Task #4 and #5

I hope I am not cheating the system, but it seems to me that task 4 and 5 overlap, so I am including my comments from both tasks on this post. I suspect the reason for separating the tasks was to give folks some time to explore RSS feeds, but I started doing this about a month ago. I am pretty familiar with RSS feeds, although I have certainly added quite a bit of content in recent weeks. I already had an igoogle page that featured some of my favorite news sources. But, the RSS feed seems more comprehensive, and I can add the RSS directly to my igoogle page. I love Google!

I have been attempting this summer to work some on my personal fitness and eating habits. The blog I have been looking at this summer about this topic is Mark's Daily Apple. The author, Mark Sisson, wrote a book titled The Primal Blueprint, and I actually read it. I usually find books about fitness completely unappealing (almost as unappealing as actually exercising), but I found Sisson's book pretty interesting. His blog is basically an addendum to the ideas in his book, with of course updated stories and research. He argues in both places that if people return to a more "primal" eating style, rich in proteins and low in carbohydrates, they will feel better and become more fit. This was certainly not shocking to me, but his other claim, that many people who exercise perform too much high intensity cardio I found surprising. I am no expert, so perhaps this is all nonsense, but I am going to give some of his suggestions a try and see if I notice a difference.

Although this post is probably becoming as long winded as its author, I wanted to comment briefly on the customized RSS feed from Google News. I have a close friend who works for Google News in NYC, and I am often getting suggestions from him about possible classroom uses. So, I was aware of the customized search, but I had not taken the time to set it up. I am teaching a new course next year on World Religions, and I think the feed I established will help me track current articles about the different religions. I think this will certainly help me to incorporate current events, and if I can tweak the feed so that it gets the desired results, I could even have students follow it.

So, overall, I am digging the RSS feed, and hopefully I can find some creative uses for it.