Urgh, Firefox

I must apologize for the delay: not only is my job keeping me busy as hell, but the days are getting shorter here fast. Night now falls at 8:30 pm, which means that I tend to get sleepy at around 9 pm. The upside to being solar-powered is that during the summer I quite literally do not have to sleep more than 5 hours a day. The downside is that during the winters I practically hibernate. Furthermore Firefox 3.0 is having some issues loading the "Edit blog" part of this site. Safari doesn't work quite as well, and I hate firing up my boyfriend's desktop and generally avoid doing so because it sucks power like a Hoover, amongst other things.

Anyways, with all that out of the way...well, it's not really out of the way, is it? Because all the stressful things in my life haven't been fixed: my job is keeping me busy as hell, the days will continue to get shorter until the winter solstice, I still have no idea what's up with Firefox, and there are two cats and one boyfriend that demand their fair share of my time and attention.

That's the thing with stress--it's always there. If you're not under some kind of stress, then you're dead.

How you deal with it, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.

Ah, stress! Part 1 of 3

I'm going through a rather strenuous time right now--one consequence of doing your job a bit too well is that you suddenly get heaped with tons of work. Added to this is a four-hour commute and my usual life and it's no wonder I've given up on trying to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep (I might almost get there on the weekends).

Stress, strictly speaking, is anything from the outside world that affects you. It is not, by definition, a bad thing: if tomorrow you won the lottery, that too is stress.

In the days of yore, when we hadn't yet earned the genus Homo, stress was running from a jaguar--and fighting like hell when it caught you. The release of epinephrine and norepinephrine enables the muscles to work much harder. Pain responses get blunted. Blood is shunted from organs that don't need it (your gut) to those that do at this moment, as your entire body is devoted to one thing--getting the hell out of there, or beating the crap out of whatever's trying to beat the crap out of you.

Nowadays, we have a more evolved brain, and far more involved lives. Social interactions are no longer limited to who gets pickings at the termite mound. Being able to think means that what we make of a scenario can greatly affect our body's response to it. Someone who has a breakdown on I-95 can panic, get angry, rant at an angry God, or call AAA. These days, very few of us will ever encounter stress of the sort our ancestors did, unless you're unfortunate enough to fall into a den of lions. But the evolutionary mechanisms by which we deal with stress--open the floodgates for epinephrine--have remained the same.

Is this a good thing, or not? Stay tuned.

The Skinny: Part 3 of 3

Women are supposedly neurotically insecure about their bodies. I'll admit that I am, though I conceal it better than most (I think--does this confession count?). We think our boobs are too big/small and our asses are too this or that and the glossies have a ball every summer before bikini season when we're supposedly at our wits' end about looking like a walrus. But you know what? It really doesn't matter--if you have boobs and an ass, you'll get hit on--only not by that cute artsy guy in the cafe (who is, of course, taken), alas. Men, it seems, really don't see much else--at least, not if my observations of ogling behavior along Kelly Drive is correct.

At this point I'd also put in a statement about what physical features about men attract women, but in this respect there's perilously little consistency. Women are far more slick about how they ogle men, and their tastes are far more divergent: the Chippendales would have you believe that the ideal man is 200 pounds of pure muscle, but the variety of body types available amongst the Hollywood elite would suggest otherwise (personally, I go for the more slightly-built, like Eric McCormack, but I have to admit, seeing Daniel Craig in Casino Royale took my breath away).

All of which suggests that there is no one true body type that's universally beautiful. Some characteristics are appreciated, undoubtedly--ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, one nose--but if you're reading this odds are you meet someone's expectations of beauty.

So why all the pressure to be thin? Or rather, why, in spite of Marilyn Monroe and the zaftig figures of previous generations, and a resurgence of more normal figures, are women still airbrushed to "perfection" and the figure of a prepubescent boy still considered desirable?

Actually, the real question isn't even why we're still told that we need to look a certain way to be "beautiful". It's why we fall for the line that our bodies, as they are, are not enough--that they must somehow be modified to be beautiful. If you think about it, this is a puzzle: female apes don't feel the need to don high heels and strut their stuff in couture--but I betcha they would if another did it and won the ultimate Darwinian prize: a male.

Which gender self-modifies is irrelevant from this point on. In most species where sexual dimorphism occurs, it's usually the male that gets decked out like a drag queen. Sexual selection is certainly a powerful force when it comes to designing traits that the other gender "likes". But it's not the end of the story. I would suggest that a somewhat more subtle psychological need to be assimilated, especially in social animals (like humans) also plays a key role in why we get gussied up.

That is: women dress up because it makes them more attractive to men. But it also unifies them with other women. Assimilation is not just for the Borg. It makes civilized life possible. And leads to an interesting array of neuroses, like that involving bikinis.

Beast: part 2 of 3

Collagen. Copper. Alpha-hydroxy acids. Petrolatum. Retinoic acid.

You can be forgiven if you thought I was talking about a chemistry course. Beauty is as much about looking young as it is about looking, well, beautiful, and today's beauty products promise to reduce wrinkles and cover up age spots and protect from UV rays and do all but wash out the kitchen sink.

There is, alas, no real way to stop looking older. Collagen creams are a hot item, but if you stop and think about it, it's highly improbable that they work the way the ads say they do. It is true that, as you get older, the collagen levels in your skin decrease. It is not true, however, that collagen creams work by "replenishing" collagen levels in your skin. Perhaps they will temporarily, thanks to the addition of retinoic acid. Even more depressing is that simple, inexpensive moisturizers are just as effective at temporarily reducing the appearance of wrinkles than the $30/jar stuff sold at cosmetics counters.

There is sad news for anti-aging diets, too: they don't work. That's not to say that eating tons of fruits and veggies are bad for you--au contraire--but rather, that the aging process is more genetic than anything that you can control.

But what about the magic of calorie-restriction diets? I would posit that, if you're eating tons of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, you're probably not eating as many calories as the person who dines regularly at Big 'n Fatty. I would also posit that, because most healthy foods--such as those found in Japanese and Mediterranean cuisines--tend to be high in fiber, you'll probably get full eating less of it. But neither of these truly illustrate a calorie-restricted diet, which is cutting your caloric intake to 1000-1200 cal/day.

What happens to your body--and, perhaps more importantly, to your mind--when you drop 25-50% of your regular caloric intake (I tend towards the low end, at around 1600/day--it's usually recommended that a man take in 2000 cal/day)? Epigentic changes are almost inevitable when the body takes punishment long enough; there is nearly indisputable evidence that most, if not all, psychiatric illnesses are due to how the genes are changed in response to environmental stressors. It only follows that the body's responses to constant near-starvation would be to go through some changes, too. The science is still terribly convoluted as to exactly which genes get turned on and off and to what extent, but epigentic changes in response to calorie restriction happens, in yeast and mice, and, presumably, humans.

It is unlikely that calorie restriction will ever enter a clinical trial on the scale that would be required to produce meaningful results. Not only do humans tend to live an inconveniently long time, the genetic backgrounds of the participants would need to be far better understood than they are today if we are to avoid the devestating effects of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. While most of the men came though the experience intact, it's a gateway to anorexia in those who are prone to it. Anorexia, with it's 20% mortality rate, is by far the more deadly, whereas even if you're doing everything right with a calorie-restriction diet, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow.

How long you live matters far less than what you do with your life, and how you look while doing it matters far less than whether you enjoy doing it. If you're paying for your wisdom with age, you may as well get the most for your time.

Beauty: part 1 of 3

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is only skin deep. It is also a multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on never delivering what it promises and telling beautiful lies.

Is there any truth to claims of antioxidant prowess against aging? Any truth at all to the 8-glasses-of-water myth? Do collagen creams really work?

And that's not even touching on the "new and improved" versions of makeup. I'll grant you that today's powders and mousses and mattes are probably substantially safer than white lead paint in in the Roman days. But I don't think most women would care if tomorrow their makeup were named as the Cause of Cancer--my sex was willing to put poison in their eyes; I wouldn't put it beyond us to suffer cancer as the price we must pay to look good.

The cultural aspects of beauty make for interesting divergences as to what constitutes beauty, but less so, in my opinion, than what constitutes universal features of beauty. There is some speculation that there is a "perfect ratio" of features that beautiful people--or rather, women--possess: large eyes, small chin, clear skin, and so on--pick your favorite supermodel/actress.

However, it is interesting to note that there is no such universal standard for men--there is no psychological equivalent of the "perfect man", the way that there is for women. If you read books from the nineteenth century, authors tend to drivel endlessly about the set of the lips or the shape of the eye. It is especially interesting to note that although heroines are all depicted in more or less the same fashion (clear porcelain skin, liquid eyes of a light hue, gently arched lips), the heroes have a far greater variety in their appearance. Rather, it is their manners and their high "moral code" that makes them desirable.

Which sex has it more difficult? Women, because they must torture themselves to appeal to the fancies of men? Or men, because they must possess the right behaviors to attract the attentions of women?

Where the Sidewalk Ends: part 2 of 2

Where we draw the line for what's acceptable and what's not poses an interesting conundrum: For instance, one study shows that recycled paper products contain lots of toxic "goodies", but I seriously doubt that any public-health-naysayer (a la Jenny McCarthy) is going to advocate not-recycling. Yet if you think about it, considering how much recycled plastic and paper is in our lives, the odds of those being the "cause" of autism (if there even is an environmental cause) would technically be much greater.

So why do we cling to erroneous beliefs in the face of good science showing that they're false? I think the answer is two-fold: first, that scientists can be "bought", and secondly, that people simply don't know enough.

The idea that Merck and Pfizer and Eli Lilly and all the big pharmaceuticals juggle the data in order to get their drugs out on the market is most likely false. I say "most likely" because undoubtedly someone will point to Vioxx and sneer, but if you look at the statistics--at the actual numbers--for the incidence of cardiovascular events of patients on rofecoxib (generic name for Vioxx), they don't vary between Vioxx and placebo.

"But those scientists are paid consultants! Of course they have a vested interest in keeping Vioxx on the market!"

Okay--well, then, another study, far less friendly towards Vioxx, says pretty much the same thing: no increase in cardiovascular events. What they do note is a slight increase in the number of annual myocardial infarcts in the Vioxx group--a difference of less than 1%. Yes, the difference is real. But less than 1%? You have a higher chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident, but nobody's suggesting that we ban cars.

Regardless of which side you believe, the outcome of this was hardly a picnic for Merck. But it also illustrates our f*cked up way of deciding what's worthwhile and what's not. To whit: parents who are terrified that vaccines can cause autism apparently have no fear of measles outbreaks, and with the way they're being portrayed as heroes, we can only surmise that children dying of easily-vaccinated diseases are acceptable casualties in a war against a disease that has no known cause.

And I though George W. Bush was insane when he decided to invade Iraq.

The problem is that people know enough to be skeptical, but not enough to know how to discern truth from smoke. Even today we're still terrified about radiation, so much that we treat foods that have been irradiated as though they've been poisoned. Yet we have no problem microwaving a can of soup, or basking in UV rays, or sitting in front of a TV--and if I'm not mistaken, there's a lot of TV-sitting.

Kinda makes you wonder how we ever made it this far.

Where the Sidewalk Ends: part 1 of 2

There's been a lot of fuss in the press about bisphenol A, that cancer-autism-hormone-imbalancing-everything-horrible compound that's added as a stabilizer to plastics. Europe has declared it safe, although they've set limits to exposure to allay consumer fears (not being sworn to protect liberty lets you do a lot of things, apparently). Consumer advocates in the US want it banned, swearing left and right that it causes cancer and acts to disrupt male hormones.

So. Which side to believe?

On the one hand, consider that companies do not necessarily have the health of the consumer in mind when they peddle their wares. We read about formaldehyde in milk and sawdust in potted meat (I love that phrase) in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The fast-food industry has long been plagued by the image of their restuarant as a hotbed for food poisoning, an image not entirely unearned--think Jack in the Box in the 1980s. Today, flavorists are paid exorbitant sums to come up with ways to flavor food "naturally", even though there is really nothing natural about grinding dead bugs into strawberry yogurt, and still less about how the yogurt is flavored, even if it is organic*.

On the other hand, consumer advocate groups have been wrong before. As important as Erin Brockovich-like figures are in keeping people from sticking knives into electric sockets and slapping warnings about letting your kids play with a meat grinder (it saddens me to think that some people actually need these warnings), they do a great disservice when they pick the wrong causes to run with (the link is an example of what's wrong--I strongly advocate vaccines, though I'm less certain about following booster schedules to the letter).

In scenarios like this, an outside observer can't win: if you go with the science (both bisphenol A and vaccines are safe) you get labeled as a pawn for the industry; if you go with the consumer groups (both bisphenol A and vaccines are dangerous) you have to ignore pages upon pages of research and you get labeled as a rabid emotionally-invested moron.

Even if you try to take the middle of the road (vaccines, but titer before boosters; accept that plastics are needed, but try to use less--a stance that any environmentalist should agree with irrespective of the health risks) then you get called out for being indecisive and John Kerry. Which is just as bad, because most of the time the middle of the road is the most logical place to be.

Skimming through PubMed produces lots of studies that show BPA is safe. At ridiculously high dosages, of course, it's dangerous, but then again, so are carrots, so that's almost a non-argument. Most of the studies that demonstrate causality were done in rats or mice. If anybody cares to remember the saccharine saga, the moral of the story is that mice =/= humans.

But oddly, despite the studies, I still have misgivings about BPA. I don't doubt the science saying it's safe. I have a higher chance of being run over than I do of getting cancer because of my exposure to it. But...

That's the puzzling part about this whole thing: that we should have all the information pointing to the facts, that we should have all of these studies indicating that we don't have to give up plastics or change our way of life--and yet. And yet we continually question whether it's true. Why does the sidewalk end? Where do we get off the train of reasoning and board the Pseudoscience express?

*Let me tell you right now that unless you've had real homemade strawberry ice cream--and I'm not talking about the stuff you can get out of a Breyer's box--you cannot understand how false commercial strawberry ice cream is. There is a cloying sweetness about the commercial stuff that is replaced by a richness in taste and an element of tartness that makes true strawberry ice cream phenomenal.

What you can do

There's not much more to be said about what you can do to reduce your contribution to our collection of greenhouse gases. Not using electricity when you don't need it, eating local, eating organic, reduce, reuse, and recycle, etc etc. You can find all of these hints and more at sites like the National Geographic's Green Guide, so there's not much of a point in rehashing what's already out there.

But let's not kid ourselves: even the most eco-sensitive and frugal in the First World use a LOT, and we waste a lot. Just yesterday I bought almost 100 euros' worth of clothing--to be fair, a lot of my clothes were looking a bit ratty and I did set aside that money for the express purpose of clothes shopping. Even though my clothes were still serviceable, many of them looked worn and it was starting to get to the point where I looked a lot worse off than I am (maybe I'm a lot worse off than I think?). Still, if pressed, I'd have to say that no, I didn't really need new clothes.

I don't have a functional cell phone, something that most of us think is a necessity--my cell phone is basically a clock, because I still haven't managed to buy myself a nice watch yet. Most people today would rank Internet connection and a computer as necessary. They would probably also put down a washer/dryer system, a microwave oven, and cable TV as necessities, too--something that always baffled me when I volunteered to sign people up for food stamps was that the government apparently did not consider basic cable a frivolous expenditure, but a gym membership was. Other necessities-that-aren't include makeup, pets, any sort of entertainment expense (including books!), and most food.

To be absolutely clear: of course there are things you can do to minimize your impact on the environment, but you can't get away from the fact that if you're putting your organically-grown produce in a plastic bag of course you're using more resources than someone who puts his organically-grown produce in a fifteen-year-old canvas bag. If you make a phone call from a cell phone, of course you're going to be using more resources than waiting to see the person and tell them what's soooo vital in person (seriously, how many cell phone calls are actually of the "OMG I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS OR ELSE SOMEONE DIES!" nature?).

In the Western world, we have a lot of resources to exploit, be they natural or man-made (which are dependent on natural resources), and most of us don't think about how we use them. It's not that we should feel guilty about using them--after all, what's the point of having resources if you don't use them?--but we should be more aware of how much we use and how we use them.

Awareness is, I think, 90% of the environmentalist's battle. Being aware of how much trash you generate, how much plastic is used, what you can reuse (even if you don't think you can), where you can reduce (and there is always more) requires reaching beyond your current comfort levels and exploring just how low you can go.

Life is hard

It's hard being at the bottom of the food chain. You get absolutely no respect, not even from wildlife protection agencies. The only way anybody even realizes you're there at all is when you disappear--i.e., die off, go extinct.

Yet the bottom feeders are one of the key players in maintaining the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Or rather, more correctly, the oceans are. The WWF and other similar organizations make a huge hullabaloo about saving the whales and pandas and other fuzzy, photogenic creatures, but to be completely and brutally honest I don't think the planet would miss them if the whales disappeared. We humans certainly would, and that goes double for the Japanese and Icelandic whalers as well as for anybody who makes a living giving whale watches. The Operation Cat Drop Principle prohibits me from stating this as a fact, but the fact still remains that there are many superfluous species in the world. Honestly, how many different types of bunting does an ecosystem really need?

The oceans are the biggest carbon sinks, absorbing 90 trillion tons of carbon dioxide every year, and releasing 88 trillion (I'm not entirely certain that I trust the link the numbers came from, but suffice it to say that the oceans sequester a lot of carbon dioxide). The oceans absorb carbon dioxide in two ways: the first is that carbon dioxide is naturally soluble in water and gets dissolved. The solubility increases as it gets colder, so the farther down you go, the colder the water, and the more carbon the water contains. The second is comprised of those trillions upon gazillions of plankton that float around. Plankton are essentially microscopic plants, which use carbon dioxide and make oxygen.

The disaster at Lake Nyos is a dramatic example of what would happen if the carbon sinks were to fail. Granted, the Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun incidents are unique, in the sense that these are volcanic lakes--some geologists believe there is a fissure that leaks carbon dioxide into the water. Because the water is so deep--and therefore, so cold--it contains a lot of carbon dioxide. Anybody who's opened a bottle of soda or a can of beer knows that carbon dioxide is not happily contained in water, and any kind of disturbance--some geologists speculate a deep-lake mudslide--will set the carbon dioxide free.

Even though the Lake Nyos tragedy is singular, the weakening of the oceanic carbon sinks should give us cause for concern. Plankton and many forms of aquatic life live within a very limited range of temperatures. Plankton are also limited to the surface layer of the ocean because they require sunlight. The increase in ocean water temperatures by a scant few degrees can affect the health of the plankton, and, by corollary, all of the animals that live on them.

It is not, therefore, for the sake of the whales that we must protect the oceans, but for our own sake. The oceans provide fish, and therefore an income and an industry's existence. The lives of farmers depends on the climate that is affected by these great bodies of water. Even in the first world, the dependence of farmers on the beneficence of the weather is important to the health of the people and the economy--when you consider that less than 1% of the people in the US farm for a living, it's obvious where a bottleneck would be if the weather were to be any more insane than it is now.

Tomorrow: what we can do. And don't worry, it won't be sappy.

Love one another right now

Eco-terrorists are to the green movement what fundamentalists are to religion--radical morons who pervert some pretty wonderful causes and make other people suffer for it.

But if Ayan Hirsi Ali is correct about Islam (at least, the more fundamental versions of it), at the very least the green movement is open to debate as to what's reasonable for most people to do in order to do their part to slow down the pace of global warming*.

How far would you go to be green? Comment below with the numbers on the list below. List first the ones you actually do, and then the ones you would do if you had the means. .

1) Cut back your driving mileage by 25%
2) Cut back your driving by 50%
3) Give up driving
4) Limit flight travel to once a year
5) Eliminate flights entirely
6) Use "green" laundry detergent
7) Use green personal hygiene products (toothpaste, shampoo)
8) Use "green" makeup
9) Give up makeup
10) Go vegetarian
11) Go vegan
12) Go freegan
13) Eat organically-produced meat
14) Eat organic produce
15) Eat local organic produce
16) Eat local organic meat/eggs/dairy products
17) Give up fast food
18) Carry a piece of trash an extra block until you find a trash can
19) Pick up litter
20) Switch to fluorescent lights
21) Better insulate your house
22) Use all-natural products to do the insulation
23) Live in an all-natural house (mud walls, thatched roof, power by windmills)
24) Give up electric lighting for candles/torches
25) Buy organic-cotton clothing
26) Buy secondhand clothing
27) Take up dumpster diving
28) Milk your own cow
29) Give up coffee
30) Give up tea
31) Give up vanilla, pepper, spices
32) Farm your own food
33) Make your own clothes
34) Butcher your own meat
35) Take shorter showers
36) Use a bidet instead of toilet paper
37) Give up chocolate
38) Reuse old jars and plastic bottles
39) Compost
40) Reuse plastic bags
41) Rinse and reuse sandwich bags
42) Rinse and reuse aluminum foil
43) Walk away from a relationship if the person bought a Hummer


*Global warming--at the very least, odd climate--is real. Whether it's manmade, and whether anything we do will make a whit of difference is debatable.