Articulatory Loop

If only I'd read this story before Saturday. I at least might have drank less and been more aware that the possibly lycanthropic girl who made my ear all pretty like this was not just playing around. Oh well.

For the record, I'm on Augmentin, Cipro, and Vicodin, and the swelling has finally gone down.

Labels: Atlanta, autobiography, drinking, ear, gross, grotesque, injury, me, photo, sicko

So I finally finished my thesis. That means that, assuming I bother to turn in my last couple of final exams, in a few weeks I will officially have my MPH! Go me.

Now I just have to rewrite the whole thing and clean it up and publish it. Which would be a great deal easier if I didn't need to sleep. Apparently, many other scientists feel the same way, and have been taking all kinds of yummy performance enhancing drugs to churn out more papers in less time.

Does my insurance cover Provigil?


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Now playing: Brazilian Girls - Sirenes De La Fete
via FoxyTunes

Labels: doping, drugs, me, narcissism, school, science, writing

As a food geek, I have been watching Bravo's Top Chef with ... eternal optimism. The entire concept of the show guarantees disappointment, I think, because ultimately the viewer can't taste the food. With Project Runway, you can see the clothes and at least make some kind of judgment on their relative merits; not so on Top Chef.

Iron Chef manages to be more interesting, I find, because it at least focuses the viewer on things that a spectator can judge - technique, presentation, how the food is getting made and the ideas that go in to making it. Top Chef started out doing a good bit of that, but increasingly the focus has been on the canned Reality TV Melodrama of the contestants' fights and whining and pontificating, mostly about topics only tangentially related to food.

It's too bad, and a part of why I dislike the whole chef-as-celebrity thing that has gained so much momentum since Wolfgang Puck (at least). That is that the food ends up getting second place to a cult of personality. And I think that detracts not only from the ability of many proper chefs (the kind who aren't photogenic enough to go on TV, for instance) to make a living, but also from the quality possible from those who do Make It Big On TV. The culinary world should take a caution from the auto industry - Lee Iacocca was brilliant at making cars, until he started being a celebrity too. And then he became a celebrity who also made cars. He retired rich, but do you have any idea how many transmissions my old Caravan went thru??

So yeah. My feelings on Top Chef and other things. Now back to my thesis.

Labels: Bravo, celebrity, cooking, food, rant, reality TV, stupidity, top chef

Two things today...

First and foremost, I learned that I will most likely not be unemployed come graduation - I have an offer from the CDC. Which is awesome. It's in Atlanta, which I was hoping to avoid, but ultimately liking what I spend 8-12+ hours a day doing is my top priority. So yay me!

And for all three people in the universe for whom my employment status is not thrilling news, it turns out that caffeine may help prevent Alzheimer's. American researchers found that a daily cup of coffee improved the function of the blood-brain barrier in rabbits, the failure of which has been implicated in the disease. And we all know that any excuse for another cup of coffee will do!

Also, have you all seen this site? It's kinda awesome. Vicious, yes, but awesome: Scorned Woman Ecards.

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Now playing: Hot Chip - Wrestlers
via FoxyTunes

Labels: Alzheimers, brain, caffeine, coffee, evil, health, jobs, links, science, work, yay

When I was a kid, my teachers were not, generally, of soft-spoken temperament. John Eaton Elementary, while nestled in one of DCs tonier areas and enjoying all the benefits that entailed, was still a DC school and more importantly, still an ELEMENTARY school. Kids are loud, there's noise outside, and the building creaks. Teachers had many different ways to rise above the din of imprisoned childhood - they would shout, bang on desks, whistle, or, in one case, glare at the front row so loudly that we would all cover our ears and close our eyes in terror.

That was back in the old days. Now, teachers have infrared microphones. Does this strike anyone else as a bit ... ridiculous? If there's any population in the universe with an instinctive understanding of escalation-of-conflict, it's second-graders. And handing out the mic to the kids so their questions and answers can be heard? Awesome, yeah, but I also have met a few second-graders, and the only ones who need a mic to be heard (even in an overcrowded DCPS classroom) are the dead ones. Plus, should we really be encouraging kids to try and be like rock stars?

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for kids being able to hear and be heard better in school. This just strikes me as a good way to, ahem, amplify the problems in DCPS, as opposed to actually addressing them (smaller classes, HVAC systems that work, etc.).

Labels: DCPS, education, insane, noise, school

Legendary scientist and science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke died today, aged 90 years. Clarke was one of my absolute favorite writers, and had an immense influence on my becoming a scientist myself.

"Childhood's End" is my favorite of his novels, and since to pick favorites amongst his short works is essentially impossible, I'll name "The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God" as the two which, without fail and upon every single reading, kick my ass six ways from Sunday.

Two of my favorite Clarke quotes, which form a solid portion of how I try to live:

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." (Clarke's Second Law)

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

Labels: Clarke, death, hero, literature, obituary, sad, science

Type II diabetes is a fast-growing health problem - as peoples' increasingly sedentary and BigMac-filled lifestyles balloon waistlines, the Beetis is close behind. Some keys to stemming that tide may come from interesting places: researchers have found that the South American shrinking frog produces a protein - pseudin-2 - the synthetic of which, it seems, stimulates insulin secretion and sensitivity. A whole new reason to lick toads?

A Scotish group has found preliminary evidence that two black tea constituents - theaflavins and thearubigins - appear to also mimic insulin's actions on blood glucose. The research is, again, pretty preliminary, so while a nice cup of tea is probably a good thing anyways, I wouldn't count on it to cure your diabetes.

The only real way to prevent type II diabetes (in most cases) is diet and exercise. Especially for kids, who, like their parents, are getting fatter and fatter every day. Johns Hopkins researchers found that outdoor activity and daily PE classes are, unsurprisingly, negatively associated with kids ending up obese. Skateboarding in particluar was associated with less tubbiness. So, NIMBY Tribunal, let them build that damn skate park, unless you'd rather put up with a dialysis center.

Speaking of parents and their children, a review of the literature may suggest that spanking kids leads to sexual health problems. Kids everywhere would love to tell their parents about this study, but it is a retrospective review, and the results seem a bit of a stretch. Plus, being into S+M is one of the "problems" listed, so that's an interesting question.

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Now playing: Dragonette - Jesus Doesn't Love Me
via FoxyTunes

Labels: Beetis, bondage, diabetes, drugs, frogs, health, kids, obesity, sex, sexuality, skateboarding, spanking

A CDC study found that the vast majority of Americans (75%) don't know the signs of a heart attack, and only a few of those who do would know how to respond. Since heart disease is still the number one cause of death in the US, it's important to know the signs:
- Chest pain (usually squeezing or pressure)
- Pain in neck, shoulder, or jaw, arms or back
- Shortness of breath
- Others - nausea, cold sweat, light headedness.
Even if you're not sure a person with the signs is having a heart attack, call 911 immediately. Time to treatment is a top determinant of survival.

Speaking of not knowing, we really don't know what causes depression. Aside from the serotonin hypothesis, which is at best a gross oversimplification, and more likely a bad theory, research indicates that much of the effect of antidepressant medications may be placebo. The meta-analysis of numerous trials of the drugs found only marginal effects beyond placebo in all but the most severely depressed patients - a much smaller group indeed than those who take these drugs every day.

These results could well have some spectacular impacts on much of the field of health care, since so many patients are on antidepressants, and the costs are staggering. What if it's all a waste?

Labels: depression, drugs, education, health, health care, heart attack, heart disease, knowledge, medication, placebo, SSRI

If you feel like making me very happy, buy me one three of these. Pleeeeze!

Labels: adorable, brains, cute, geek, nerdy, plushie, toys

...For guys looking vapid gold diggers. CNN.com has a feature on what cars, allegedly, a guy should drive to impress the ladies. The contestants are the Nissan 350Z Roadster (a 'he-man' ride but no good for commuting), the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder ( practical but too girly looking), Audi TT Roadster (crap engine), Porsche Cayman (a Porsche that allegedly gets 23 MPG), and the ultimate gold digger-mobile ("Only bankers, lawyers, rap stars and trust fund babies can afford one"), the Mercedes-Benz CL 550.

All of these cars are pretty hot, but it honestly must take a certain type of girl to be so swayed by a man's car.

And thank you again, CNN, for bringing us news that matters.

Labels: anal sex, cnn, culture, fake news, sexism, stupid, superficiality