This summer antarcticlust   and I are doing Couch25K. For me, it's in order to train for the Multiple Myeloma Race for Research in Chicago this September. I'm running for my brother Wayne, who passed away on November 26, 2007 from Multiple Myeloma.

Multiple Myeloma is an incurable blood cancer (it attacks the very cells you need to fight cancer). The MMRF doesn't focus as much on "curing" Multiple Myeloma as it does on making the last years of patients' lives comfortable. Wayne really benefited from the Foundation, receiving a stem cell transplant and other experimental therapies. Just a month before he passed away he was running daily and traveling frequently. His quality of life was as good as it could be.

So, I finally registered for the race and created a donations page. I shot high with my goal and hopefully I'll reach it.




(And, in case you are worried, the MMRF is rated 4-stars by Charity Navigator for its fiscal responsibility and allocates 95 percent of money raised to fund myeloma research and related programming, keeping overhead to 5 percent.

Rise in TB Is Linked to Loans From I.M.F.
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 22, 2008

The rapid rise in tuberculosis cases in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is strongly associated with the receipt of loans from the International Monetary Fund, a new study has found.

Critics of the fund have suggested that its financial requirements lead governments to reduce spending on health care to qualify for loans. This, the authors say, helps explain the connection.
( Read More )



Salmonella Strain in Jalapeños Is a Match
By BINA VENKATARAMAN, The New York Times, July 22, 2008

Federal food officials have matched a bacterial strain found on fresh jalapeños in a Texas distribution plant with the strain responsible for what has become the nation’s largest food-borne outbreak in the past decade.

The strain found on the jalapeños, Salmonella Saintpaul, was a genetic match to the strain found in lab tests of many of the 1,251 people who have become sick from salmonella poisoning over the past three months.
( Read More )



Vital Signs: Risks: High PCB Levels, Fewer Births of Boys
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 22, 2008

Women exposed to high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are significantly less likely to give birth to boys, according to a new study.

PCBs, which have been associated with various negative health effects, have been banned in the United States since 1977, but they persist in meats, eggs, dairy products and fish. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says everyone has detectable levels of the chemicals.
( Read More )



Climate Film Draws a Rebuke
By ANDREW C. REVKIN, The New York Times, July 22, 2008

A controversial British documentary called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” unfairly portrays several scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Britain’s television watchdog agency ruled on Monday.
( Read More )




Hubble images show that the Baby Red Spot on Jupiter, at left in first frame, has moved and seems to have been caught up in the Great Red Spot.

Observatory: On Jupiter, a Battle of the Red Spots, With the Baby Losing
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, July 22, 2008

Can a planet change its spots? Jupiter, where spots are really just large storms, seems to be in the process of doing so.

A small red spot that formed on the surface this year appears to have met its match in the Great Red Spot. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 28 and July 8 show that the small spot, which has the misfortune to lie at the same latitude as the great one, has moved from the west side of the giant to the east side.
( Read More )

Essay: I’m Y.A., and I’m O.K.
By MARGO RABB, The New York Times, July 20, 2008

When my agent called to tell me that my novel, “Cures for Heartbreak,” had sold to a publisher, she said, “I have good news and bad news.” The good news: an editor at Random House had read it overnight and made an offer at 7:30 a.m. The bad news: the editor worked at Random House Children’s Books.

My agent recounted the story of my novel’s sale, its rejections and close calls, and its particularly close call with editors at two Random House adult imprints. Both had wanted to buy it until the editor in chief decided the novel would be “better served” by the young adult division.

My literary novel about death and grief, which I’d worked on for eight years, was a young adult book?

Apparently, I had unintentionally slipped across an increasingly porous border, one patrolled by an unlikely guard. “The line between Y.A. and adult has become almost transparent,” said Michael Cart, a former president of the Young Adult Library Services Association and a columnist for Booklist. “These days, what makes a book Y.A. is not so much what makes it as who makes it — and the ‘who’ is the marketing department.”

( Read More... )

Findings: A New Frontier for Title IX: Science
By JOHN TIERNEY, The New York Times, July 15, 2008

( Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science. )



Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest
By BINA VENKATARAMAN, The New York Times, July 15, 2008

( What if “eating local” in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food? )



Personal Best: To Beat the Heat, Learn to Sweat It Out
By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, July 3, 2008

( Why does performance slow when it is hot and humid? )

Op-Ed Columnist: A Virginal Goth Girl
By GAIL COLLINS, The New York Times, July 12, 2008

Every so often I discover that the whole world seems obsessed with a pop-culture phenomenon that I’ve missed out on completely. This would be O.K. if I’d been spending my time on more important matters, but unfortunately I’m not all that deep. I’m telling you all this because our topic for today is “The Twilight Saga,” a series of extraordinarily popular books that you may have never heard of, just the way I had never heard of “American Idol” until it was practically passé.

( Read more... )



As Outbreak Affects 1,000, Experts See Flaws in Law
By BINA VENKATARAMAN, The New York Times, July 10, 2008

More than 1,000 people in 41 states and the District of Columbia have now been sickened in the nation’s salmonella outbreak, in what officials said Wednesday was the largest food-borne outbreak in the last decade. And some food safety experts this week tied problems in tracing the source of the contamination to what they say are shortcomings in the Bioterrorism Act of 2002.

( Read more... )



A New Fashion Catches On in Paris: Cheap Bicycle Rentals
By STEVEN ERLANGER, The New York Times, July 13, 2008

PARIS — They’re clunky, heavy and ugly, but they have become modish — and they are not this season’s platform shoes.

A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Vélib’s, they are being used all over Paris. The bikes are cheap to rent because they are subsidized by advertising, and other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.

( Read more... )

Vital Signs: Safety: Laws Reduce Drunken-Driving Deaths
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 8, 2008

( Two federal policies meant to make it harder for young people to acquire alcohol have significantly reduced drunken-driving deaths, a new study finds. )



Vital Statistics: Risk, From a Broader Perspective
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 8, 2008

( New risk charts published last month provide a broader perspective than most of the risk calculators available on the Internet. )




Images of Mercury taken during the flyby, from left: the Caloris basin, a volcano and a new view of the planet.

Flyby of Mercury Answers Some Old Questions
By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, July 8, 2008

( The flyby of Mercury by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in January provided the first close-up look at the planet since the 1970s. )




The roof of a General Motors distribution plant in California is covered in solar panels.

Large Solar Energy Array Set for G.M. in Spain
By MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, July 8, 2008

( A Michigan company, Energy Conversion Devices, plans to announce Tuesday that it is providing the solar electric system for what it says will be the world’s largest rooftop array, on a General Motors assembly plant in Zaragoza, Spain. The project will be 12 megawatts, a huge number in a field where most arrays are measured in kilowatts, units 1,000 times smaller. )

EPA Didn't Know Anybody was Still Drinking Water
April 26, 2006 | Issue 42•17

WASHINGTON, DC—Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson apologized during a press conference Tuesday for what critics called "flagrant oversight and neglect" in monitoring ground- and tap-water quality across the United States, claiming that his department was unaware that citizens were still consuming it. "I can honestly say we had no idea that anyone used faucet water anymore," Johnson said. "Bottled water, sure—I have some here on the lectern. But if there really are people out there still drinking tap water, all I can say is you're better off not knowing what's in there." Johnson added that official EPA policy is that Americans should stick to sports drinks.

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Biofuels Worse For The Environment

According to the journal Science, the use of biofuels does not offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced in their manufacture. What do you think?

Apparently there is some rumor going around that the flooding in Iowa is going to cause a new Avian flu pandemic. The source of this rumor seems to be that because there are a lot of hogs that were displaced by the flooding and they are possible intermediary hosts for bird flu (as well as some confusion that the 1918 flu was a "swine flu," which it was not) this will cause a pandemic. It reminds me of the fears people had that dead bodies would cause disease in the 2004 Tsunami.

Here's the thing you need to remember - diseases do not spontaneously generate - they come from somewhere. So unless there is an infection of bird flu in the birds that fly through Iowa or those dead bodies had something when they died, you do not need to worry. And yes, both of those things can happen, but they would happen regardless of flooding or whatever caused the death toll.

On a related note, since it's also West Nile Virus season - the mosquitoes that are associated with flooding are not the mosquitoes that carry West Nile. There are many different kinds of mosquitoes and certain ones can be vectors for certain diseases (anopheles for malaria, culex for west nile, aedes aegypti for dengue and yellow fever, etc.). There have been no fatalities from West Nile yet this year, but there have been 13 cases. Wisconsin has had it's first animal case of West Nile, however. Birds are sentinels for the virus (the culex mosquito prefers them, just as anopheles mosquitoes in America prefer cattle - which is part of the reason the agricultural development of the Upper Mississippi River Valley helped eradicate malaria) and that is why the state asks people to report dead birds in the summer.


On the left is Culex pipiens, also known as the northern house mosquito. It is the species mainly responsible for transmitting the West Nile virus to humans. At right is Aedes vexans, also called the floodwater mosquito and considered primarily just a nuisance mosquito. Associated Press)

Scientist at Work | David Pritchard: The Worms Crawl In
By ELIZABETH SVOBODA, The New York Times, July 1, 2008

( Can hookworms protect against allergies? In a quest to find out, David Pritchard infected himself. )



Uncovering Evidence of a Workaday World Along the Nile
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, July 1, 2008

( A new excavation sheds light on the living and working spaces of ordinary Egyptians. )



Really? The Claim: Mayonnaise Can Increase Risk of Food Poisoning
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR, The New York Times, July 1, 2008

( Food poisoning typically spikes this time of year, and mayonnaise always attracts suspicion. )



The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating
New York Times, June 30, 2008

( The 11 best Foods you aren't eating )

For Alien Life-Seekers, New Reason to Hope
By NATALIE ANGIER, The New York Times, June 24, 2008

( To some theorists, an announcement last week virtually guarantees the existence of other Earthlike worlds. )



Homecoming of Odysseus May Have Been in Eclipse
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, June 24, 2008

( Two scientists have concluded that the homecoming of Odysseus possibly coincided with a solar eclipse in 1178 B.C. )



Vital Signs: Safety: Deaths Soar After Repeal of Helmet Law
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, June 24, 2008

( In 2003, Pennsylvania legislators repealed a law requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets. Researchers who studied deaths and injuries over the next two years say that decision had lethal, and expensive, consequences. )



Drug-Resistant High Blood Pressure on the Rise
By BRENDA GOODMAN, The New York Times, June 24, 2008

( High blood pressure, the most commonly diagnosed condition in the United States, is becoming increasingly resistant to drugs that lower it, according to a panel of experts assembled by the American Heart Association. )





Tropical Diseases Add to Burden Among the Poor in the U.S.
By DONALD G. McNEIL JR, The New York Times, June 24, 2008

( Ailments of poverty, including some tropical diseases, are a burden in several regions of the United States, a new analysis finds. )



Home Depot Offers Recycling for Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM, The New York Times, June 24, 2008

( Home Depot’s move will create the nation’s most widespread recycling program for the energy-saving bulbs, which have to be properly disposed of since they contain small amounts of mercury.The New York Times )

This is exactly the sort of thing that made me wary of Obama. I've read in various sources about how ethanol is not an environmentally sustainable or socially equitable solution to climate change - and yet, it seems to be Obama's entire environmental platform :(


Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol
By LARRY ROHTER, The New York Times, June 23, 2008

When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon — and so did Senator Barack Obama.

Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.

Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.
( Read More )

Dinosaur Fossils Discovered in Utah
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The New York Times, June 17, 2008

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago.
( Read More )



A Bounty of Midsize Planets Is Reported
By DENNIS OVERBYE, The New York Times, June 17, 2008

There is a lot of new territory out there in the cosmos, but nothing you would want to pitch camp on — yet.

About a third of all the Sun-like stars in our galaxy harbor modestly sized planets, according to a study announced Monday by a team of European astronomers.

At a meeting in Nantes, France, Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory and his group presented a list of 45 new planets, ranging in mass from slightly bigger than Earth to about twice as massive as Neptune, from a continuing survey of some 200 stars.
( Read More )



Helpful Bacteria May Hide in Appendix
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, June 17, 2008

Everyone is born with one, but no one knows what it’s for. The human appendix is a small dead-end tube connected to the cecum, or ascending colon, one section of the large intestine. Everyone lives happily with it until it becomes painfully inflamed, when the only treatment is to remove it surgically.

Then everyone lives happily without it. So why is it there in the first place?

Some experts have guessed that it is a vestige of the evolutionary development of some other organ, but there is little evidence for an appendix in our evolutionary ancestors. Few mammals have any appendix at all, and the appendices of those that do bears little resemblance to the human one.

Last December, researchers published a novel explanation in The Journal of Theoretical Biology. The appendix, they suggest, is a “safe house” for commensal bacteria, the symbiotic germs that aid digestion and help protect against disease-causing germs.
( Read More )

"Through Your Inadequacy To Fulfill Me, I Have Realized My Own Egotism"

Well HERE is an interesting twist on a common narrative courtesy reader "Mandy"! Usually when you date a writer and he is a selfish asshole who forces you to break up with him because breaking up with you would require him to verbalize the full extent of his idiotic assness, the silver lining is that you can get a bunch of writerly man-hours out of him because he feels guilty. My ex-boyfriend edited all my stuff for years after we broke up, to the point that I realized he was actually a decent person. This is in stark contrast to "Josh," who dated Mandy for nine months while they were editors on the college paper. He cheated on her the whole time with a reporter at the paper — ever worked on a college paper? this = not easy — then broke up with her, only to commence nagging her via all the various modes of correspondence with little editing chores and proofreading requests. This particular email came with a ten-attachment cargo of stories to read. (Hey Josh, I know some guys who are really good at this sort of thing!) But it was not without a fairly thorough self-criticism! Try not to get an ulcer…

Mandy,

I know you don't want to speak with me, but I just wanted to thank you for forcing me to realize my own repugnance, the blackness of heart and vanity of spirit I've ignored. So thank you, and I wanted to say that you will love again, sooner than you think. With your tenacity and strength of character, you deserve someone who loves you and who is actually happy to see you every day. Through your inadequacy to fulfill me, I have realized my own egotism. I can't thank you enough.

I know I'm in no position to ask you for a favor, but I am currently vacationing in New York City, making it damn hard to edit news stories. I know you are interning all day, but if you could edit the stories I've attached I would deeply appreciate it. I believe that you editing my stories would make things less weird between us and would help forge the road to friendship. You have no reason to like me, but I would like to be your friend. I miss you.

You may be wondering why I did not email someone else and ask them to fill in for me, but I chose not to because of their intense hatred toward me. Since we broke up, I have started to realize that the reason people put up with me was because I was dating you. None of those people will ever be my friend, and The Post is just a job for me.

Again, I am sorry that because of me, you are broken. I am a terrible person because your love couldn't sustain me, and what I did to you is the most terrible thing I've ever done. Everything you ever said to me was completely true, and I feel awful.

Please let me know if you can edit those stories. Thanks

Josh.

EXHORTATION: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers
By William Deresiewicz, The American Scholar

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
( Read More )

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Lesbian couple of 55 years ready to say 'I do'

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment.

On Monday afternoon, more than a half-century after they became a couple, Lyon and Martin plan to become the first same-sex couples to legally exchange marriage vows in San Francisco and among the first in the state.
( Read More )

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I actually just read about these women in Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. The nice thing about Boyd's book is that she covers both lesbian and gay culture in San Francisco (both where they intersected and where they differed). Apparently there are a lot more books on the history of gay men (George Chauncey's Gay New York: Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 being my favorite) than there are on the history of lesbians. I need to remember to check out Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community because that has been recommended several times.

Media Charged With Sexism in Clinton Coverage
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JULIE BOSMAN, The New York Times, June 13, 2008

Angered by what they consider sexist news coverage of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, many women and erstwhile Clinton supporters are proposing boycotts of the cable networks, putting up videos on a “Media Hall of Shame,” starting a national conversation about sexism and pushing Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Senator Barack Obama, to address the matter.

But many in the news media — with a few exceptions, including Katie Couric, the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” — see little need for reconsidering their coverage or changing their approach going forward. Rather, they say, as the Clinton campaign fell behind, it exploited a few glaring examples of sexist coverage to whip up a backlash and to try to create momentum for Mrs. Clinton.
( Read More )

Now, we all know that "Stuff White People Like" is good for a few laughs, but I think they've been one upped...

Stuff God Hates:

#15: Science

In this entry I will focus on something that makes Me so mad, I just can’t even…say it…aargghh!! DAMN YOU SCIENCE! DAMN YOU TO HELL!

Whew…ok…I feel better now. I always feel a lot better after damning things I hate to hell. And I think this blog-therapy has really been paying off in My Temper lately. Like, a couple of hours ago I could’ve totally killed this dumb baby I hate, but I was like, whatevs! I’ll let it live. For now.

But back to the subject at hand – stupid damned pagan science!

I, the Lord your God, despise science and all things sciencey. Scientists, the scientific method, laboratories, lab rats, the periodic table, Bill Nye - they’re all going to hell when they die.

Facts, evidence, hypotheses - BAH! These things show a disturbing lack of faith in My Divine Wisdom.

I mean, the gall! The utter gall it takes for man to try to figure out the universe I created. I gotta say, it’s pretty galling!

Put yourself in My Position. Imagine you made your very own ant-farm. You designed it from top to bottom, filled it with ants, and set about the joy of watching them kill each other. And then what do your stupid ants do? Get all sciencey and stuck-up on you!

Ugh. I hate every last one of those smug, self-satisfied scientists. Think they’re so smart! You probably think they’re smart too. Smarter than Me even. Well you’re not gonna think they’re so smart after they accidentally blow up the planet this summer. Yup, you won’t be thinking much at all after that, because you’ll be dead.

Well anyway, there’s just not enough time for Me to discuss the many things I hate about science in this post. Just know that in general, I hate science.

It is dumb. Really, really, really, really dumb. And it’s never proven anything.

Other things God hates:
-foreskins
-losers who tried their best
-women
-anal
-cats
-too many questions
-being crucified