Don’t believe the meatheads at the gym. Yoga is not new-age mumbo-jumbo. It’s an intense workout that can add years to your life, strengthen your muscles, relieve stress, and improve your flexibility. It can also be confusing, intimidating and difficult to learn.
No parasite has wriggled into our psyches quite like the tapeworm. The mere mention of one is enough to make most of us squirm. They lurk in our food, twist through our intestines and feast on our meals. They are the stuff of horror stories, occupying a very personal and frightening niche in our minds.
A snoring man can reach 85 decibels, making as much racket as a vacuum cleaner or a blender mashing margaritas. Sleepwalkers have been known to cook and eat full meals and even have sex during sleep. Narcoleptics can nod off at any time — during conversations, meals and while operating heavy machinery. Fatal Familial Insomnia, a rare brain-wasting disease, throws people into a fit of wakefulness that eventually kills them.
The allure of a safari through the Serengeti or a trek up Kilimanjaro may inspire you to strike out for the heart of Africa, but before you make like Hemingway, there are a few things you should know. The huge continent is teeming with bug-borne, water-borne and human-borne diseases. Malaria poses one of the greatest threats to travelers, but yellow fever, cryptosporidiosis and African sleeping sickness are real dangers as well.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Some guys will stick to that motto for everything, including their own bodies. But your body won’t always tell you when something is broken. The following silent ailments can cause big health problems; some are even certified killers. Luckily, a little prevention goes a long way. Keep an eye on these health problems and they won’t get the best of you.
Alternative medicines and techniques claim to cure all, but most are dubious at best. We’ve come a long way from the days when crackpot medicine men sold dubious nostrums like snake oil from the back of covered wagons. Still, many of us are all too eager to buy into the latest natural or alternative miracle cure, healing technique or health philosophy. Guys are particularly vulnerable to such fodder — there’s nothing more appealing than an herb that could increase sexual potency, a simple bracelet that could lower blood pressure or a magnet that could reduce joint pain. Keep in mind, however, that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
When cars had big fins and the Space Race wasn’t just a video game, engineered food was all the rage, and kids dropped all their lunch money on synthetic astronaut drinks and freeze-dried ice cream. Today, engineered food has a somewhat different stigma. Preservatives and food colorings are suspect and the latest, greatest morsels science has to offer — genetically modified organisms — can be downright scary. But before you make any snap judgments about the scientists who are working to make the world a better place, take the time to learn what Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are.
You devour too many donuts, scarf down more than your fair share of cheeseburgers and pound more pints than any man should — and it’s starting to show. Maybe you’re a little pudgy and soft around the edges. Maybe your favorite jeans don’t fit anymore. Perhaps school children laugh and point as you waddle by, squealing gleefully as they mock your strained steps. Either way, it’s time to lose weight. If only it came off as easily as it piled on. If only there was a miracle pill that would melt the fat away with a few easy doses. But wait; there just might be such a pill. Since the dawn of the industrial age, scientists, doctors and quacks have worked diligently to devise diet pills, or something similar, with the goal of eliminating excess body fat. Some strategies have actually been successful, producing tonics that can make you as skinny as Iggy Pop after a bad night. Others are about as effective as a sack of diet potato chips. Keep reading to find out which diet pills work and which ones don’t.
Let’s face it, bikes are dangerous. It’s part of their appeal. There’s nothing like screaming down a mountain road on two wheels, skipping over asphalt on a 23-millimeter ribbon of rubber, nothing between your hide and the grating pavement below save a single layer of Lycra. However, you’re all grown up now, people depend on you and you can’t come home from the ride with a set of handlebars lodged in your brain, babbling about all the pretty birds flying around your head. You need to protect your noggin.
They started on the track, rocketing around velodromes at high velocity; then the bike messengers snatched them up, looking for light, fast, uber-reliable bikes that could withstand hellish urban war zones; then the hipsters caught wind, drawn to their clean lines and vintage looks. Now you want in on the action, and you’re eying your first fixed-gear bike.
Infants learn the rhythm and tone of their native language before they’re born. In fact, newborns from different countries have different cries. My mom brought me home in a 1970 Austin America. I can’t consciously remember it, but it burned an obsession with tiny, quirky hatchbacks into the synapses of my brain.
The Delta Wing Racer Indy car concept soared into the Chicago Auto Show this week riding currents of outrage rising off Indy Car racing fans. It’s been called heretical, toy-like, Batmobile, and just plain ugly. But I think it’s amazing. Here’s why:
1. It looks like a spaceship.
I’ve been waiting for a chance to fly a Wipeout-style antigravity racer since the ’90s and the Delta Wing is probably as close as I’m gonna get. And those spectacular spaceship looks serve a purpose. The thing is designed like an aircraft for extremely low drag and tons of downforce just where you need it. See how the back end is shaped like the space shuttle? That puts maximum downforce on the middle of the car, providing supreme stability at speed. The shape is so slippery and stable it can conceivably hit 236 miles per hour at Indianapolis Speedway.
I play a little game during night drives. I try to identify the make, model, and year of cars by the shape of their taillights or headlights alone. I’m pretty good. See, I have an Asperger’s-like obsession with cars and I’m rarely stumped. So when most of the cars at an auto museum absolutely confound me, I know it’s good. And thus, the Blackhawk Museum in Danville, Ca., is good.
The Blackhawk Museum is tucked in the foothills of Mt. Diablo, technically in Danville, just south of the upscale community of Blackhawk. It was built in ‘88 and has 70,000-square-feet of gallery space. The place may be small, but it’s crammed with a stunning, bizarro collection of contraptions. On average, it houses about 90 cars, most on loan to the museum from private collectors.
And it’s quite a collection, spanning automotive history from the early teens right up through the Malaise. But enough talk, let’s take a look at some of these rides.
Photo by Dustin Driver
Published in Solano Magazine
The night air is thick with heat and the sweet smell of fried beaver tails, a Quebecois confection of fried dough known as queue de castor. The St. Laurent River is alive with light, its waters reflecting the nonstop nightlife of Old Montreal. The narrow cobblestone streets teem with people-street performers, musicians belting out jazz, and locals drinking at sidewalk cafés. There are children, college students, clowns, old men with accordions, jugglers, sketch artists and street vendors. Smiles, snickers and laughter are everywhere. This is summer in a city that’s buried under snow for half the year. This is a celebration that will last until autumn, a kind of subdued, down-home revelry that only the Quebecois can pull off. read more »
Published in Solano Magazine
Dating is difficult. Sure, you can peruse the magazine rack at Borders, hoping to strike up a conversation about the latest issue of “GQ” or “Nintendo Power.” Or maybe mill about in the produce department squeezing fruit until an attractive person asks you about tangelo ripeness. You could do those things, but they’re not likely to land you a date. You’ve got to be proactive. You’ve got to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and dating services. Or at least you had to—until now. Today I’ve done it for you, endured three types of assisted courtship: speed dating, professional matchmaking and online dating. Admittedly, I haven’t conducted an exhaustive study of each, but I’ve done enough to help you decide which service is for you. read more »
Photo by Dustin Driver
Published in Solano Magazine
It is dizzyingly hot. The sharp smell of new clothes, perfumes, rubber and strange food marry to form an intoxicating fume that hangs in the air like fog. Bangkok’s Chatuchuk weekend market is a vast labyrinth of more than 15,000 cell-like stalls. It buzzes with the combined voices of more than 200,000 shoppers. Their eyes scour the endless shops for bargains. Their hands tear through mountains of T-shirts, racks of knock-off jeans, piles of watches, lacquered dishes, rice-paper lamps, cell phones, compact disk players, everything imaginable. Merchants scream at the crowds through megaphones at a speed and pitch that makes me wonder if even the Thais can understand them. Food vendors deep fry, sauté, boil, peel and serve everything from cocoanuts to noodles to grasshoppers. The insanity sprawls across 35 acres of land. More than $750,000 will change hands in just under two days of operation. The Chatuchuk Market is the largest of its kind in the world, humanity’s best impression of a beehive. read more »
A small black plate is riveted to the cockpit’s interior next to my head. It reads, “No acrobatic maneuvers, including spins, approved.”
Right. I’ll keep that in mind. From where I’m sitting, it’s nothing but gauges. There must be hundreds of them, needles twitching, numbers recording countless vital statistics. This is my first flight lesson and I’ve known them for maybe 10 minutes. If that one tilts past 30, you’re in trouble. If that one is below 60, you’re in trouble. I don’t know what those two mean, but the instructor tells me they’re not important right now. Above all of them, the windscreen is nothing but gray-blue, the sky shining through the blur of the propeller. The runway is somewhere out there, just barely visible below the plane’s nose. My headset pops. It’s the instructor, sitting in the seat next to mine, a million miles away. “Go ahead and give it full throttle.” read more »
Published in Solano Magazine
At 6:30 p.m. on April 27 at least 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel leaked into the Suisun Marsh. The fuel was bound for Sacramento and Reno via a 14-inch Kinder Morgan pipeline when it pushed its way through a crack and settled over 20 acres of marsh. Operators at Kinder Morgan noticed a drop in pressure soon after the pipe burst. They shut down the line and sent men to look for the leak the following morning. It did not take long to find it. There was enough fuel in the marsh to fill two backyard swimming pools; enough to drive one dozen fully loaded rigs from San Francisco to Los Angeles 43 times. read more »