"I was skimming this article and made me think about your conspiracy theory/'how we are all going to die' blog"

One of my favorite things about having this blog, even though I basically stopped posting anything on it for a very long time*, is that my friends periodically forward me articles that they think I might find interesting. In pretty much every case, the forwards are exactly the type of thing I'm interested in, and also the type of thing I would blog about, if I ever blogged.

WELL. Here I am blogging for 30 straight days, so what better time to highlight some of the articles people have sent my way? This should hopefully encourage people to keep sending me stuff, because even though I don't always respond, I do always read the messages and the articles and I always appreciate the thought. (And just as an FYI, I'm happy to return the favor and send out dire news via email as well, if you're into that sort of thing. I've got over 200 articles bookmarked to read/blog about someday, so if you let me know what kind of bad news you like, boy oh boy can I forward you some stuff about it!)

But I digress. Without further ado, let me start makin' my favorite thing--a list!

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1. From my favorite undergrad worker bee/research assistant I've received several interesting articles in emails all appropriately titled "for your blog." For example:

I was skimming this article and made me think about your conspiracy theory/"how we are all going to die" blog. 

(He hasn't read a word of this blog, but he's already decided I'm crazy, apparently!) Shortly after the above link, he also sent along, with no comments whatsoever (apparently my interest for the article speaks for itself):

NYTimes: Tea, Sugar and Death: Cafe Groups Ponder the End - An informal group discusses philosophical thoughts on dying at a monthly gathering in New York called Death Cafe, one of many such get-togethers around the country.

After I received that first link he sent along, I read the whole article and then went out and bought the book that the article was based on. I enjoyed the book immensely, but I have to say, if you read the article in full you basically get the main gist of the book, and with a lot less repetition to boot. When I told the worker bee I was reading the book, and that it was making me think about what "food" really is, he sent me back this pithy remark: "Food is a scary thing. And yet I just keep on eating all of it." Isn't he so cute.**

2. My friend Tiffani also often sends me amusing emails with dire links, and since I know Tiffani reads this blog, I want to say directly to her: Thank you, I do dearly love all the emails you send me. Recently, there was the gem of an email with the subject line: "Good news on the flu front!", which then went on to say

just kidding. why would i send good news about the flu? and is there even such a thing?
(Link)

That article that she forwarded along was suuper terrifying (so I obviously highly recommend reading it). Basically, it describes how average sanitary habits are NOT SUFFICIENT to stop the spread of norovirus, which "is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis -- stomach upset -- in the United States," as well as "the most common cause of foodborne-disease outbreaks." How do you get norovirus, and how do we seem to not be able to get rid of it? I'm glad you asked:

Hand-washed dishes are especially likely to carry the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in its website -- which could be one reason norovirus causes so many outbreaks on cruise ships. “You cannot get the water hot enough if you wash by hand,” says Aiello.

Norovirus is spread fecally -- in the poop -- and that means it can get into laundry. Studies show that fecal matter spreads even in ordinary laundry, so if someone is sick, it’s important to use very hot water and bleach to destroy virus that could be on any clothing, sheets or towels.

And regular cleaner won’t get the virus off surfaces. CDC recommends using bleach, including chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

Complicating the problem, most restaurant workers don’t get paid sick leave, so if they miss work, they don’t get paid. This means many workers come in sick, and they can spread the virus to hundreds of customers. Food handlers, dishwashers, even staff who bus and clear tables, all can spread the germ.

The problem extends to the home, too. There, Aiello said, several factors make it hard to keep one sick family member from infecting others. "It could be the door handle. It could be the toilet tank cover. Some studies show it can be aerosolized. If you throw up and then flush the toilet, how much of the spray gets into the air?" she asked. One study last year showed how the virus spread on a plastic bag that had been in a bathroom where a norovirus patient threw up.

Ugh. But hey, speaking of getting sick on cruise ships, there was another message Tiffani sent me recently, which exclaimed:

First, calamities took cruises away from me... now they are taking hot air balloon rides?! What is going to be left? Sitting on grass and hoping you don't get hit by a meteor? (Link)

Thankfully, I'm happy to report that Tiffani's last resort--sitting on grass and hoping you don't get hit by a meteor--is no longer something we have to worry about. That's because of what I'm about to describe, which comes courtesy of a coworker who I probably ill-advisedly told about this blog.

3. There is something called "DoomsDay Dwellings." In June, my coworker sent me an email pointing me to maybe the best site on the internet, which promotes the Dwellings, and she noted:

Why buy a used house when you can build one of these and be prepared for the apocalypse?   Designed to withstand fire, social unrest, shrapnel, governmental collapse, and earthquakes (optional). http://www.doomsdaydwellings.com/
The "Genisis" model comes with a "Civilization Generator".

The website for these Dwellings is very much worth a perusal. If you don't want to click away from my blog and get lost in the epicness of DoomsDay Dwellings though, I'll list just some of the things that the fanciest Dwelling (GENISIS: 6 Adults and 9 Children  - 10 years of indoor food, air, water, power  + Civilization Generator) allegedly protects you against:

• Double Dip Recession / Depression  [Huh? Does the house come with its own economy?]

• Gas Shortage / Peak Oil 
• Drought / Famine 
• Cyber Warfare that Destroys the Grid
• Social Unrest / Large Scale Riots
• Government Collapse [In your DoomsDay Dwelling, the government will never collapse!]
• EMP Burst / Solar Flare
• Pandemic
• Earthquake (Optional)
• Volcanic Disruption [Is that different from a volcanic eruption?]
• Minor Climate Change - Excluding Major Flood Zones [Aren't major flood zones like, the first places that might need a DoomsDay Dwelling?]
• Magnetic Field Rotation [????]
• NBC Explosion < 1 Mile Away [not really sure what an NBC explosion is; I'm assuming it doesn't involve the TV network]
• Total Environmental Collapse [but only "minor" climate change...]
• Non-direct Meteorite Impact 
• WWIII - Nuclear War [Only if the nuclear bombs do not have a "direct" impact, I assume]
• The end of the Civilization as we know it [Don't worry, the genesis model comes with that handy Civilization Generator, so humanity won't die out on your watch]

Truthfully, I would totally like to own one of those DoomsDay Dwellings, just in case things spiral out of control out there. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure that I do not have (and never will have) nearly enough money to afford my own self-burying bunker. Based on the research I've been doing lately, the amount of money I have available to purchase a dwelling in the area in which I currently live seems to be able to get me approximately two bedrooms, one bathroom, and no special doomsday protection whatsoever. Alas alack.

4. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not give a hat tip to Jessie, who's sent me too many links to even remember. Recently, she notified me that "Everything is trying to kill us," and she sent along this link, which totally made me sad, since I really really want a treadmill desk. But more interestingly, she also sent along this article about Greek Yogurt, which is quite interesting. It was the second thing I'd read about how hard it is to get rid of the whey that's produced as Greek yogurt is strained (there's whey too much of it!***), and it was the final straw that made me stop eating Greek Yogurt. Of course, the first straw that made me stop eating Greek Yogurt was the realization that I just don't like it very much. I prefer a runnier, more sour yogurt (like the kind they have in Bulgaria. In case you care...).

I suppose I could go on and on with this list, but lucky for you I'm running out of time. I've got to be off to my tennis lesson! I can't wait to go smash balls for 90 minutes. Hopefully those two Russian chicks from last week show up and shriek just as much as last time when I hit the ball to them...that was fun.

Day 2, complete!

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*Not intentionally, it just kept (not) happening.
**I am not coming on to him. I mean cute in a precious kind of way. Not that this kid reads my blog. We just talk about it sometimes.
***Ba-dum ching!

All Men are Mortal, and All Fruit Flies Are Boozers

Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't particularly cheered up as of late...I even flew myself all the way to California in the hopes that a change of pace (and some friend time) would make me feel better, and I continued to mope while I was there because everything is terrible and we're all gonna die and I'm gonna die alone and I am the worst. But I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to make life a little more enjoyable and I guess a good start is some edjumucation. I do like learning me some new things! Like these random tidbits I've stumbled across lately:

• Fruit flies seek fermenting fruit to keep wasps away.
• There is a contest for Oddest Book Title, and one of the books on the shortlist this year is God's Doodle, and I'll let you click on that link to find out what "God's doodle" is.
• Crying in space is hard to do.
• Thomas Edison invented LOLCats?
• The world is in need of portable fish authenticity tests...beware your sushi!
• Oh god, prairie dogs have the black death.
• Dolphins might call each other by name. Amazing.
• Holy moly look at these giant bird nests! I wouldn't want to stand under any of those...
• Note to self: do not store your gun magazine (should you ever be in possession of one) in the oven.
• OMG the world's soil is running out.
• And the pièce de résistance: Can you eat your own poop? Spoiler alert: Yep. Second spoiler alert: there is a word meaning "eating poop" and this word is "coprophagy." 

In some more existential crisis news, I recently read All Men are Mortal, by Simon de Beauvoir. It was an odd book that I don't particularly recommend, but I mention it because it was more or less a meditation on immortality, and therefore on mortality, and on what makes a life meaningful. The main message I took from the novel is that individual lives are relatively meaningless and can make little impact (even immortal ones) and in the aggregate humans are constantly repeating their errors...but at least humans are mortal and get to die. So let this serve as a note to self: life might be pointless, but at least you'll die some day!

And hey look, this is topical:

As is this (from one of my favorite new (to me) blogs).

And this:

Via

Finally, to finish this long ramble, I can't wait to teach my nephew about what goats actually sound like:


1:24 is obviously the best part of this compilation.

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!

Not dead, just restin'

Oh, hai. Has it really been over a month since I last blogged?  That's crazypants. Does it mean we're all not gonna die? Heavens no; evidence still abounds that the world is collapsing all around us.  I mean, you need look no further than this disgusting concoction which I had the (dis)pleasure of tasting this weekend:

(Incidentally, those fries were also pretty disgusting, some of the worst things I've eaten in a long long time. I can't believe people eat that sort of stuff regularly.)

Speaking of fast food, there is also this. Never let it be said there is no truth in advertising.

Not that I condone the distruction of property...

...but sometimes graffiti can make a marvelous improvement to a billboard.

Observe:

Apparently this was spotted in downtown Seattle last month (source).

Honey, McRib, Peak Oil, Earth from space, Surprise link

The title of today's blog entry is not creative, but it is descriptive. With that, let's begin.

1. Oh, Honey: It's like I don't know you anymore.

I've learned some terrible things about honey this week. Let's start with the fact that a lot of stuff that is sold as "honey" in supermarkets (three quarters of it, maybe) can't legally be called honey. This is because the honey has been been ultra-filtered to have the pollen removed from it, and the FDA has ruled that honey must contain pollen to legally be called honey. Now, whether or not honey has pollen in it most likely seems somewhat inconsequential from your perspective (why should you care if your honey has bits of flowers in it?), but don't be lulled into complacency. Without pollen in the honey, there is no way to trace the source of the honey, and this means there's no way to tell where your honey comes from. And you definitely want to know where your honey comes from, because--apparently--the cheapest honey around is from China, which is also where the most dangerous honey is from. Says Food Safety News:

A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals.

Yep. Evidently, Chinese honey is very often tainted with chloramphenicol, which can cause fatal reactions in 1 in every 30,000 people. The United States doesn't even let food animals eat the stuff! And then there are the heavy metals in the honey--it seems mom-and-pop beekeping operations in China have a pesky habit of using "small, unlined, lead-soldered drums to collect and store [their] honey." This is no good, people. No good.

But how does contaminated Chinese honey get into the US of A, you ask? Especially if all the pollen has been filtered out of it--and if everybody knows it's poisonous? Simple: via (a) negligence of the FDA, and (b) honey laundering schemes (I kid you not--look, senator Schumer from my home state made a whole stink about it last year). The United States has placed steep tariffs on honey from China to dissuade their import; in response China has adopted the practice of routing its honey through other countries, most recently India. Europe allows neither Chinese nor Indian honey to be imported...but America apparently has no problem with the Indian variety despite the well-known fact that much of it comes from China. America: land of the free and home of the brave honey eaters!

Which is all to say, I think the Food Safety News report on honey laundering, where a lot of the above information comes from, is definitely worth a read.

From now on, I think I'll stick to honey I purchase from local producers.

2. Ribses.

I've never eaten a McRib sandwich, and I have no intention of ever doing so. But I'm gathering from a lot of postings on Facebook, commercials on TV, and various internet articles, that the McRib is/was back on the market--for a limited time only (apparently, you've missed your chance to eat one at this point). Two things I've read about the McRib have stuck with me, so I'm sharing them with you.

(Side question: Why am I reading about the McRib at all? Because it's oddly fascinating, that's why. Also because I am nothing if not good at procrastination...more important things to do? Time to research the McRib on the interwebs!)

Numero Uno. Yesterday I read skimmed a fascinating article about the McRib as arbitrage, in which it is argued that McDonalds only introduces the McRib when pork prices are falling. The author even made a graph to prove it (blue is the price of pork, black is when the McRib has been reintroduced):

Neato, huh?

In addition to being an interesting read--definitely worth a perusal--the McRib arbitrage article also contained a one-sentence summary of the American fast food industry that I liked very much (such nice imagery):

Fast food involves both hideously violent economies of scale and sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of.

And what a nice segue that is to McRib thing Numero Dos: What's the McRib made of? It's certainly not made of actual ribs. If you've digested one of these things, you probably don't want to know the ingredients...but I'm going to tell you anyway: The patty is comprised of chopped up pig innards and "plenty of salt." The bun? Well, that contains 34 ingredients, among which is azodicarbonamide, something also found in gym mats, and a banned ingredient in European and Australian food.

I'm sure there's a joke in here about "chewing on that" next time you chew on a McRib, but it's not coming easily to me so I'll just move on.

3. We're so screwed.

This is a really, really interesting article about public/scholarly debate, popular perception, and the reality of overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, and the future of the world (if you can't view the full article, a summary is here). Rather than abstracting the article in my own words, I'll just quote a large bit of text from the conclusion--the authors write much more eloquently on the subject than I could. I know the following quote is long, but it's a nice reminder of the bind the world is in and I encourage you to read it all.

The world today faces enormous problems related to population and resources. These ideas were discussed intelligently and, for the most part, accurately in many papers from the middle of the last century, but then they largely disappeared from scientific and public discussion….Most environmental science textbooks focus far more on the adverse impacts of fossil fuels than on the implications of our overwhelming economic and even nutritional dependence on them. The failure today to bring the potential reality and implications of peak oil, indeed of peak everything, into scientific discourse and teaching is a grave threat to industrial society. The concept of the possibility of a huge, multifaceted failure of some substantial part of industrial civilization is so completely outside the understanding of our leaders that we are almost totally unprepared for it.

There are virtually no extant forms of transportation, beyond shoe leather and bicycles, that are not based on oil, and even our shoes are now often made of oil. Food production is very energy intensive, clothes and furniture and most pharmaceuticals are made from and with petroleum, and most jobs would cease to exist without petroleum. But on our university campuses one would be hard pressed to have any sense of that beyond complaints about the increasing price of gasoline, even though a situation similar to the 1970s gas shortages seemed to be unfolding in the summer and fall of 2008 in response to three years of flat oil production, assuaged only when the financial collapse decreased demand for oil.

No substitutes for oil have been developed on anything like the scale required, and most are very poor net energy performers….Our new sources of “green” energy are simply increasing along with (rather than displacing) all of the traditional ones.

If we are to resolve these issues, including the important one of climate change, in any meaningful way, we need to make them again central to education at all levels of our universities, and to debate and even stand up to those who negate their importance, for we have few great intellectual leaders on these issues today. We must teach economics from a biophysical as well as a social perspective. Only then do we have any chance of understanding or solving these problems.

4. Now some fun. Look at the Earth from space!

5. Finally, the surprise link. What the...

I'm never eating seafood again!

I'm a little late on this news, but I just had to share: Seafood is evidently not safe to eat unless you catch it with your own two hands!

By "not safe to eat seafood," i mean it's probably safe to eat, but if you order it at a restaurant or buy it in a grocery store you may not be getting the type of fish advertised. According to some recent investigative journalism by the Boston Globe, fish mislabeling is rampant in Boston-area retailers. It's not just Boston though--other studies have found the same is the case around the country as well.

While some substitutions are relatively innocuous, for example Pacific cod in exchange for New England cod, others sound much more terrifying. Chew on this, for instance:

In 2007, two customers at a Chicago restaurant were hospitalized after eating a toxin found in puffer fish. They had ordered monkfish.

That same year, a large shipment of escolar from Indonesia was labeled Atlantic cod and exported to Hong Kong. More than 600 people reportedly fell ill after eating it. Consumption of escolar can cause severe gastrointestinal problems because of the type of oil it contains.

I know, gross, right? Wikipedia claims that escolar can cause keriorrhea, which "is similar to diarrhea, only the body will expel yellowish-orange drops of oil instead of liquid bowel movements." Wow, that's just what I want to get when I order cod. (Pardon me while I gag.)

According to an unsubstantiated claim made in the Globe article, "at some restaurants, chefs call fish anything their imagination conjures, disguising the identity with sauces and spices." Really?? Well, if that's true* then I think it's safe to say: It's a conspiracy!** Totally time to panic and stop eating seafood.

*It's probably not.
**You will all be pleased to note that I refrained from making a joke about "something fishy going on here." You're welcome for that.

***

So I wrote most of that a few weeks ago, but never really got around to finishing. Things have been insanely busy over here; I've been travelling a lot (Vegas two weeks ago, Los Angeles this week), there was a freak snow storm, work has been hectic, and I've actually working on my dissertation...among other things. Which is all to say, blogging might be slow for a while. Please bear with me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to go breathe in some of that famous LA smog. Oh, Los Angeles. How I have not missed you.

Friday Fatigue

Man. It's hard to have a full time job, move across town/the country, write a dissertation, try to have a semblance of a social life,* AND keep up with this blog.

I've been bookmarking things to write about here, but let's be honest: I won't get around to most of it. So here's a list of things I've found interesting recently.

1. WATCH YOUR HEAD! I was informed yesterday that there's a satellite falling to earth that is going to clear orbit today, and that there's a 1 in 3200 chance it could hit a person (a statistic I have verified in an extremely detailed NASA PowerPoint). While this doesn't precisely translate into a 1 in 3200 chance that it could hit ME, I'm not taking any chances. I think I'll work from the subway today. They have wifi down there, don't they?

(Side note: In my brief research on this satellite-maybe-hitting-me business, I discovered that NASA has an entire office dedicated to studying things that fall from space and might hit me. They think of everything!)

2. The world's (allegedly) deadliest volcano might erupt soon. Not a good time to plan a trip to Indonesia, I guess.

3. Ever wonder how breakfast cereal is made? Wonder no more! (Also, eat cereal no more...ick.)

4. Speaking of icky industrial food, the first two parts of this piece have rather disturbed me. Wood pulp in our food, and tasteless OJ? Guess I'll be fresh-squeezing my juice from now on, and trying to avoid chemically-treated pulverized wood.

More on food-grade wood pulp here and here. (Worth reading about, in my opinion.)

5. More tax, more happy?

6. And finally, some fun. Researchers have analyzed male dance moves to discover what the ladies like the most. The results might surprise you, so I'll quote directly from the abstract [try here for the full article]: "Three movement measures were key predictors of dance quality; these were variability and amplitude of movements of the neck and trunk, and speed of movements of the right knee."

More specifically, the following aspects of dudes' dancing seems to account for most of the variability in ladies' ratings: neck internal/external rotation (head shaking), trunk abduction/adduction (sideways bending), and right knee internal/external rotation (twisting).

Not to be a hater, but there is literally no attractive dance I can imagine that involves shaking one's head while bending sideways and twisting the right knee rapidly. But what do I know.

Do you guys remember this guy? Check out that trunk abduction/adduction!

Happy Friday.


*I am blatantly failing at my goal of making no new friends until the dissertation is done. Shame on me.