$disanpoter

prevailing medical opinion would agree

Sugar does not cause Diabetes .

It's true we of the safely above-average IQ are almost all guilty of entrenching ourselves in a position purely out of a visceral defensive need to assert our own intelligence in the face of those who might, just might have an equal - or god forbid - stronger claim to it. But boy does it aggravate me when i can't say a single well-meaning point-of-information without it being contradicted and then pissily contested by someone who thinks they know what they're talking about.

I don't go around spouting opinions about the chemical structures of complex artificially produced sugar substitutes. Why? because i have limited knowledge on that subject. I don't enmesh myself in arguments about the viability of string theory; the ethics of minor variations of hinduism in the sub-continent; pre-viking scandanavian tribal rituals, or a whole host of other topic that, regardless of whether or not they actually qualify as Topics in popular consciousness, I quite comfortably know next nothing about.

however much it seems like I pull statements about subjects out of my ass - I usually have in mind some qualified, non-anecdotal source in memory that get triggered when someone makes a comment that registers as false in my mind.

take the dunkin' donuts exchange last night. obnoxious arrogant  boy  1 (oab1)  makes a response to some mundane comment which has the general meaning of

"i don't want a donut because i don't want to get diabetes"

i casually respond

"sugar doesn't cause diabetes"

oab1, continuing what appears to be a very deeply engrained and automatic recourse on his part, attempts to wield the hammer of authority, saying

"prevailing medical opinion would say otherwise"

"Endocrinologist wouldn't"

"Huh?"

"Nevermind"

"Oh yeah. How many people in your family have diabetes"

"A few. And more of them treat it"

something challenging and snotty in response.

"you know, the whole medical training/specialization thing."

snide conclusion of the oab1: "apparently it didn't rub off"

sorry my good friend who enjoys the company of this person; i find him tiring. i find all people who deliberately combat knowledge instead of considering presenting and comparing sources in a collaborative way tiring. they bring out the worst in me. they drag up know-it-all in me and switch my motives from the pursuit of knowledge to the desire to instill a smidgen of humility and self-awareness in the current embodiment of arrogance.

who knew!?

In the course of making an appointment for friday to donate blood (actually, I made two...so i'm not sure how that'll work out), I clicked a link presented as "learn about other types of blood donation." It turns out new treatments are being developed using blood from the placenta and umbilical cord of new born babies, which is rich in stem cells - or maybe just has stem cells. Better yet, it's putting something otherwise thrown out to life-saving use. Almost makes a girl want to get pregnant...

um, no. but if I ever do have those 3 kids the palm reader promised yesterday (that's another post), you can bet your hide (or what's inside it) their globular in vitro wrapping won't be heading off to some facial product manufacturing plant.

[and, thus I say]

Screw those neurotic beauty queens; donate your afterbirth to a cord bank!

Score!

One of the 4 focuses of the endo conference this year is 'the endocrine brain.' I'm psyched, psyched. Couldn't be more perfect...

It's the opening plenary at the moment so they're a bit heavy on the wise quotes, so far we've had:
~The Einstein quote on simplicity.
~"Beautiful hypotheses slain by ugly facts" - Thomas Henry Huxley

[Natural Sciences] This edible is rich in...

I was eating the banana of my breakfast just now, and on licking a bit of mushed banana tip from my fingers I tasted that familiar flattening taste one experiences when eating an unripe banana. Instantaneously my mind offered me the commentary it must be the potassium.

just like that. but that whole mind/voice this is a separate issue.

as is the accuracy of that conclusion, (which i in no way mean to endorse despite the fact that it was my own mind that suggested it to me).

what this here is about is how strange it is that bananas are rich in potassium. not bananas specifically, or potassium specifically - but the whole this fruit/vegetable/other is rich in this valuable compound thing. not on a social/trend level, but on a biological level. is it a biproduct of growing in potassium overrich soil? does their dna produce enzymes that bind with potassium? what is it about bananas that causes them to be 'potassium rich'?

funny lookin' things make me laugh

i'm sorry...i know i shouldn't laugh at this excrutiatingly painful medical condition, but i can't help it if male genitalia is plagued by awkward encumberances and pitiably human travesties. In all fairness, though, I wasn't looking for something to laugh at men over. I was googling gangrene because my great-grandmother's feet showed signs of it, and the very first result was for Fournier's Gangrene, "a necrotizing infection involving the soft tissues of the male genitalia." - as opposed to what? the hard tissue? does that mean arousal mitigates morbidity?

Of all the appendages to have up and die on you, though, that's really gotta suck...

then again, if you're going to put a rubber band around your balls in order to get laid regularly, i hardly think it's my gender that prevents me from feeling pity so much as my common sense. If they were meant to be constricted that way, they never would have dropped.

ultralente

Eli Lily is discontinuing production of Humalin Ultralente, a drug whose lilting cadences have been a sound in my ears my entire life, always in close proximity to another sweet sounding phrase 'CCs' also know as cubic centimeters.

I found this out because my grandmother forwarded me some drug recall alert that (for once) turned out to be accurate and current. Apparently, Phenylpropanolamine (not to be confused with Phenylalanine, the accumulation of which in pheylketaneurotics, crumples the brain into progressively more severe retardation) has been linked to a rare but life-threatening side effect: hemorhagic strokes. One see how they might be confused, considering they both reduce the unfortunate patient to a near vegatative state...

But this Lily thing reminded me of something more disheartening. At first I linked the memory to The Constant Gardener, but that wasn't quite right. In fact, it was a fact picked up at last years Endocrine conference...which i'll get to after lunch.

hmmm

i think i might need a new bed - or at best a new futon. last night i was finishing up some computer things in bed, and the steep of my laptop from the edge of the bed toward the center was at least 20 degrees. This could be why i've been so tired, or it could be the reason i keep waking up at 4 or 5 or 6 convinced that it's 8 or 9 and my alarms didn't go off or didn't wake me up (which in turn could be the reason i'm so tired). but i'm hoping this undesirable incline is only an indication of the futon getting packed down unevenly and not of a broken midbeam...

other than that - i just want to go to sleep.

and other than that...my grandparents are missing. they haven't responded to my emails; they haven't called me back. where could they be? have they snuck off on a trip somewhere?

::sniff::

it was getting a bit too quiet in here so i turned on the television and hit the wrap up of the NCAA Gymnastic Championships. With Stick It also out right now, gymnastics has been closer to the surface in my mind. and you know what? i miss it. i really really really miss it. i going to look and see if there's any place to do gymnastics for grown-ups around here, or trampolining or something. imagine that rush, that weightlessness but with the pull of g-forces, that came from working yourself up to the highest possible arc on a swing. and then take away the swing. it's this movement, this sensation, that's active and controlled, rhythmic and powerful, and yet, filled with this enormously physical sense of freedom.

it's kinda bumming me out, actually, how much i miss it.

tonight

Tonight, I'm going to get back to the design of this blog, and I'm going to watch the movie i got from netflix this week: Solaris. The original. Lately i haven't been watching my netflix regularly. I set up the queue so long ago that the ones i receive happen to be somewhat anti-thetical to my mood at the time. Not so with Solaris. It's just about the most perfect file for me. I need something quiet and sombre, but hopeful, too, and beautiful. There are other ways in which this really is the perfect movie for me tonight, but they're not easily expressed in words...

yay. this pleases me. if i'm not too tired, i may work on some stories as well. i feel like i could make some strides with that coder narrative...

[eco-friendly] candles

11 July

this morning i learned that most candles are made from non-renewable petroleum based waxes. that is bad. here i thought wax was a pretty natural frequently occuring thing, but no. now i have to get rid of my candles and buy method candles. okay. well 'getting rid' would just be compounding the issue, but i'm going to melt the down and replace them with the depilatory wax i bought that isn't water soluable, now that i'm only using the water soluable kind. and then i'll make something else out of that wax that won't be burned to give off sooty cancer agents.

22 April - There's a madness to the method

I'm actually excited about spending the day cleaning up my place. i have that warm fuzzy feeling that things are coming together as they should. my weakness for well designed home products could have something to do with it. i saw method products first through my Food Magazine subscription last year, but i didn't have a home to user them on. now i do, and i've come down with method madness. In my defense, this is because they're really good. they smell good; they work good (okay, well - very well); and they are good to the environment. they may be a bit more expensive, but they're also concentrated so it even out at the end.

i'm also just pleased to be making my home more of a home. i'm worn out with work, and the idea of getting up to do more of it kept me in bed for a few extra hours (which, granted i desperately needed) this morning. instead, i realized i could take care of myself, and take care of my personal space. that got me out of bed and up the stairs. now all i need is a much delayed coffee to get me of my behind.

oh, but i meant to discuss how even being perfectly aware of all the psycological trendy devices they use in their marketting, i'm still happy to be spending my money on them. i think perhaps i need coffee for that too...hmmm