I'm Listening

Today on my way up the fabled, marbled stairs of a building at the University of Michigan I passed about a dozen students scattered around the floor over giant sketchpads, sketching said fabled stairs.

Almost all of them had headphones on; so uniformly that at first I thought part of the assignment might have included some audio recording. But a few did not, and so I reject that hypothesis.

What this means is: I am surprised by our low tolerance for silence.

The view is nice from up here on my high horse!

It's that time again, dear readers! That's right -- time for Yours Truly to complain more about what we're eating. This time it's going to be quick (fear not). Here it is:

Snacks: I am against them.

There are many reasons, some more sane than others, none unvaluable. (Do not tell me that unvaluable is not a word.) Your Fearless Leader will not share them Yet, but invites you to Whet your non-appetite with this article on how eating all the time has taken over American culture.

Putting the acid in acidophilus!

Here's a quick read on less protein, less meat for most of us (in the US and similar SAD-like places). The reason this time is the high acid in meat and dairy, which we (a) eat too much of, and (b) don't balance by fruits and vegetables, which are high alkaline. Acidity is officially something I don't understand, but I've read about it elsewhere and find it not completely crazy. In other words, please pass the carrots! Just kidding, Yours Truly would eat carrots even if they were the most acidic thing on earth.

the public services

This article (from 1990!) discusses a lot of that about which I wish we in the social sciences thought a bit more -- or at least remembered before we embarked on a study.  (It also reminds me why I really like the work my advisors do.)  

I often think that the social ones are most hubristic of the sciences.  Indeed, the motivation for the work taken up by psychology, political science, economics (etc) is (supposedly) to understand and improve ourselves and our living conditions.  Frequently, I find this a source of profound dissatisfaction with my chosen field of study.

But, it's difficult to think of any science -- the biologies, the chemistries -- as anything more than another version of selfish pursuit.  While in these the goal is to understand the non-human elements of the universe, the understanding we seek is similarly usually for our own advancement [link to bunnies with bleeding eyes here]*.  

We debate the "unselfish good deed" endlessly.  Perhaps we ought also to wonder of the "unselfish curiosity".

(I may have just given the physicists even more ego than they already have.  But even their work is selfish if you consider that we'll all have to end up on Mars anyway.)

*you're welcome.

Informational Cascades, or: Welcome to 2009, The Year The Internet Finally Let Us Do Anything We Want

Welcome to 2009, gentle readers!  In today's post I propose to begin with a reflection on the past, then move to the present, and in-between discuss the future.

Since time immemorial, a perfectly sound reason for doing something has been the observation that other people are doing it.  In this fearsome blog post, Yours Truly follows in the footsteps of both peers and ancestors, as well as peers of ancestors (Important note: this does not include ancestors of peers).

With no ado beyond that which we've already endured, I hereby invite you, dear watchers (!!!!), to feast your minds and psyches on the following odyssey of communication, technology, art, and that burning, eternal flame that is black-and-white minimally moving human-like creatures:

In addition, and in the continued spirit of calendar-worshipping, I present to you a New Year's Gift of One New Speculation and One New Truth, for a Grand Total of One Speculation and One Truth thus far in this, our fairest of Gregorian years.

Speculation:

1. Responsibility exists only in the abstract.

Truth:

1. If you are not inside a Trader Joe's grocery establishment at the precise moment you find yourself in need a bag of freeze-dried mangosteen, you are going to spend your day unsatisfied.

Finally, let us also take a moment to celebrate that this blog just became even more multimedia than it already was.  If I didn't worry that it would cause us to shriek in overwhelmence, I would post a celebratory song.  For now, we shall suffice with a celebratory made-up word.  And a celebratory reward for any reader who spotted the made-up word before it was announced it was made-up.  And another celebratory reward for any reader who is currently shrieking in overwhelmence. 

Farewell for now, dear readers!  May your tomorrows continue to be affected by the things you did today and before that!

mucho

Two things that, when they work beautifully, are evidence that civilization actually might be good for people, but that, when they don't work, make you pretty much question the worth of your entire existence, are: (1) Public transportation and (2) auto-formatting.

Today Domestic Andrea tried to make her own raw hummus. Turns out, Domestic Andrea makes terrible raw hummus. But Domestic Andrea is the Master of Espresso. And of Frozen Raspberries out of a Glass with a Fork.

Relatedly, a study from the University of Michigan (hooray for the home team) found that in the US single women in their 20s spend an average of 12 hours per week on housework. (What are they doing? Does showering and checking e-mail count?) Apparently when they get married, this number goes up to 5 million. That is why I support outsourcing in the home.

Back on my high horse

Writing a dissertation is like going to the gym ---- Just kidding, dear readers! This blog entry is decidedly not about my dissertation (whew). Instead, it is about this article. But you are busy people, so instead of expecting you all to read the article, I will present the main points for your convenience, information, and discussion. First, here is the background:

1. The cost of food is on the rise around the world.
2. This is mostly because demand is skyrocketing as people in developing countries get wealthier.
3. The world's stockpiles of grain are the lowest since world stockpiles of grain made sense as a concept.
4. High prices of food are contributing to inflation in the US
5. High prices of food are contributing to social unrest and violence in many countries
   

Now, to be sure, farmers all over the place are responding to the demand by growing as much as they can. But it's all mostly wheat and grains. (Fun fact: there was a one-day pasta strike in Italy last year!) Apparently demand for bread is huge in a lot of places that don't traditionally include it in their diets:

"Between 1995 and 2005, per capita wheat consumption in Nigeria more than tripled, to 44 pounds a year. Bread has been displacing traditional foods like eba, dumplings made from cassava root." It's even gotten to the point where, if you think about it in terms of a substance, people are basically addicted to it. (On this subject, read this book.)

Add to this that demand for other American-style foods is also increasing -- In addition to bread, people all over the place now want things like pork, dairy, and beef. (I've belabored the point elsewhere about how eating all of these things basically makes our healthcare costs ridiculously high and probably is what gives us all degenerative diseases.)

It used to be that the Standard American Diet was the sort of thing that was bad for our health, sure, and, ok, also terrible for the environment. But at least the environmental impact was somewhat mitigated by the fact that it was mostly just Americans eating this way. Then our harmful and unsustainable habits spread to parts of Western Europe. Then they caught on in China. Now they're really ramping up everywhere.

Thus, in the midst of global concerns about overpopulation and global warming, the very lifestyle that contributes most to healthcare costs, costs of living, and environmental damage is spreading like wildfire. Or like a disease!

As if all of this isn't bad enough, the US Government is actively limiting the ability of local farmers in the US to (a) increase how much they grow, and (b) grow things that are not corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton -- which are the five federally subsidized commodity crops. For more on this terrifying story, go here.

How is it possible, you ask, that in the face of what looks to be a flat-out global economic, health, and food crisis, the US Government isn't changing its policies drastically to try to prevent it, or at least strongly minimize its effects? Alas, my friends, THAT is the subject of my dissertation.

Damn! But before I go, a piece of advice: Even if they tell you you can't have more than one Blockbuster account, you actually can.
Piece of advice #2: Don't incorporate in Nevada.
Piece of advice that I never follow: Brevity, friends, brevity!

No way to know!

Our perspective controls everything, even things that happen as -- what we at least thought were -- seemingly straightforward chemical reactions in the body! Before you dismiss that sentence as making no sense, fine readers, let me explain: there's an article in the NYTimes today on drinking and why people do it and how people in different cultures react to excessive consumption of alcohol. Now, not only do people in different cultures act differently when they're drunk (Americans get aggressive, Japanese sing, Brazilians in some areas get really reserved. Are you surprised by any of this?), but also how our body responds to alcohol can depend on whether we think we're drinking it! Apparently in the 80s a series of studies were conducted where study participants were either given alcoholic drinks or a placebo. The ones who thought they were getting alcohol but weren't acted just as ridiculous as the ones who actually were. And vice-versa, those who only thought they were not drinking acted the same as who actually were not drinking. Most amazing of all:

"One participant insisted that she could not have been drinking because alcohol always made her flush.

“We told her that, yes, in fact she was drinking it,” Dr. Marlatt said. “She immediately flushed.”

Incredible, right?! I'm telling you, 90% of what we do has everything to do with what we think is going on, not what's actually going on. Well, maybe not 90%, but I bet it's high. I'll say it: maybe even higher! I suppose there's no way to ever know, unless humans start getting tested by aliens. Otherwise we're trapped in our own perception nightmare.

Oh, and not only that, but people in different cultures drink for different reasons. Apparently Western cultures are more prone to excuse drinking as a needed "mental vacation" than other cultures. Just more evidence that the Western political/social/economic model is not the cure-all some purport it to be.

Finally, if nothing else, this article has one of the most aesthetically pleasing sentences I've read in a long time: "the disconnect between the conventional wisdom and the available evidence is even now so scandalous as to exceed the limits of reasonable toleration.”

I love that shit. If you still want to read the actual article even though I've spoiled all the highlights for you, you can find it here. In the meantime, I'll work on spoiler alerts.

Choices

Walking with Dinosaurs vs. When Dinosaurs Roamed America?
BBC vs. Discovery Channel
UK vs. US

What will I pick? I even rotten tomato-ed them both. Walking has three "fresh" reviews, one of which accuses the whole thing of being fake. I often fail to understand quite where the line gets drawn between fresh and rotten on that thing.

RT has never even heard of Roamed.

Now that I think about it, what is with the dinosaurs - as - unhurried - pedestrians attitude in both of these documentaries? Why not Running For Your Life with Dinosaurs or Get The Hell Out Of My Way I'm Chasing A Dinosaur? I'd watch either of those before these two I've got here. (Or, I guess I just described Jurassic Park.)

There's (always) more to it

Recently I posted suggesting we improve the foods available in poorer neighborhoods. Apparently, there's more involved than just making it available. In fact, the introduction of produce stands in a bunch of neighborhoods with obesity problems has been met with lots of (understandable) uproar.

I am endlessly fascinated by how the complexity of our societies makes change difficult -- or even just makes things difficult to undo.

Feeding the Fires of Our Own Destruction

The more I read about it, the more it seems to me that food and water will be the more important issues facing humanity in coming decades.  Certainly the environment is up there, too, and in fact is naturally intricately linked with the nutrition problem, as what we eat and how we grow it have everything to do with how we treat the earth.

Just today this article in the Health Section of the NYTimes writes about findings that being overweight is associated with increased cancer risks.  To that I'll add what I've read in The China Study about high consumption of animal proteins also being linked with cancer and heart disease.  Finally, our general high consumption in the west of processed, refined foods means that we're overall getting tons of fat, protein, and simple carbohydrates, and few vitamins and minerals that we need, which come largely from plants.

Now contrast that with malnourished and starving people around the world -- where in many places they depend on food aid from the US and other countries, which, at least from the US, is all more of the highly processed, corn and potato based foods that aren't even feeding Americans properly.  Couple that with the fact that farmers in other countries who grow cash crops can't even independently feed themselves if they wanted to, and there you have a double-edged sword where all the food going in is barely better than the foods/crops going out.  

So, in rich countries we're not taking care of ourselves so we are getting degenerative diseases, while people in poor countries are starving and trying to live off of measly donations from the rich countries in the form of the same nutritionally-poor foods with which we are stuffing our faces.  We get tons of calories, they get none.  We get cancer and heart disease.  They are weak for life.

All of this is so far related just to physical health.  Now, consider that proper nutrition is also linked to mental development, alertness, brainpower, and mood.  How we feel and think has everything to do with what we eat.  When we're hungry we're in a bad mood.  Even when we're full but are deprived nutritionally we can be in bad moods.  Admittedly, my comments in this paragraph really need to be held off until I look some more stuff up, but I think my intuitions are at least reasonable.  Think about it -- the poorest neighborhoods in the US tend also to be the ones with the highest crime rates.  Certainly desperation for resources, lack of education, having young adults with no job or school to go to all contribute greatly to that violence.  

But, consider also that these are the communities who are the worst fed in the country (if you don't believe me, go to a grocery store in Manhattan and then go to one just over the river in Brooklyn, where everything is suddenly bright white and packaged and what little fruit there is is waxy and unappealing).  Maybe, just maybe, the poor nutrition has something to do with the tensions and quick tempers that spur on violent behavior.  Again, so far it's just a suspicion I have, but I bet that if we tweaked the diets of Americans, especially in our poorest communities, we'd see better behaved kids in school, more patient parents, and fewer angry teens.  I suppose the problem is that changes in diet have subtle background effects on people's lives (hell, that's why dieting is hard for people -- no immediate results!!), so it would be hard to convince, say, the Government to sponsor such a program.  And it would be hard, even if they did sponsor it, to keep it going, because the results might take a long time coming in -- which would only increase opportunities for the interference of other variables.

(For the record, I have read here and there about the effects of food on mood and cognition -- that part's less speculative -- it's more that I have no idea what kinds of effects community-wide dietary tweaking might have on our many society-wide challenges.)

Finally, the environment.  Ah, the environment, how we destroy you with our factories and terrible land-destroying farming practices.  Grow more fruits and vegetables properly (without genetic modification, without pesticides, and with a focus on keeping our soil rich), and watch a lot of our environmental problems go away.  Oh, and, I suppose, stop flying all these planes, driving cars everywhere, and pumping out crazy chemicals from non-food factories ... uh, ok ... baby steps!  

Well, that's enough of my tirade for today.  Sorry to dampen the mood.  Just don't say I didn't warn you.

P.S. No, I did not make it to my noon appointment today.  I have another one at 3 that I, frankly, have no choice but to go to.  Also there's the added advantage that I'm already awake, so all signs point to actually making one commitment this week.  Stay tuned, friends!