Matt Metzgar

Enjoying Nature

Vancouver Art Gallery

I really don't like writing negative posts, but I must say the Vancouver Art Gallery was probably the worst museum I've ever visited.  It almost seemed like it was some type of practical joke as I went through the different levels.

Some highlights:

• A picture of a door
• A picture of a mobile home
• A picture of a homeless person
• A blowup of a real estate ad
• A bunch of shoes glued together
• A projector showing a man running through the snow

All this art was zero-talent, zero-creativity in my opinion.  If I'm paying to see art, I want to see something skill-based, something effort-based.  Anyone can take a picture of a door, what type of talent/training do you need for that?  I'm looking to see a product of effort and training - something that the average person can not do.

It felt like "the emperor had no clothes".  They built up things with the description, "this door represents obstacles that people face in fulfilling their potential...".  But really, it's just a picture of a door.

Throughout the museum, they had all these mentions of how they've lacked financial support.  No wonder!  With art like I saw, no one would have a reason to contribute!  If anything, they should be giving people refunds.

Back from Vancouver

I'm back from a conference in Vancouver.  It was a sustainability conference where I was one of the presenters.  My presentation was based on a paper that just got accepted for publication, so I will talk more about it in due course.

I thought Vancouver was a very beautiful city.  It had a lot of green areas to it, and the weather was decent for this time of the year.  The architecture was very interesting - there was an Asian influence to some of it, and there weren't many cookie-cutter houses.

One other thing I noticed: not too many fast food restaurants.  I saw one McDonalds the whole time I was there driving around.  I would also say that the rate of overweight/obesity was much lower there than what I see in the US.

The only dud was the Vancouver Art Museum, which is worthy of a separate post.

Overall, it was great city that would be worth visiting again.

2012 Goals

While I'm not making any New Year resolutions, there are a few areas I plan to focus on in 2012.

1) Less screen time.  It gets to be too much if I do computer work at the office and then use the computer at night during leisure time.

2) Eating to hunger.  I see this as a natural skill that unfortunately can be weakened by constant exposure to energy-dense foods.

3) More sprinting.  I plan to go back to weekly sprint sessions.  In the back of my mind, I think about entering one of those masters track competitions (now that I'm 40!).  There's a good chance I could get crushed, but I think the training and the goal pursuit would be worthwhile.

It's a short list, but it's about all I have time for.

2011 Year in Review

This is just a brief recap of this year.  2011 was a very busy year with the move and the new job.  I haven't had the time to blog as much, but hopefully this will change at some point.

Physically, my biggest success was, without a doubt, my squat experiment.  It is now no problem for me to do a deep barefoot squat, where for years before I couldn't.  All it took was two weeks of concentrated practice.

Nutrition-wise, I think the new line of research on eating in the absence of hunger looks to be the most promising.  I hope to write more about this in the new year.

Also, this year I spoke at the first Ancestral Health Symposium.  I think the seed has been planted, and now the event will continue to grow each year.

All in all, it was a good year.  I don't have any complaints!

Shorts in January

I thought my shorts in December experience would not be topped.  Lo and behold, today I was out in the yard in shorts and also barefoot.  It must have been around 65 degrees.

Unbelievable for January 1st - especially for me moving here from the snow belt.  What a way to start the year!

Merry Christmas 2011

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

Merry Christmas, signing off for a while.

Searching for Binary Solutions

Most of my research time this semester has been spent on educational research.  It's interesting, as I've started to see the same pitfalls in this literature as the nutrition literature.

A key problem many people propose simple, binary solutions to issues.  In nutrition, some people have fallen under the spell that high-carb is bad, and low-carb is good.  Regardless that it's not accurate, it produces a nice, simple mental package that requires no further thought. 

In education, you have a similar disagreement between the "constructivists" and the lecture group.  The lecture folks argue that students need direct instruction.  The constructivists argue that students should be allowed to explore and be guided to create their own knowledge.

In actuality, a combination of the two is best.  Studies have shown that having the instructor present a worked example and then having students try problems is superior to either giving all examples or all problems.  Unfortunately, this solution doesn't give anyone that neat, binary answer they were looking for.

I wonder if the tendency towards binary solutions is a part of our evolutionary psychology.  Maybe it's existence allows mental energy to be saved.  Unfortunately, its potential existence also biases people towards simplistic, one-dimensional solutions.

Shorts in December

The other day I was out raking leaves, and it was warm enough to wear shorts!  I am loving this Carolina weather.  There are so many days of the year when you can be outside and physically active.

Open Access

I am in the home stretch of getting another Paleo-related paper published.  This time there is an option for the paper to be open access.  The bad news is that it costs a good chunk of money!  The fee would be around $3,200 or so.  Yikes! 

It feels strange that now I'm on the author end of open access.  There have been articles that I've wanted to read and wished were open access but were not.  Now as an author, my article won't be open access either, but there's nothing I can really do about it.  It's just the economics of the situation.

Oh well, at least there's interlibrary loan...