Just in the nick of time!

The PERFECT Halloween costume idea for me:

Thanks to Jessie for sending.

UM WHAT?

Oh Em GEE. Have you heard about the police officer in NYC who was recently arrested for plotting, on multiple occasions, to "kidnap, rape, cook and eat women"?!?!

This is a real story, and like many real stories, it is incredibly bizarre. It has recently been discovered (by the FBI, no less) that NYC police officer Gilberto Valle, aged 28, married, with a one-year-old daughter, liked to spend his free time on his home computer chatting with various people via IM about the logistics of kidnapping and/or cooking women. Not only that, but he also created upwards of 100 files that contained information about various women that he knew, including their addresses, physical descriptions, and photographs. He also went so far as to look up various women in a federal database, and to offer to kidnap some of them for money.

The federal complaint filed against him is fascinating, and creepy as hell. For example, here's the FBI's description of Gilberto chatting with his "co-conspirator #1" (CC-1) about the logistics of silence-of-the-lambsing one particular woman:

And let's not forget about the kidnapping, plotted with Co-Conspirator #2!

Valle's lawyer claims that he is "at worst is someone who has sexual fantasies about people he knows and he talks about it on the Internet" and that "nothing has happened....it's just talk," and that may be legally true. But I can't imagine that his wife--who turned him in, by the way--or his job--which he used to access federal database information about potential victims--will take kindly to any of his talk.

People can be really creepy sometimes.

***********

In other news, THERE IS A HURRICANE OUTSIDE.

From The Cat in the Hat

Another gem from the archive

"If baby-throwing-out-windows becomes a trend in NYC, and if I ever get to go to NYC, I could get hit on the head and suffer serious consequences." Gosh, I still don't see why Mr. T* gave me a talking-to about this journal...

In other news, I've been caught in a whirlpool of sad this past week, and have been feeling a lot like this:

Guess I just gotta keep on keepin' on.

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*Not that Mr. T. I'm using an initial to protect the identity of the poor beleaguered man who had the misfortune of teaching me global studies in 9th grade. Mr. T, if you're out there, my adult self apologizes for my teen self. (Though I still maintain that I satisfactorily fulfilled the current events assignment. You can't belatedly insist the entries cover only certain stories from the newspaper, and not be snarky to boot.)

This is why I'm against homeschooling

A 14-year old New Zealand girl recently write into her local paper, the Northern Outlook, to express the following opinion:

via

I think the letter stands just fine by itself and does not need my comment, but...wow. And before you jump to conclusions, this does not appear to be a hoax. It does, however, appear to be very, very sad.

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In more fun (and (finally!) related) news, have you heard about how duck penises and vaginae* work? No? You should listen to this, then. Or, if you're not at work, google "duck penis." You will be surprised at the results.

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Two posts in one day, aren't you lucky.

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*That's what the spell check suggested instead of "vaginas," so i'm going with it.

Something I should take to heart

One problem I have in life is not making my wishes, desires, or preferences known until it is too late. Perhaps that's why #19 from 40 Things to Say Before you Die spoke to me:

By Jessica Hagy

Very sad I missed this!

The space shuttle Endeavour was recently driven 12 miles, from LAX to South Los Angeles. ON SURFACE STREETS:

It's rare that I miss living in Los Angeles, but I do badly wish I had still been living there when this drive happened. It would have been really cool to see in person.

Many more photos of the expedition can be found here. They're pretty awesome.

In which I reveal that the idea for this blog was stolen from my 14-year-old self

While shelving some books on my bookshelf this morning I (re)discovered my 9th grade current events journal from the fall of 1995, and I immediately abandoned my tidying task to peruse the little time capsule. Reading through the current events I chose to chronicle, I (re)realized that the journal is basically a paper version of this blog.* Take, for example, the following entry from 10/26/95:**

Each of the entries in this journal end with a paragraph about how the story affects me, which was clearly part of the assignment. I often interpreted this part of the assignment as "this affects me because it could happen to me and I could die."

It's like I set the stage for this blog 17 years ago! It's nice to know I still have a teenage enthusiasm for the world.

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*I had had these epiphanies for the first time last December, when I discovered for the first time that I had this journal in my apartment. I read aloud many of my favorite entries to Jessie and Evan, who were visiting me at the time, and we all agreed my 14-year-old self was pretty much a direct predecessor of my current self, but also a cheeky little bastard. That last part didn't stick with me over time. Ahem. Right?
**Sorry about the somewhat low quality of the pictures. I took them with my new cellphone (!I am finally free from my old crappy phone!) under sub-optimal lighting conditions.

gmNO

The New York Times magazine recently published a nice article by Michael Pollan* on why we should care about California's Proposition 37, which will require labeling on all food products containing genetically modified ingredients. Predictably, agribusiness corporations are not best pleased with the proposed California law, and would really love it if the proposition did not pass.

I found the following few paragraphs from the article particularly interesting, and I hope they will entice you to read the whole thing (it's really not that long and it's worth a perusal).

Monsanto and its allies have fought the labeling of genetically modified food so vigorously since 1992, when the industry managed to persuade the Food and Drug Administration — over the objection of its own scientists — that the new crops were “substantially equivalent” to the old and so did not need to be labeled, much less regulated. This represented a breathtaking exercise of both political power (the F.D.A. policy was co-written by a lawyer whose former firm worked for Monsanto) and product positioning: these new crops were revolutionary enough (a “new agricultural paradigm,” Monsanto said) to deserve patent protection and government support, yet at the same time the food made from them was no different than it ever was, so did not need to be labeled. It’s worth noting that ours was one of only a very few governments ever sold on this convenient reasoning: more than 60 other countries have seen fit to label genetically modified food, including those in the European Union, Japan, Russia and China.

To prevent the United States from following suit, Monsanto and DuPont, the two leading merchants of genetically modified seed, have invested more than $12 million to defeat Prop 37. They've been joined in this effort by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, whose president declared at a meeting last July that defeating Prop 37 would be the group’s top priority for 2012. Answering the call, many of America’s biggest food and beverage makers — including PepsiCo, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and General Mills — have together ponied up tens of millions of dollars to, in effect, fight transparency about their products.

Americans have been eating genetically engineered food for 18 years, and as supporters of the technology are quick to point out, we don’t seem to be dropping like flies. But they miss the point. The fight over labeling G.M. food is not foremost about food safety or environmental harm, legitimate though these questions are. The fight is about the power of Big Food. Monsanto has become the symbol of everything people dislike about industrial agriculture: corporate control of the regulatory process; lack of transparency (for consumers) and lack of choice (for farmers); an intensifying rain of pesticides on ever-expanding monocultures; and the monopolization of seeds, which is to say, of the genetic resources on which all of humanity depends.

Now for a quick topical rant:

To all (one) of my California readers out there, my personal preference would be that you VOTE YES on this prop. I'd quite like to make those agribusiness and food companies squirm; wouldn't you? Plus, as a general rule, I'm against genetically modified food. I'm not really sure whether it's "unhealthy" (whatever that means) or not, but I do think the seed patenting process is extremely unhelpful to the sustainability of the food system (and the livelihood of farmers; go watch this and you'll see), and I'm way against the way that GM crops tend to promote the use of pesticides.

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*Stole this link from Christine's post on Facebook. Thanks, Christine!

It's all a bunch of noise anyway

By wendy macnaughton

Upside-down frown?

So I took an impromptu trip to Ithaca for Columbus day weekend, and what a good idea that was. I think the trip was good for my soul, or whatever I should call the place in my brain (heart?) where a black hole of despair has recently appeared. There's something about being around family that's just...comfortable and nice, and I really benefited from being in the bosom of my family for a few days. Not to mention the fact that going there, being there, and driving home efficiently took up the empty, yawning, span of time that I was facing over the three-day weekend. Plus, when I'm home there's no pretense, no need to shower*, free laundry, free food, car advice...I mean, it don't get much better than that.

Except nowadays it kind of DOES, because of this little guy:

My nephew is getting SO CUTE. He's talking up a storm, and he actually seems to be starting to like me (finally!). He was a big part of helping me turn my frown upside-down. Except for the part of the weekend in which he screamed so shrilly, so close to my ear, that I went a little deaf. I'll forgive him for that though, if he keeps smiling that adorable smile.

In book news, I finished both Wool and 14 over the weekend. The Wool Omnibus proved to be pretty good throughout (4 stars on Goodreads), though I (predictably) lost patience during the fighting scenes (that kind of stuff makes me drift off...yawn). I haven't decided if I'll keep reading the "next" book in the series; it is a prequel that I'm not sure I will like as much, but we'll see. 14 turned out to be...perhaps a horror book? It's hard to say. I've never read anything like it before, and while I was *quite* surprised by the ending, that was mostly because it came out of nowhere and didn't really make much sense. People have compared the book to LOST (the TV show), and I think it's an apt comparison in terms of how little sense everything makes and how much is left unexplained. That said, it was a pretty fun deviation from my normal audiobook, though I'd probably not recommend it to anyone, nor would I read anything else by that author.

To continue the dystopian kick I'm on, I'm now re-reading Brave New World.** I read this book for the first time probably 12 years ago, during the summer after my freshman or sophomore year of college. I remember loving it then, and man, my current self thinks my younger self was right on. What a great book. If you haven't read it, you need to, right now.

And now, I must get on to the real world of going to work, which somehow isn't quite as interesting as made-up other worlds I can read about. Does anybody out there have a job that's as exciting as a book?

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*No desire to shower, either, ever since my parents got new fancy glassed-in showers that require squeegeeing after every shower, and woe to the one who does not squeegee appropriately...
**Actually, this time I'm listening to it.

How about a date with a good book?

Disclaimer: this post is way, way off the purported topic of this blog. But it's my blog and I'll do what I want. 

***

In an effort to keep me distracted from myself this week, I've been reading a lot. At the moment I am reading/listening to three books that I am super into. It's been a long time since I was reading ONE book that I really liked, so reading three at once feels miraculous somehow, like being pushed into a candy store as a kid with a hundred dollar bill and told to go wild. The books are totally different, too. One is The Idiot, by Dostoyevsky, which I am loving because (a) I love Russian literature, and (b) it is SUCH A DRAMA. I mean, you won't believe what Natasya whatsherface did at the end of part 1! Everyone was so vexed! I'm shocked that Days of our Lives or As the World Turns or whatever is still on TV hasn't borrowed liberally from the plot. (Actually, they may have. I would have no way of knowing.) Although I'm only a third of the way through the book at this point, I feel confident in saying that it is quite good. And it's perfect for distracting me just enough when I'm trying to fall asleep, even though I sometimes have to read the same page three nights in a row before I remember what happened. I'm so happy the book is epically long...I am already dreading being finished. What will happen to the prince next? I must find out!

The second book I'm reading is I guess called Wool? That was the name of the short story that sucked me in, anyway. [Incidentally, said short story is free for Kindle right now and I highly recommend downloading it (and reading it, obvi).] I thought Wool was a really, really good story...it didn't take very long to read, but it packed a lot in and the end was really haunting. I liked it so much, in fact, that upon finishing I immediately downloaded the Wool omnibus edition, which is the novel-length sequel to the short story, and I am plowing through that as fast as I can. Reading it has even taken the place of my TV vegging-out after work, which, if you know me, means I must be quite into it. I am particularly enjoying this book because it serves well to occupy my imagination during the day, and anyway, there's almost nothing I like more than a good character-driven dystopia*...especially one that paints a world complicated enough that you don't know who to root for. Ack, even typing this paragraph makes me want to quit and go back to reading. I'd better hurry up and finish with whatever it is I'm talking about.

The last book I'm reading is titled 14, and in the interest of full disclosure I'm not actually reading it but rather listening to it. However, since listening to a book takes me much longer than actually reading it, I count it as a read (and in any case, does it really matter how the words get into my brain?). I suspect that this book will lose its lustre for me after the central mystery is resolved, as often happens for me with books like this, but before that happens I'm quite enjoying the way the story is playing out. As a bonus, the book takes place in Los Angeles, and I like being able to picture the streets and parts of town that it talks about. So I guess that's one good thing about the five years I spent in LA: I can accurately picture books that are set there. That's...something.

And now, I find myself running out of things to say. There's no real purpose for this post except to get rid of some nervous energy I have pent up...there are so many ideas swirling in my head from these books, and I don't really have anyone to talk to about them. Though it's always good to have an excuse to feature some awesome WPA artwork. Why doesn't the government still pay people to make propaganda for books? That's probably what's wrong with the youth these days.

*Fun fact: Blogger spellcheck does not recognize "dystopia" as a real word. It suggests I might actually mean "topiary." Really?

Beware the pigs

So I've been pretty disconsolate this week, moping around and crying periodically when I'm left alone without sufficient distraction. But I guess things could be worse...I could get EATEN BY MY HOGS.

According to various news reports, a 69-year-old Oregon farmer was eaten by his giant hogs last Wednesday. The poor man apparently went out to feed his 700-pound oinkers and never came home. When his family went to look for him several hours later, all they found were his dentures; further searching of the pig pen revealed bits and pieces of his body. Nobody is quite sure how this happened, but the two primary hypotheses seem to be that (a) he had a heart attack or some other similar malady, and fell into the pen, at which time the pigs ate him, or (b) he was attacked by the pigs, pulled into the pen, and eaten alive. To quote what I believe is the original media report, "While investigators are certain that the hogs consumed most of Garner’s body, they do not know how he died." Authorities in Oregon have dispatched a forensic anthropologist to look into the matter.

Ten points for the Examiner, which posted this awful picture along with their version of the story:

Now, if you think this is the first time such a gruesome thing has happened, let me disabuse you of such notions. In 2004, some hogs in Romania knocked a farmer's wife unconscious and ate off her face and ears and fingers (she later died). In 2006, a farmer in England was bitten and mauled by his hogs; he was fortunately saved by his wife, who turned a hose on the pig. And there are probably many more similar incidents, but I don't feel like looking for them. So I guess I'll end with this life lesson: If you are raising 700-pound hogs, keep a hose nearby. You can thank me later for that valuable piece of advise.

Now, back to moping.

Ha, like I would have pets. Those things are liable to eat you!

October 1

Something pretty sad happened in my personal life over the weekend, and now I find myself idly wishing the world really WOULD end as soon as I sometimes prophesize on this blog. I thought that I could hitch some hope to the Mayan apocalypse, but sadly that does not seem to be on the horizon. Some lady at the Washington Post suggests I could worry instead about the volcano at Yellowstone erupting, or global warming, but those are too unlikely to happen anytime soon (in the case of the former), or too gradual to have the type of effect I'm looking for (in the case of the latter).

Guess I'll just link to a bunch of things I've bookmarked over the past few months in an effort to inject some depression into the world. I'll bring you all down to my level if it kills me! (I'm always here for ya.) Which it won't (kill me, that is)...this is only a small selection of the links I've bookmarked for this blog. Lists like this are just too easy to make.

1. Saw this today and it went straight to my Amazon wishlist: Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus.

It is the most fatal virus in the world, a pathogen that kills nearly 100 percent of its hosts in most species, including humans. Fittingly, the rabies virus is shaped like a bullet: a cylindrical shell of glycoproteins and lipids that carries, in its rounded tip, a malevolent payload of helical RNA. On entering a living thing, it eschews the bloodstream, the default route of nearly all viruses but a path heavily guarded by immuno-protective sentries. Instead, like almost no other virus known to science, rabies sets its course through the nervous system, creeping upstream at one or two centimeters per day (on average) through the axoplasm, the transmission lines that conduct electrical impulses to and from the brain. Once inside the brain, the virus works slowly, diligently, fatally to warp the mind, suppressing the rational and stimulating the animal. Aggression rises to fever pitch; inhibitions melt away; salivation increases. The infected creature now has only days to live, and these he will likely spend on the attack, foaming at the mouth, chasing and lunging and biting in the throes of madness — because the demon that possesses him seeks more hosts. (via)

2. On the rabies front, India is not a great place to live. According to the New York Times:

No country has as many free-roaming dogs as India, and no country suffers as much from them. They number in the tens of millions and bite millions of people every year, including vast numbers of children...An estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a third of the global rabies toll.

3. Traveling to Yosemite? Might want to stay away from the park's cabins - they could be full of hantavirus.

Hantavirus is a respiratory disease that first causes flu-like symptoms, then coughing and shortness of breath, and can eventually lead to fatal lung or kidney failure. It doesn’t spread from person to person, but humans can contract it through contact with airborne particles from the feces, urine, or spit of an infected rodent, primarily deer mice.

4. A reason to NOT smoke weed during your teenage years: it makes you stupider. Permanently.

Persistent cannabis use was associated with neuropsychological decline broadly across domains of functioning, even after controlling for years of education. Informants also reported noticing more cognitive problems for persistent cannabis users. Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline. Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning among adolescent-onset cannabis users. Findings are suggestive of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on the adolescent brain and highlight the importance of prevention and policy efforts targeting adolescents.

5. Speaking of getting stupider, check out this article about brain anomalies in children exposed prenatally to a common pesticide. From the article's conclusion:

Our findings indicate that prenatal CPF [chlorpyrifos] exposure, at levels observed with routine (nonoccupational) use and below the threshold for any signs of acute exposure, has a measureable effect on brain structure in a sample of 40 children 5.9–11.2 y of age. We found significant abnormalities in morphological measures of the cerebral surface associated with higher prenatal CPF exposure, after adjusting for possible confounders.

...our findings of altered brain development in children exposed to CPF in utero have important public health implications. First, associations between prenatal exposure, brain structure, and neurocognitive alterations at 5.9– 11.2 y of age suggest that the neurotoxic effects of CPF are long term, at least extending into the early school years. The persistence of effects is consistent with animal studies suggesting that CPF effects are irreversible. Second, the high-exposure group...had relatively modest doses of CPF—doses that were measureable only because of the remarkable sensitivity of the CPF assay. Specimens from a Cincinnati blood bank during the same time period showed a background CPF concentration of 9 pg/g in serum (twice the mean level reported here), suggesting that exposure concentrations in the present sample were not unusually high. Current safety limits are set according to levels needed to achieve inhibition of plasma cholinesterase, a surrogate for inhibition of acetylcholinesterase in the brain, long assumed to be the common mechanism by which organophosphates induce neurodevelopmental deficits. However, pathogenic mechanisms other than cholinesterase inhibition are almost certainly contributing to the deleterious effects of early exposure to organophosphates, including the observed brain abnormalities and their accompanying cognitive deficits. Human exposure limits based on the detection of cholinesterase inhibition may therefore be insufficient to protect brain development in exposed children.

6. Oh, and damage from pesticide exposure may be hereditary. Pesticides are killing the children AND the children's children! Or...more accurately, pesticide exposure of mama rats might be stressing out their children, and their children's children in turn.

We find that a single exposure to a common-use fungicide (vinclozolin) three generations removed alters the physiology, behavior, metabolic activity, and transcriptome in discrete brain nuclei in descendant male [rats], causing them to respond differently to chronic restraint stress. This alteration of baseline brain development promotes a change in neural genomic activity that correlates with changes in physiology and behavior, revealing the interaction of genetics, environment, and epigenetic transgenerational inheritance in the shaping of the adult phenotype. This is an important demonstration in an animal that ancestral exposure to an environmental compound modifies how descendants of these progenitor individuals perceive and respond to a stress challenge experienced during their own life history.

7. And to continue the topic, pesticides might be killing the bees after all.

...data [from two recent studies] present a rather damning portrait of our fondness for pesticides, particularly the modern new neonicotinoids. Not only do bee colonies suffer a significant reduction in growth, but forager bees exposed to even low doses of neonicotinoids are not as likely to find their way home. Further, even if these struggling bee colonies survive, they have an 85% reduction in their production of new queens compared with untreated control colonies...So in short, use of any neonicotinoid pesticide appears to spell out imminent doom for honeybees, bumblebees and their wild kin -- all of which are essential for the continuing survival of flowering plants. Since humans and other animals depend upon flowering plants and their fruits for our survival, the common and widespread use of these pesticides appears to threaten us all.

8. And now for something completely different. Did you hear about the ZEBRA HERPES THAT KILLED THE POLAR BEARS? Herpes is apparently "fatally mixing" in zoos out there. I guess we should try to avoid kissing zoo animals from now on.

9. Newsflash: Pretty much everyone is fat (thanks to Jessie for sending along the Wired article with that delightful title). The CDC recently came out with new estimates of adult obesity in the US and omg, one-third of Americans are obese (yet more are overweight). In The Economist's coverage of the story, which included a view of obesity in other countries (American side note: There are other countries?), the fat epidemic is called "another thing that's too late to prevent." The Economist offered this cheery view of the situation in America [pardon the British oddities in spelling, they do things differently over there]:

America's national governing ideology is based almost entirely on the assertion of negative rights, with a few exceptions for positive rights and public goods such as universal elementary education, national defence and highways. But it's become increasingly clear over the past decade that the country simply doesn't have the political vocabulary that would allow it to institute effective national programmes to improve eating and exercise habits or culture. A country that can't think of a vision of public life beyond freedom of individual choice, including the individual choice to watch TV and eat a Big Mac, is not going to be able to craft public policies that encourage people to exercise and eat right. We're the fattest country on earth because that's what our political philosophy leads to. We ought to incorporate that into the way we see ourselves; it's certainly the way other countries see us.

10. Last but not least, my sister's worst nightmare: have you heard about the SPIDER SWARMS? In June, swarms of poisonous spiders invaded an Indian town during a cultural festival, causing massive chaos. And in March, Mazda had to recall a bunch of its cars because Yellow sac spiders apparently like to live inside a certain part of the car. Says Time:

Yellow sac spiders have found a new place to weave their webs — inside the evaporative canister vent line in the Mazda6 Sedan, which has forced the automaker to recall approximately 52,000 cars due to safety concerns...The spiders’ webs are causing blockages preventing air from getting into the vehicle’s gas tank, which can result in negative air pressure, cracks in the tank’s casing or even fires. It’s a dangerous and creepy situation that has been reported in 20 vehicles so far...According to Mazda representatives, they are unsure why the spiders have decided to take up residence inside the car, but it does appear that the crawlers have a preference. They've been found only in 2009 and 2010 models with 4-cylinder engines. Apparently the V6′s are not as appealing.

Has this list not been depressing enough? Looking for some additional doomsday reading? Why don't you check out the CDC's 12th Report on Carcinogens, which came out in June! Newly reviewed substances this year include Aristolochic acids, Captafol, Certain glass wool fibers (inhalable), Cobalt-tungsten carbide: powders and hard metals, Formaldehyde, ortho-Nitrotoluene, Riddelliine [not a misspelling, believe it or not], and Styrene. FUN!


P.S. Happy (?) birthday to me.