Karen

headesk - we don't care what the science says

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:08:26 GMT

The reporting of this story on the BBC Radio 4 1pm news today (no transcript available) is worse than the webpage itself. The obesity experts (from the Obesity Forum) are explicitly saying 'we don't care what the science says' - they're not saying 'we're not sure if the study was conducted properly and we need some more evidence to be certain', but are openly, (and indeed without adequate challenge from the journalists), wanting to willfully ignore recommendations that are coming from scientists, because of the 'obesity epidemic'.

It's 2009, research looking again at recommended calorie intake that was done in 1991 is now 18 years old, so it probably is time to look at it again with the benefit of new developments/research techniques/knowledge gained in the past 18 years. The report is from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition - that's a link to a summary of the findings. The report itself.

It's entirely possible to consider, on the balance of the evidence, that obesity is bad and wrong and evil (or simply to consider as many do that being a 'normal' weight is healthy and being an 'abnormal' weight is unhealthy) and still be opposed to the mangaling of science like this - namely, wanting to suppress and ignore the research stating that the recommended calorie intake should be increased by 16% from the 1991 recommendations.

I'm quite surprised at the lack of critical challenge by the BBC journalists - I expect better of Radio 4, because the point being made is so clearly wrong. I'm also quite pleased at the huge hole the Obesity Forum is digging for itself. It's (in this instance, leaving aside generalised fatphobia) leaving itself so open for attack, it should be child's play to shoot it down. Though that said, the SACN summary findings are clearly written against a background of DangerDangerObesity, so they perhaps aren't all that confident in their own recommendations cf:

Revised reference values should not be interpreted to mean that individuals or groups should increase their energy intake. Energy expenditure needs to increase in relation to energy intake from food to reduce the number of overweight and obese people.

I do actually agree with the point that a change in the reference values shouldn't lead to people concluding they automatically now require an extra slice of bread or portion of chips. On the other hand, one has to wonder at the culture where grown ups would rather trust a government recommendation about how many calories they need to consume rather than their own body's signals of hunger. And their second sentence is a linguistic nightmare. We go from the individual to the national without proper thought. Even if it is accepted that reducing the number of overweight and obese people is a good public policy goal, it makes no sense to jump from recommending increased exercise in relation to food intake - which is an individual recommendation to the effect this would have on the total numbers of people classed as overweight and obese without linking the two things together and considering the other complex social factors involved.

SACN fully endorses current recommendations on physical activity that adults should participate in at least 30 minutes of activity of moderate intensity on five or more days a week, while children and young people should aim for 60 minutes every day.

And the expertise of SACN to endorse that recommendation comes from where? It's an advisory committee on nutrition, not an advisory committee with expertise in appropriate exercise levels. It's not recommendation different reference values for people who have particular high energy expenditure eg. Olympic swimmers, coal miners, breast feeding mothers, people recovering from surgery etc. It's toeing the party line, despite its evident lack of expert knowledge to make such an endorsement.

Card carrying solicitor

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:26:53 GMT

On Friday I finally received my Law Society Membership card, having been waiting for it since July 2008. It doesn't really entitle me to anything I couldn't have got in other ways (use of the Law Society's library in Chancery Lane/some discounts the Law Society has negotiated with companies) but it's nice to finally have it.

Television

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:00:19 GMT

In more important news, over the weekend, I've lost reception for Channel 4, so I now have BBC1, BBC2 and ITV and that's it:-( I've tried searching through the whole spectrum and can't find Channel 4 at all (apart from something very blury at about the place it always used to be). I don't imagine there's anything else I can do to get it back? I'm already using an aerial booster. [Freeview doesn't work, I have the wrong sort of aerial and the aerial company couldn't fit me one that would work because the sugar beet factory is the way, I'm intending to set up Freesat at some point in the future (once the satellite decoder boxes are cheaper), so I'm after a temporary solution]

Bisexual

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:50:46 GMT

As a general rule, I try to avoid backing myself into corners and leave myself plenty of room for manoeuvre, as I know I don't always have all the information I need to be certain about things. On an intellectual level, I'd always been willing to accept that I might like women as well as men - it's the kind of thing that's quite clearly possible and it wasn't something I was willing to rule out happening at some point. In many ways it's like my agnosticism. I don't think there is a God/Gods/$other supreme beings, but I'm not sufficiently certain in my belief to be convinced that there isn't. Maybe there is some form of supreme being or other supernatural forces at work in the world? I'm not prepared to do more than believe that we cannot prove the existence of such a being/beings. For a while I described myself as 90% straight for this reason; I didn't think it very likely I'd be attracted to a woman, but accepted it was possible it might happen. And then something along those lines did happen as I'm going to post this very publicly indeed this isn't the place for more detail. So yes, I'm attracted to some women and some men and I identify as bisexual as this is a useful way of describing how attraction isn't gender dependent for me.

Silly question

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:40:13 GMT

How many layers of clothing is it reasonable to be wearing before deciding its cold enough to put the heating on?

EeePC + Vodafone mobile broadband

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:19:09 GMT

I have an EeePC 900 running its original operating system and a Vodafone mobile broadband PAYG dongle K3565 made by HUAWEI.

To make the Vodafone mobile thing work I ended up doing the following:

1. Restoring the EeePC to its factory settings (press F9 while its booting, then you get a menu allowing you tell it to restore factory settings). I'm fairly certain my Eee PC hadn't been properly shut down at some point in the past. The discussion there seems to indicate that this is the way to fix this sort of problem.

2. Opening a terminal window (ctrl + alt + t) and then opening synaptic (software that deals with installing updates/new software) as per the Betavine instructions 'sudo /usr/sbin/synaptic'

3. Reloading the existing repositories [press the reload button] and installing all the upgrades as recommended [press the 'mark all upgrades' button, then the 'apply' button].

4. Then continuing to follow the Betavine instructions, by adding in their repository and installing their specific bits of software.

5. Open the Vodafone connect software while the dongle is in the USB slot. It connected quite happily. The 'email' and 'internet' buttons within the software both open Firefox.

6. Put dongle into USB slot on PC running Windows Vista, install Vodafone's connect software for Windows machines. Connect to the internet using Vodafone mobile thing, discover the telephone number of the SIM card in the dongle (text messages can be sent to it, but not from it (I think because it's a PAYG thing and this is a limitation imposed by Vodafone rather than a technical limitation).

7. Register that telephone number on the Vodafone website, so that I can top it up when I run out of credit.

DVD player remote control

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:48:45 GMT

Came home this evening intending to watch a DVD and found that the DVD remote control wasn't working (though it was working perfectly well yesterday). I have tried:

1. Replacing the batteries - it now has batteries that I know to be good in it
2. Unplugging + replugging in the DVD player

The remote doesn't seem to be giving off any infrared signal (I can't see a red light where one normally appears). The DVD player works when using the controls on the box itself.

What really obvious thing am I missing/have I forgotten to check?

Am I better (1) buying a universal remote that does DVD players from Argos or (2) buying a replacement RC2K16 (model no. of remote) from the internet? [Never watching DVDs again isn't an option, there aren't enough options on the front of the DVD player to make using it without a remote really viable, replacement remotes are cheaper than replacement DVD players]

Mobile broadband

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:28:03 GMT

I could do with a PAYG mobile broadband thingy to use with my Eee PC, and this offer from Vodaphone looks reasonable, but says it only works on Windows machines. Does anyone know whether it would work with a linux based Eee PC and if not any alternative PAYG mobile broadband deals that do work with Eee PCs?

European & County Council Elections

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:13:10 GMT

I have received the following by way of electoral communications

Trevor Beckwith, Independent × 2 [only standing in the County Council election]

BNP
Conservative × 3
Green
Labour × 2
Liberal Democrat
Libertas.eu
UKFP (United Kington First Party)
UKIP

[a number of other parties have put up candidates for the Eastern Region, but haven't sent me any publicity]

I shall be voting for Trevor Beckwith for Suffolk County Council and Liberal Democrat for the European Parliament.

Birthday

Fri, 22 May 2009 14:31:41 GMT

I'm now 28, which feels close to 30 and I suppose these days I've got much more in common with people in their thirties than people just turning 20 who tend to be still undergrads at uni/in very junior work roles. [insert enough 'approximatelys' and 'in generals' for the above sentence to work for you].

Thank you for all the birthday wishes.

I'm having a day off work, most of the morning has been taking up complaining at British Gas and sorting out some building work. Time to do nice things now.

Pandemic influenza

Sun, 10 May 2009 22:44:51 GMT

Pandemic influenza is something that happens at regular intervals, we are overdue for a pandemic and have been for a number of years (the last one was 1968, before that there was one in 1957 and one in 1918). Whether the current swine 'flu is what becomes a pandemic remains to be seen - we still haven't got enough evidence yet. It might be the one, or it might be some other strain of avian or swine or other 'flu in a number of years time.

It's quite difficult to predict exactly what the effects of a pandemic will be. There are places on the internet where people are talking about stockpiling enough to isolate themselves from the world for six months or so as an appropriate pandemic-preparedness strategy. I don't think the effects will be so severe as to cause a breakdown of law and order or that the appropriate response is to isolate onself for six months or that the cost/benefit analysis of preparing to have six months worth of stuff stockpiled works in one's favour.

A lot of what's out on the internet about pandemic preparedness is premised on the idea that people don't live alone and this is not particularly useful for me and in general isn't very good as there are a relatively high propotion of people living alone than there would have been in previous pandemics. So what I'm going to talk about here is pandemic preparedness for those of us who live alone - specifically how it's different from that which applies to people who don't live alone.

Firstly, it's likely that in a pandemic there will be fewer public gatherings and people will be less willing to socialise in person due to the risk of catching 'flu/being ill/caring for others. There may be restrictions imposed on public gatherings, but I would consider it more likely that people will be choosing to stay at home rather than being forced into doing so. Given this, it's useful to think about what stuff you can do at home for entertainment - what hobbies do you have? do you have books to read? personal projects to work on? what else do you enjoy doing that you don't normally have time for? have you got the materials and resources to hand? how can you maintain contact with friends? - telephone? internet?

Secondly, it's probably safest to assume that you will catch the influenza and make preparations for this happening. How many people will get ill will vary, but could easily be 50% of the population over the life of the pandemic. Unlike normal seasonal influenza, young healthy adults are as at risk from it as elderly people, young children and people who would normally be more suspectible to influenza. [Depending on the strain of influenza we get, healthy elderly people may have some level of immunity to it, if a similar strain was about when they were much younger].

If you get pandemic influenza you are going to be really rather unpleasantly ill for about a week. And this is what is being described as 'mild' 'flu. It's quite possible (even likely) that you won't be able to get out of bed for that period of time. It's also quite likely that the people you might otherwise rely on to help you out will be ill themselves/caring for others who are ill/unable to travel to you. As a medium term/long term measure think about your local support network - who is there who could help you? What kind of help would they be willing to offer? [I know I could get local people to deliver medicine and food to me, I couldn't get them to provide physical care]. Although the government would have to pick childish terminology; "'flu friends", the principle is utterly sound. Within the country there are many more single person households and many people who live some distance away from their family, given the demographic shift there has been since the late '60s. Making local connections and ascertaining what help people are willing to offer is a good thing to do now ish - both in terms of pandemic 'flu planning and in case of other events happening where having a local person able to help a little would make life easier (even if more substantial help would have to wait on people from further away coming to you). If you have influenza it's unlikely you'd be capable of collecting your own medicines and even if you are, you risk infecting others during your trip.

I consider it sensible (for me) to plan for not having anyone about and able to provide personal care for me, should I be ill, but to expect that local people could bring me medicine and post it through the letter box and bring me stuff like milk and yoghurts and bread. For this reason, I've planned to have a sufficient supply of food/medication/toiletries/cleaning products/other stuff to not need to leave the house for about two weeks. For me this isn't all that out of the ordinary - I invariably have food cupboards containing tinned food/packets of rice/pasta etc and I normally buy toiletries and such like in bulk so I would nearly always have more than two weeks worth of stuff about. I've also thought about ways of moving stuff into my bedroom, so that I can reach what I need from bed. One of the biggest dangers of 'flu is from dehydration - either from sweating due to fever or diarrohea. I've bought a couple of non-spill toddler cups as it's possible to drink from them lying down without spilling water everywhere. I have plenty of salt and sugar to make up oral rehydration solution. Something I plan to do is play about with ways of flavouring water/ORS to make it more interesting to drink. I also intend to draw up a medication chart to record what I've taken and when I've taken it. Influenza will have cognitive effects and I believe having an easy to complete chart will help me make sure I don't overdose on anything - it's something I consider worthwhile trying, though I accept it might not work. I'm thinking it's probably wise, if you've got 'flu to maintain some sort of daily contact with someone else, so that if you get worse and don't realise how ill you are, hopefully the person you're talking to regularly will recognise the difference and can call for medical help for you. A telephone in your bedroom is a good move.

The other point that's important to bear in mind about 'flu, is that while the acute phase of the illness lasts about a week, full recovery is likely to take about a month. Recovery will be quite slow and you will be fatigued for a while. At this stage having easy to prepare food on hand will be very important as it's now that you need to eat to rebuild your strength. It's also important to have food about you consider 'comfort food' and to eat little and often. It's difficult to know what the situation will be like, but it's probably going to be important that recovering people don't rush back to work immediately.

Once you've thought about yourself, consider family members and friends - who is there you would be offering to care for if they were ill? If you're planning on having someone else look after you, if you're ill, how would you get to their home once you're unwell? [Bear in mind that travel restrictions are possible and it's possible these people would be ill at the same time as you] Are there local people you'd be offering to help out with fetching medicine and shopping? If you're likely to be caring for someone who lives some distance away from you, do you have arrangements with your employer to work from home? to work flexi time? to take unpaid leave at short notice?

Also consider your stance on masks/gloves/hand hygiene. If you're going to wear surgical masks, you need to wear them properly, which means replacing them when they get damp - get a big boxful and then read some instructions on how to use them. I'm basically of the opinion that as they don't protect against particle transmission they're not overly helpful and it's bad science to wear them [possibly except in so far as seeing strangers wearing face masks encourages social distancing]. Unless we reach a stage where there is a risk of violence for not wearing them, I am not intending to go about the streets in a surgical mask. If I get involved in treating someone who isn't a family member, I will insist on being supplied with proper FFP3 respirators and disposible gowns etc. Currently, I tend towards thinking that if I'm caring for a family member I'm going to get ill eventually anyway, so I might as well just keep going with the caring, get ill and hope that by the time I'm ill, they've sufficiently recovered to look after me.

If your hands are dirty soap and water is better at cleaning them than alcohol based hand gel.

The beginning of a pandemic is probably going to be a good time to get ill, when there are still lots of hospital beds available and medical staff haven't been exhausted by months of caring for influenza patients. If you're ill at the beginning (and ill enough to require hospital admission), you're going to get very good care and much better care than will be available in the middle of the pandemic.

Dreamwidth invite codes

Fri, 08 May 2009 22:34:45 GMT

I have had a number of requests for Dreamwidth invite codes from people who (so far as I can tell) I've never spoken to or interacted with in any way before. I'm not annoyed with people for asking, as (1) generally asking questions isn't wrong and (2) at no point (until now) did I ever say 'only people who already know me', but I have decided that for the next period of time, until Dreamwidth beds itself down within my various social circles, I want to keep invite codes for friends/acquaintances/friends-of-friends. I currently have two invite codes. I am intending a relatively low barrier of 'know me' ie. have LJ account I may have seen commenting on other people's journals/have left me LJ comments etc rather than anything stronger but basically not anonymous/people I've never heard of before.

Dreamwidth have convincing reasons for the decision to use invite codes as a means to control site growth, however, the invite-or-pay-$3-to-get-an-account thing is something that is reminiscient of occasions when I've been the one excluded from a social group. Here I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the equation - I'm welcome here and other people are being sort-of-excluded* and while I accept the geek social fallacy that excluding people isn't always wrong, I think there's a way to go before the site will have grown enough that there will usually be people about with invite codes and most people will know someone able to invite them. For that reason, I do feel somewhat uneasy with deciding to prioritise friends/acquaintances over strangers, because I think getting people here who wouldn't otherwise be invited is a good thing. On the other hand, I don't think deciding to prioritise friends/acquaintances is illogical or in and of itself a bad thing. Of course my primary loyalty is to people I already know.

I will stop in passing to mention dw_codesharing where people with spare invite codes are offering them and there's a place for people who want invite codes to ask for them.

*I say sort-of-excluded because there's a social difference between a friend saying 'hi, come and join me doing x' and 'I'm doing x, if you pay $3, or go and comment in dw_codesharing you can come and do it too' - the access is there, but the social aspect of being explicitly invited to join in and welcomed isn't. [another note in passing - $3 probably is a barrier to entry for some people]. For people who have experienced a lot of exclusion in other settings, the internet is often a place where they find themselves usually welcomed and further experiences of being left out are unlikely to go down well, whether intended in this fashion or not.

Excuse for a post

Fri, 08 May 2009 17:42:00 GMT

[am testing something, but was intending to make a post with approximately this content anyway]

I seem to be getting a crush on someone online again. I don't like it when this happens and still don't really know how to deal with it, except wait for it to go away, which takes ages. Anyone got any thoughts/comments/ideas they want to share?

Dreamwidth + Firefox

Sat, 02 May 2009 15:31:28 GMT

I don't currently have any more invite codes for Dreamwidth. I'll let you know if/when I have more. In the meantime, try asking people who've recently created an account in a few days time, as they're likely to be issued with invite codes in due course. Or go and have a look at dw_codesharing/Dreamwidth codesharing.

reddragdiva/reddragdiva twittered earlier about No Script; an add on Firefox users can install to prevent websites running scripts without explicit permission. It seems that previously useful software is now being exploited for advertising gains:-( I don't currently have it installed and won't be installing it again until someone more technically competent than me tells me it's useful again or points me at an alternative.

I've just been through my Dreamwidth access list removing a lot of Open ID accounts. When I imported my friends' list from LiveJournal, something was broken and all of the communities and feeds I had on my LiveJournal friends list were given Open IDs. I intended to just remove those accounts, if I've removed you, it's from accidentally clicking the wrong box in scanning down a very long list.

Dreamwidth - Invite codes

Fri, 01 May 2009 08:29:29 GMT

I now have five Dreamwidth invite codes, who would like one? (I have one person who has already asked me). I need an email address to send the code to, please email me karen@wonderfuldreams.me.uk if you don't want to leave your email adderss in a public post.

Google Analytics

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:22:38 GMT

Am thinking about setting up Google Analytics for this journal [ie. the one on Dreamwidth] 'cos it's a new feature to play with.

Is Google Analytics evil?

Anyone have any objections to me doing this, or any other comments?

IRC

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:44:24 GMT

One of the really good things for me about Dreamwidth over the past few days has been finding #dw - the main IRC channel for Dreamwidth. It's full of some people I used to spend time on IRC with in #lj_support some time ago a couple of others I sort of know from various places and other people I don't know (yet). And it's lovely, some of what's lovely about it is down to the people and maturity and conversations that are possible when you've got a channel full of respectful people who are good at communicating in text based media.

But beyond that I'd forgotten how much I like IRC as a communication medium. I can wander in and out of conversations without feeling like I'm desserting someone I'm talking to 1:1 and I get a sense of 'yay, people to be social with' without perceiving that I'm demanding attention inappropriately from people who are busy.

I wish more of my friends used it. And I wish I had the technical skill to set up and run an IRC server so I could offer somewhere for people I know to come and create their own channels.

Dreamwidth

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:14:09 GMT

I've spent much of the weekend playing around with Dreamwidth, after a friend gave me an invite code on Friday and I am very impressed indeed with what I've seen so far. My journal. I never squee - it's just not how I respond to things, but with this project I've been sitting in IRC watching the conversation and finding myself really wanting to offer to help them out with something. I'm excited about it. I can see it working well and I'm now a little bit apprehensive that having got myself so excited about it, it might not work out the way I think it will.

I'd have signed up for a Dreamwidth account without much persuasion anyway, on the basis of it being new and shiny and wanting to know what it does to see if I like it and because one of the people running it is rahaeli who was in charge of LJ Support when I did some volunteering there and I trust that she knows what she's doing. What I didn't expect was to find myself pulled towards it so strongly, so quickly.

Dreamwidth is a code fork from LJ - they've taken the LJ code and modified bits of it to make it better and fix annoying things. One of the key changes is splitting what LJ calls 'friends' into 'subscriptions' (journals you read) and 'access list' (journals who can read your protected entries). Conceptually I think this is better - you can want to read without allowing someone access to protected entries and want to allow people access to protected entries without wanting to read what they post. As a matter of social engineering I'm not sure how Dreamwidth will develop a culture around subscribing/granting access and desubscribing/removing access - I'd bet a small quantity of money that within certain subsections of Dreamwidth users there will still be drama associated with desubscribing/removing access, because people are people and some people will be upset that others don't want to read their entries/allow them access to their posts.

They've removed the nudge feature LJ introduced and all ad support from the code:-)

They've created an 'importer' so you can easily import journals from LJ & IJ and are working on a cross poster (so you can post to Dreamwidth and LJ at the same time).

Once the cross poster is working I will probably start cross posting entries for a while and see what happens. I plan on using LJ and Dreamwidth in parallel, with each friends page having its own tab in Firefox.

If you have an OpenID account and you have set and validated an email address on Dreamwidth you will get an invite code when it goes into open beta on 30th April. Until then, they're sending out a certain number of invite codes to OpenID accounts each day, as they try to build up the site usage between now and 30th April.

Laziness

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:39:21 GMT

1. Can someone point me at a list of greasemonkey scripts useful for using with LJ?

2. Sort of related - does anyone have anything useful for automatically LJ cutting posts that are automatically fed to LJ from Twitter? [No objection to people ccing Twitter to LJ, but I only want to read it once not twice and I'll have usually already read it on Twitter]

3. What are your power management settings for your PC? Do you turn it off when you're out for the day/at night? Do you use some sort of suspend setting? What's better these days for computers - being left turned on or being turned on and off as needed? [Presumably energy saving wise we're now at the point where turning them on and off as needed saves energy]

4. If I were to want to grow vegetables in my garden, what can be grown successfully in big pots? I have a little bit of flower bed space, but not very much and am not very confident about any of this.

PSA - internet

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:27:57 GMT

I now have internet access at home again. If you've emailed me anything before 14th March 2009, I no longer have it. If you've emailed me anything after 14th March expecting a reply, then I don't have it either, as there's currently nothing in my inbox awaiting response! Please resend anything you want me to see.

Cash ISA

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:13:23 GMT

Am looking for a new cash ISA from 6th April 2009 as I now have a credit card with the Nationwide and they claim the right in their terms and conditions to use credit balances in other accounts to clear balances on credit cards if you don't pay the credit card bill. Whilst I'm obviously intending to pay my credit card bill, I don't like that as a condition and don't want to put more savings with the Nationwide until I no longer have a credit card with them.

Any recommendations?

[Yes I know how ISAs work, I want a cash ISA with instant access [might consider a short notice period], nothing more complicated. The interest rate isn't going to be great but it'll be better than my current account and tax wise I should be protecting my savings by putting them into an ISA]

Edit - Abbey Direct ISA (Issue 3) looks like a possible.

PSA: No internet

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 11:40:58 GMT

I currently have no internet access from home due to my computer breaking. If you want me when I'm not at work, please phone or text me. Contact details.

Small quantity of help needed

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:20:01 GMT

Can anyone access the Tesco Finance website? I've tried using Firefox and IE. They apparently have a savings account paying 6% interest, but I can't get to their website at all.

New year

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:26:41 GMT

Happy new year. Hope 2009 treats you well.

Groan

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:52:24 GMT

What's the current geek take on Verified by Visa and Mastercard secure code?

I've now encountered Egg putting a block of some description on my card after I didn't sign up for Mastercard secure code while doing some online shopping a couple of weekends ago. I've now just tried to buy something else online and encountered a Mastercard secure code screen without a cancel function, got back to a screen to enter different card details and it took me to a verified by Visa screen.

I'm currently skeptical about the benefits of either scheme and don't see what else they add in terms of security and am pretty pissed off at retailers removing the ability to skip the screen. What do you think? Are they a useful security feature? Am I going to end up signing up for them on the basis of the process of least resistance in order to be able to do some shopping?