Le Gout des Autres - The Taste of Others

Sometimes, I don't write entries on Compressive Sensing. This is one of these occurences. Since mid-December, I have lost about nineteen pounds (8.5 kg) by following some of the results of the self-experimentation of Seth Roberts, a professor at Berkeley (you need to read his fascinating blog here). What did it take to do this ? For me, just one thing: a $4 nose clip that I put on my nose every time I eat. That's it. No exercise. I eat what I usually eat although now in a rather lower amount (not because I am starving myself but because I feel full earlier). At the start of this trial, the weight loss was pretty steep. Since putting a nose clip has some social cost I lose it when I eat out with friends or through the Christmas period. The underlying theory given by Seth is that we are not wired for food developed in the past fifty years (lots of what we eat is highly processed and engineered for one purpose: to be eaten) . By decoupling the food intake with its smell, our brain is less capable in determining whether that intake should be stored or not. Anyway, I can now see abs that I had not seen for the past twenty years. Which brings me to this other 20 year old find: I was going through my stuff and found the first e-mail I ever received from France. It's a response to an e-mail I had sent a friend. Enjoy:

From: Jnet%"OPER@FRCIME51" 19-JAN-1989 17:28:26.35
To: *******@TAMSIGMA
CC:
Subj:

Received: From FRCIME51(OPER) by TAMSIGMA with Jnet id 0037
for *******@TAMSIGMA; Thu, 19 Jan 89 17:28 CST
Date: 19-JAN-1989 12:31:05.51
From: OPER@FRCIME51
To: *******@TAMSIGMA
Subj: RE: ENCORE LUI

Les comptes etudiants n'ont pas acces aux messageries internationales ni meme nationales...
Merci de ne pas encombrer les reseaux.

which translates into:

Students' acounts do not have access to international or even national E-mail...
Thank you for not overloading the network.

It sounds as if I was clogging the tubes or maybe the postmaster did not find my initial E-mail to his taste.