There are times when I feel that the mostly useless information I've accumulated over the years is crowding out the parts of my brain I need for my actual work. But now that I've seen this news, about a French civil servant who lives a normal life with a miniature brain, I'm more encouraged. As long as I leave a bit of memory for the important stuff, I should be okay.

That leaves the problem of what to do with work-related information that's important but also depressing. Take, for example, Bob Condor's latest column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, about how we're losing the fight against obesity:

Normally, I don't link to news none of us can use or do anything about, but one particular paragraph in Condor's column caught my attention:

By pure coincidence, we also got news this week of perhaps the best reason why diet and exercise help people live longer:

More and more, it seems that insulin is the most powerful hormone for humans at this moment in our history. On the plus side, insulin pushes amino acids from food into muscle cells, and prevents protein that's already in the muscles from breaking down. On the downside, the hormone that's celebrated for helping you build and preserve your muscles also is notorious for helping you build and preserve fat deposits.

It's your best friend but also potentially your worst enemy.

If your body were a Mafia crime family, insulin would be your Luca Brasi. In the original novel, Mario Puzo shows that the Godfather is intimidated by his own best hit man, which is a healthy attitude to take toward something that's simultaneously deadly and useful. (The movie version is more ambiguous -- you can't tell if Don Corleone is afraid of him or just doesn't like him much.)

The one thing you can't do with insulin is ignore it. If you stop exercising and get careless with your diet, insulin will probably get you. But unlike a classic Mafia hit, it won't be quick and painless.  

Vacation blog meat

• According to this story, men who take annual vacations are less likely to die from any cause than those who leave their work behind less often. I suspect it only works if you really vacate -- if you leave work behind, and don't make travel any more stressful than it needs to be.
• In related news, I'll be on vacation until July 31. This one is low-key family get-together in Kansas City. We've got tickets for a Royals-Yankees game, plan to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and nearby American Jazz Museum, look forward to some authentic K.C. barbecue, and hope to spend the rest of the time enjoying the balmy July weather in the Midwest.
• When I worked at Weider in the mid-1990s, the art director of Shape once showed me an unaltered cover image. It was a model, so she was beautiful, but I was surprised by how much it didn't look like a photo you'd typically see on a magazine cover. This article sheds some light on the degree to which magazine cover photos are altered by computer software (what we used to call, in a gentler age, "airbrushing").
• Speaking of the media, check out this pretty amazing takedown of ESPN, if not all sports media, by T Kyle King of Dawgsports.
• Last thought on sports before I post this and go to the gym for my final pre-vacation workout: Can anyone remember the last time the sports-industrial complex had this bad a week? We have an NBA ref who apparently bet on games in which he was officiating; a report from T.J. Quinn of the New York Daily News saying that Barry Bonds is likely to be indicted by a grand jury soon after he breaks the home-run record; and the usual doping allegations nipping at the tires of the Tour de France leader. Even though Michael Vick's dog-fighting imbroglio has gotten the most attention, it strikes me as the smallest pile of poop for the sports world right now. The biggest, I think, is gambling. This weekend I heard a couple of radio talk-show guys saying that an NBA referee is in a prime position to throw games, possibly the best in all of sports. Personally, if I were writing this as a mystery novel, I'd make the gambler a slugging first baseman on a contending baseball team. He can turn ground balls into extra-base hits by diving a fraction of a second too late, create errors for his teammates by not stretching that extra inch to take a throw, or strike out with runners on base and the game on the line ... and no one would consider any of that unusual, since sluggers strike out a lot anyway, and since defensive performance is so difficult to measure.