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In Reply to: "but you sunk in about 10 inches" posted by neolith on October 20, 2006 at 11:35:27:
Neo,THis really borders on talking "about other people".
See, I have a fairly strict vegan diet, and haven't had a burger in about 6 years. Fries yes, burgers no.
The couch was a dog, and that is why I left it behind.
Without experiencing it first hand, I never would have thought where the listner's head was would make that big of difference.
Perhaps some of the "brightness" issues on the smaller mags are really a height issue.
Follow Ups:
I wonder what the sonic differences would be.All my living room furniture is leather (the firm, sit on top kind, not the sink down stuff). I know that having a high back and reclined seating position isn't good for sound, so only my couch is used for serious listening. It would be interesting to do a furniture test and see how that effects sound, maybe make some general guidelines about furniture for people serious about audio.
On the diet note, my twin brother turned vegitarian in college (and converted to Buddhism)- so to aggrevate him I went on an almost all-meat (2+ lbs a day) diet for a little over a year. The results: he lost a lot of muscle mass but grew a gut (had to buy new pants); while I stayed about the same weight but had my body fat and cholesterol drop so low (87 combined) that my doctor ordered me to eat more carbs and fat. This is before I knew what Atkins was and seemed counter to what everyone thought was going to happen. Granted I was working out, but even I was surprised how much of a difference diet makes and how much fat you burn off when you eat that much protien. Now that I'm over 30, I still eat a lot meat and work out so that my clothes from college fit- but I try to do everything in moderation, which I think is the key to being healthy (my twin brother also moderated and started eating a little meat/eggs/fish). I'm sure being vegan is more about personal beliefs (which I respect- at least you believe in something), but I thought you might find it interesting, as there are not many examples of such genectically similar people taking such drastically different diets.
That was funny...the couch was cloth. I am not THAT hardcore, I am betting some of my shoes are leather.I do it for 3 main reasons.
1. Heart disease/ high blood pressure in the family. It would be just a matter of time before the doc pronounced me dead, or told me to cut out all meat...or worse, I had a stroke. Trying to be proactive. I knew a guy when I lived in Chi town...talk about a meat town, who had hassled the hell out of me about not eating meat. He had a similtaneous stroke/ heart attack and fortunately survived. Now we trade Tofu recipes.
2. Modern meat in america is not what I would call natural. I am not one of those "oh the poor animals" people. I just am concerned about all the growth hormones and chemicals they inject the cows/ chickens with. (One nice side effect of this is that 15 year old girls have enormous (audio?)racks these days). Plus, the whole thing being petroleum based instead of sun based is not sustainable.
3. It is cheaper. More money for Maggie.
Finally, animal waste is a huge pollution issue too.
http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/def/aw_gen.html
Interesting data on you and your brother. Excercise is definatley an important ingredient of any lifestyle, and were it not for Jim Fixx, I would say more important...but you really have to have both. Also there are many many vegetarians that don't have a complete diet, and IMHO that diet kind of leads itself to an imbalance, with dairy being way too relied upon. You are right about moderation. I constantly have to be careful about getting too much protein and not enough carbs.
ANyhow, I never intended to expain all this stuff publicly. It is hard enough to advocate sideways maggie setups let alone "freaky diets"...even if they are sound, cut down on cancer rates immensely, and can solve some environmental problems:
I think it all comes down to there are no easy answers. Just like in audio, everything has a trade-off. Planar speakers may have a transparency and audio qualities that we appreciate, but have trade-offs in difficulty of placement, size, lack of efficiency, etc. CD's travel well, have low measured distortion and are readily accessible; but many people prefer the "natural" sound of turntables, despite the pops and hisses. New Class D amplifiers have high efficiency and low measured distortion, but some people prefer the warmth of tubes.Diets often have similar tradeoffs:
Trans Fat (a.k.a. hydrogenated vegetable oil/vegetable shortening) was promoted as a healthy alternative to saturated fat-laden butter and lard. Turns out trans-fat is worse for you than animal fat. If you use regular vegetable oil (which has lower molecular weight) and try to cook with the same temperatures/durations as trans fat/saturated fat, you run into problems of polymerization (oil turning into plastic), which can release carcinogens.
Phytoestrogens (a.k.a. isoflavones) found in soy, are the flip-side of the coin to BGH in beef. These plant-based chemicals act like estrogen (female hormones) in the human body (which can actually be beneficial for post-menopausal women, people with risk for some cancers and men with ailments related to high testosterone levels like enlarged prostate and high cholesterol). However, they have their own set of potential problems. For infants, soy formula has been linked to impaired sexual development of males, impaired thyroid function, behavioral problems, and hundreds of times more the estrogen exposure than breast milk or cows milk (whether the cows were given hormones or not). Israel has even placed recommended limits on soy consumption. In our current society, high testosterone is not really needed for adults- the muscle mass, high cholesterol and increased blood clotting served more of a purpose when heavy labor was a daily practice and men were more likely to die of bodily trauma at 30 than heart disease at 70. In a sedentary lifestyle, women's bodies are far better suited for inactivity and high body fat (it has been estimated that men could live up to 7 years longer if they got castrated as adults, kind of like the way neutered dogs live longer). I kind of like the way I am now, testosterone and all.
Other vegetable-based protein sources do not have the phytoestrogens, but often have a lot of fat (nuts have twice as many grams of fat as they do protein) or have poor amino acid profiles and utilization rates in the human body compared to animal products (e.g., protein in beef liver has almost twice the utilization rate compared to protein in wheat). Considering protein concentrations in natural vegetable sources and utilization rate, you may need to eat much more fat and calories to supply the same amount of utilized protein as you would with a lean cut of meat- but you avoid the saturated fat and cholesterol.
Like Audio, there are people who have the same philosophy but dramatically different results: UcD versus cheap Class D car amps, PA speakers versus Avantgarde, the wide variety of class A/B amps. In diet it is the same- many vegetarians use a lot of salt, fat and sugar to make their food taste good while sitting in front of the TV. However, some carnivores eat lean cuts of meat, exercise and keep their weight in check. And results vary: Linda McCartney was an activist-vegetarian and died at 56, while George Burns was almost an activist for an "unhealthy" lifestyle and lived to be 100. On one side you have vegetarians in India with low heart disease rates, and, on the other, Inuits with virtually no heart disease and diets almost exclusively of meat and fish. It is hard to make sweeping generalizations about either group.Just like audio, there are general rules to follow regardless of philosophy: for audio we seek flat frequency response and low distortion, for diet low fat and sugar. Overall, it seems like you have to use your best judgment, keep an open mind and not follow fads blindly. If I followed fads in audio, I would probably own Bose. I would still have horn speakers and class A/B amps if I single-mindedly followed the "high-efficiency" dogma. I'm sure there are many people who have different opinions than I do on almost every issue, but I try to use my best judgment and do what's best for me.
Best of luck
I agree with you about the height. My very first Maggies were SMG's and I always preferred sitting in a bean bag chair (this was in 1979 or 1980) . I didn't like having a back rest so I moved up to MG-II's. At the time I probably didn't know enough to put 2 and 2 together but in retrospect the reason to move up probably had a lot to do with head height.
I may be an egoist but at least I don't talk about other people.
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