose name I can't remember and I'm not going to look up the reference now. Ariel asked him what he thought about girls constantly dieting, and he said that he and most of the guys he knew didn't see the awful stuff about their bodies that the girls saw, and they just wanted to be with the girls. Not "get with", *be* with. In other words, men like being around women who like themselves.

And Cosmo's survey results echo this:

Cellulite and Stretch marks: 85% of men say they don't notice them and don't care if their partner has them. Only 15% said it was a turn-off for them. I'd be asking that 15% what they'd want their woman to do about something that happens naturally to almost all women.

A flat stomach or a good sense of humour: 87% prefer a good sense of humour. As one 23 year old guy says, a flat stomach doesn't last very long, a sense of humour is for life.

Regarding which size is most attractive: 10% like size 6-8, 81% like size 10 - 12, 11% like size 14 . That sounds a lot like the natural distribution of sizes amongst the population to me. Message: only a small percentage of guys like really thin girls, and from the comments it seems they know the difference between naturally really thin and beating-body-into-submission thin. More guys like bigger girls (ie 14 ) than like really thin girls.

What does a man think when a woman orders dessert: 78% think: she wants dessert. That's all, nothing else. LOL! rock on guys! 15% think thank god she's taking a night off the diet, and just 7% think "she's going to get fat". Probably the same guys who think stretch marks are a turn off.

About women who complain about their body weight: 74% said women who complain about their weight are a bigger turnoff than those who maybe could lose a few kilos but don't let it bother them. 86% said they'd rather have a relationship with a woman who enjoys food, only 14% said they prefer a woman to constantly diet. Same mob as in the cellulite para, above.

They asked the guys to describe the last woman they slept with. 60% thought she looked great, 30% thought her breasts were fantastic, only 10% were unhappy with something (eg her breasts were too small). As regards gravity-challenged breasts, 62% said they loved it, 30% said they never noticed, and just 8% said they didn't like it. That's a full 92% of guys who love the effect of natural gravity on breasts, ladies!

About your weight: 50% of men said you'd have to gain 10-15 kgs (that's 35 pounds) before it turned them off, and 25% of men said it would take a weight gain of 20-30 kilos. One guy (age 21) said he'd never leave a girl just for gaining weight, another (age 28) said he wouldn't care at all if his girlfriend gained weight, and a third (age 26) said it would have to be a large amount for him to notice in the first place!

So why are we all starving ourselves and hating our bodies anyway??

I'm reminded so strongly of Maya Anglou's Phenomenal Woman - go google and read it. It's about the real physical power of a woman, and it's all about attitude to yourself, baby!
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Tyra and Body Image (LINK)

September 6th 2008 02:33
I'm not a big fan of daytime TV, usually too busy. But sometimes I catch Tyra Banks on cable at odd times, and I saw a show she did where she talked to young girls about their bodies. I was sickened at the time, that these young girls, some just 7 years old, would think of themselves in such a negative way They're children for goodness sake, they should be out running and playing and jumping and giggling and having fun, not worrying about if they're fat or not! Man our anorexic culture is more revolting every day!

Anyway, yesterday I was googling for something or other and up came a link to the video (next to the headline above). I watched it, and then read the comments below.

Now I feel sick.

What are we doing to our kids, that young women like those posting in response to that vid are so distressed that they're a size 4 (that's an Aussie/UK size 6) - that's an EXTRA small in anyone's language, and they want to be a size 0!!

Hello! Helpless, 3 month old babies are a size 0!! Not full grown women! (I sometimes wonder if that's the point of all this - to make women helpless, they're certainly weak if they're not eating enough to sustain a normal weight!)

I'm not bagging the girls who want this - they've been taught that this is how a woman must be.

Again, what are we doing to our kids?

What are we doing to our women?

Every single one of us has to take responsibility for this, it IS a crisis. How do we do that? The same way we fight every other kind of bigotry, because bigotry it is.

The truth is that fat=unhealthy is a LIE! It has NO scientific research to support it. So it's a fashion, an opinion, to think of people who have more body fat, as somehow deficient or lazy or unworthy.

And it begins with YOU! If you think of your OWN body fat as somehow making you less worth in ANY way, how can you possibly think otherwise of other people?

You ARE responsible for your thoughts, and you can make a change in your thoughts.

And you can begin now. When you change yourself, those around you also change.

It won't change overnight, but we will reach the tipping point, and god I hope it's soon enough to save our kids from a lifetime of severely ill health, because they've abused their bodies in their foundational years.
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More on Health and Fat... (LINK)

September 5th 2008 06:43
Scientists are starting to speak out more and more about the truth of their research into body fat and what it really means for our health.

A new study co-authored by MaryFran Sowers, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, says that fitness is more important to the state of your health than is your weight! This information has been around for decades, is often discussed in the books about the fallacy and politics of the obesity epidemic, bust, as Ms Sowers says, the terms "overweight" is often used indiscriminately


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Is this the answer to what makes us fat? (LINK)

September 4th 2008 05:36
The Telegraph UK reports that British and Swedish scientists have made some interesting discoveries about human fat cells.

It seems that they were able to track radioactive isotopes in the fat cells of people who lived during the years 1955-1963, when much land-based nuclear weapons testing was going on around the planet


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Adsense step-by-step?

September 3rd 2008 01:32
Hiya

Is there a step-by-step for adsense? I've created my adsense account, been approved and now trying to get it on orble. Adsense gives me ten lines of html, orble has one little box. What part of the code do I add to orble? It's just not clear, maybe I've missed something


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Another reason to get moving (LINK)

September 2nd 2008 23:58
I'm always interested in finding another reason to encourage people to move their bodies. We're so hooked into the idea of exercise needing to be about "the burn" and lose or control weight, that when we don't care about weight for whatever reason, exercise often also goes out the window!

Driving to my clinic this morning I was listening to an interview on Radio National with a researcher, Professor Nicola T. Lautenschlager, from the University of Western Australia who's been working with older people to try to improve their memory


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Attention Queenslanders!

September 1st 2008 22:13
This post is off-topic for this blog, and I make no apologies!

I like Premier Anna Bligh, 1 because she's a woman at the top, leading the way for other women to bring much-needed balance to our political arena; and 2 because she seems to me to be accessible and reasonable


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Cancer for Breakfast?

August 31st 2008 23:03
First, what the article says:

The Sunday Mail's headline (31-08-08) says: Fried Brekkie "a cancer risk


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Mums rule!

August 30th 2008 06:19
Australian Healthy Food tells us that mothers are starting to distrust packaged food!

89% don't trust the claims on food packages - and who would with milo cereal being pushed as a great healthy food for kids when it's mostly sugar


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Recent Comments

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Adsense step-by-step?

September 3rd 2008 02:40


Body Mad

not to mention, I was looking at the google referral codes on orble, no wonder it wasn't making sense, tch!


thanks for help

Sandy

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Adsense step-by-step?

September 3rd 2008 02:28


Body Mad

I have read them, Jon, having brain freeze I think. I enter google_client_ID? Gee it seems obvious now I look again

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Chemicals and Hormones are Changing our Children

September 2nd 2008 07:36


Body Mad

Manda, I think the Bisphenol A is probably hugely at fault here. Experiments with Agouti mice show massive hormonal changes in babies born to mothers injected with BPA, stimulating early puberty as you say, and also causing a huge change in the way the body stores fat. In the mice it even changed their hair colour! That can't be good. Some critics say the amounts we absorb each day are miniscule but the mice researchers say they used proportionate amounts in the mice less than we'd take in, in an average day. And it's almost impossible to avoid! I switched to glass storage for food and tossed out the cling wrap about five years ago, but of course my pyrex dishes have plastic lids - I reckon I can cope with that because the food doesn't touch it. But the food comes out of packets, no matter how hard I try to avoid plastic - it's all around us. I guess all we can do until the regulators catch up, is try to minimise the damage. Not so easy to do, unfortunately. Thanks for a great post

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Alanis Morisette is Heavy

August 30th 2008 06:42


Body Mad

I started reading this blog at Keely Shaye Smith, went to Jennifer Love Hewitt, and now Alanis - what's the deal with caring how much body fat these or any other women have?

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Jennifer Love Hewitt Gets Skinny

August 30th 2008 06:17


Body Mad

Ah I'm getting it now.... a woman has to be skinny AND 'toned'! I wonder, will a woman like Jennifer Love Hewitt (or anyone, really) ever be 'toned' enough to pass the test? What are the criteria for the 'good enough' test anyway? Can you please post them so everyone can look and see if they pass?

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Keely Shaye Smith Still Fat

August 30th 2008 05:46


Body Mad

Looks to me like she's fit, active, happy, well-proportioned and with great self esteem. Which she'd have to have to brave the fat-phobia of people who don't' know her and should care less.

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on We won't say we're fat?

February 2nd 2008 20:35


Body Mad

Hi Susan
Well done you on being so comfy in your own skin, and for finding a doc who's not weight obsessed!

I hadn't heard about wanting to make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese people, but I had heard about pending class actions against restaurants for serving food that makes people obese! Truly nuts, especially considering that science still doesn't know what makes us get fat, it's surely not totally about any one thing, not about food, not about emotion, not about stress, not about hormones. All we know is: it's complicated.

Ain't that a mantra of modern life?

Thanks for the link, I'm off to have a look

Sandy

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on More about vegetariansim

January 28th 2008 20:20


Body Mad

Krystle,

I wonder if you're aware that every study which has looked at diabetes and excess weight, has found that the most important factor in managing the diabetes is movement and eating the right foods?

Every study finds that the diabetes can be very well managed so that its effects are invisible, by only cleaning up (esp moderating sugars and "bad" fats) what a person eats, and having them do moderate exercise. And the improvement happens fast, like a couple of weeks.

And I know thin people who have diabetes as well, even type 2 - it's not a disease of being overweight, it's a disease of being inactive and eating rubbish.

Love your recipes by the way - going to try the apple and walnut today

Sandy

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Changing the look of your Blog (Including Title Banners)

January 24th 2008 07:02


Body Mad

Harry, thanks I just found it! I was in advanced settings, and it's in basic - too obvious for me, it seems

I'll have a go at less ads format, thanks

Comment by Sandy Kumskov
on Changing the look of your Blog (Including Title Banners)

January 24th 2008 03:41


Body Mad

Lovely. Graphic ready to go, but I'm not seeing where to upload it?

I'd also like to be able to put my blog in the centre and no ads in the text - would love to know when this is available. I don't care for the ads in my blog because they're all about dieting, and my blog is anti-diet - so it doesn't really work for me.