Six years ago, almost to the day, I had a heart attack. It wasn’t much of an attack, as cardiac events go — it was myocarditis, after all. It wasn’t caused by blockage, or high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, or any of the USUAL things that trigger arrests in 31-year- old males. I spent three days in the hospital being very bored (and a little scared, yes), and came home fit as a fiddle. Well… the strings needed to be tightened a bit, because the drugs they wanted me to take were worse than the myocarditis, but as soon as I ditched the battery of useless meds (including a blood-pressure regulator that prevented me from running up stairs, doing more than a couple of push-ups, or getting anything else up, if you catch my drift) I was fine.

They measured my cholesterol while I was in the hospital, and it was around 100. I was spectacularly healthy, and the ratio of HDL to LDL supported that. I’d been low-carb dieting at the time, and exercising upwards of 10 hours per week. Then I caught the “Luke Skywalker” flu — the virus made it all the way to the reactor core, and my heart muscle swelled up. That’s what myocarditis is: a viral or bacterial infection and resulting inflammation of the heart muscle.

Understand, though, that my Dad spent at least two decades being obese, had myocarditis in his 40’s, and then had a massive and quite fatal coronary at age 56. Regardless of how healthy I felt back in 1999, I also felt that there was this hereditary sword hanging over my head, and if I couldn’t move out of the way, perhaps I could put on a helmet.

So ever since 1999 I’ve been interested in my cholesterol levels. Some of you may remember the “guess Howard’s total cholesterol level” contest I ran for three or four years in a row each winter. Sadly, I’ve never dieted-and-exercised as effectively as I did back in 1999, so the levels have been as high as 235. Back when I was twenty-five years old I had my cholesterol measured, and it was around 200, maybe 205. The few times I’ve been tested while low-carbing, It’s been down around 150 to 175.

As far as I can tell, then, my cholesterol levels are high when I’m on the high-carb, high- junk, 21st-century fast-food-forager diet, and healthy or low when I’m doing some variant of the low-carb thing.

The latest round of results bear that out. I’ve been low-carbing, working out at least twice a week, and enjoying staple items like bacon-wrapped grilled chicken breast, butter-fried cheese, bacon and eggs, and ham-and-egg-drop soup for 16 days now. This morning I took a home cholesterol test, and was almost off the chart… on the low end. The chart only went down to “21 = 119” (a reading of “21” on the chart-calibrated device corresponds to a total cholesterol level of 119) and the fuzzy purple line generated by a few drops of my blood only went up to about 20.5. Eh. Call it 21. That puts my total cholesterol at or just south of 119, which is the lowest measurement I’ve had since 1999.

Needless to say, I’m pleased. My weight may have plateau’d for the last week, but I feel great, my clothing fits better, and now I know that my cholesterol has retreated from the borders of the Undiscovered Country.

Paul Mirecki has some odd ideas about freedom of speech. In this article about his “forced resignation” from his post as Chairman of Religious Studies, his statement to the press is quoted:

“The University penalized me and denied me my Constitutionally protected right to speak and express my mind.”

Hmmm… Really? It seems to me that he’s expressing his mind right now, in front of a national audience. What the University denied him was the opportunity to be paid out of taxpayer money for teaching things that the University didn’t want him to.

Let’s face it: journalists, teachers, TV and Film producers and everybody else who gets paid to provide a message to an audience do so because of PRIVILEGE, not because of RIGHT. If their employers decide they don’t like the message, their employers can AND SHOULD discipline them, or even fire them. These people can still speak their minds, but they don’t have a constitutionally-protected right to get PAID for that.

And whether or not Intelligent Design is a thinly-veiled crock of fundamentalist intellectual dishonesty, it looks pretty bad for the Chair of Religious Studies at your university to be denigrating religious people. Of COURSE you remove him. Send him off to “Social Sciences” and let him flame the “fundies” from there. But if donations to the school drop off, you might have to let him go altogether.

He’ll land on his feet. There are plenty of educational institutions that will cater to his style of teaching.

–Howard

(note: It’s possible that there is legislation with court precedent in Kansas or at the Federal level that protects teachers and their precious tenure from the fallout of their big mouths. But that’s not “constitutionally-protected” free speech.)

I saw Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe today, and loved it. I’m at the Keep right now, on wireless, so I’ll spare you a full review. That said, here are some high points:

1) C.S. Lewis’ original story was an allegory for the Atonement of Christ. The film preserves that perfectly. You don’t HAVE to be Christian to appreciate this, but it will be pretty hard to miss.

2) The child actors were awesome.

3) The effects were great. It didn’t seem like a cutting-edge effects flick, but the effects were solid enough to fully support the story. And Aslan and the beavers were the most believable talking animals I think I’ve ever seen.

I really appreciated the message of the film, especially at this time of year. Obviously, I recommend you see it in the theaters — Aslan’s roar just won’t sound right on any but the best home systems.

–Howard

The theme for this year’s Ward Christmas Party was “A Night In Bethlehem,” and they asked us to come in costumes, if possible. There was a wide variety of bathrobe shepherds and all kinds of bathtowel turbans, and the whole evening centered around the reading and play-acting of The Nativity. It was a wonderful evening. We ate, we talked with friends, we sang Christmas hymns (the ones about Jesus — not the ones about snow), and basically had a great time while not forgetting for a moment whose holy day we were preparing for.

I got to be a tax collector. Before people could file into the gymnasium (which was VERY extensively decorated to look like a marketplace in Judea — complete with hebrew text on the signs) they had to be taxed. The tax was canned food, to be donated to the Utah Food Bank. I collected the donations, and then handed out plastic coins to be exchanged for the meal and the activities. I had a large surplus of currency which I blatantly used, in true tax-collector form, to buy some extra meal goodies for my family. There was plenty of food left at the end of the evening, and everybody got seconds or thirds, so it’s not like my obvious embezzlement caused any shortages — it was just fun to get into the character, and to always have lots of little gold-plastic coins on my person when everybody else had run out.

And role-playing or no, I wept during the Nativity. It wasn’t especially well-acted, and the singing was congregational unison rather than anything with actual harmony to it, but that’s not what makes for a good Nativity play. For me, I just have to be reminded of the gift of the Atonement, and of the miracle of forgiveness. Even a thieving, embezzling tax-collector can repent and find salvation.

Last year I ranted angrily about how the Ward had put on a “Polar Express” party for the kids, with no mention of Christ at all. I voiced my complaints quietly to the Bishop a year ago, and maybe that’s why this year’s theme was so much more in line with the true meaning of Christmas. But at the party this year I was too uplifted to bother feeling vindicated. There’s no room for an “in your face” attitude when you’re surrounded by reminders of God’s forgiveness.

As an added bonus, we came home with half a box of oranges and a dozen apples. We’re not hurting for food (I just bought 4lbs of bananas this afternoon), but the kids will really appreciate some more fresh fruit. Oh, and I let my kids raid the tax-collector’s table. We’ve got fifty or sixty of these plastic gold coins now… “tackses,” Gleek calls them, overarticulating the “X.” Ah, the currency games they’ll be playing tomorrow.

–Howard