the granola rules

The New Last Post: Verisyse

2007-04-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

So, I lied. I'm writing another post here. But this is just to tell any passing bystanders that I've been talking about getting a Verisyse implanted into my eye on my blog over at http://www.amichopine.com/blog.

Last Post on Granola Rules

2007-02-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

IF you want more of The Granola, THEN GOTO www.amichopine.com/blog.

This is it.

The last post I'll be making here now.

I'll be putting all of my thoughts on my new original blog. If you are linked to me here, I would appreciate it if you would link to me at www.amichopine.com/blog.

Ami's Musings about Blogging

2007-01-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

Warning: Unless you know me, the following is probably boring. It might be boring even if you know me. If all you want to know is if I'm still alive and happy, then read no further. Okay, read the very end paragraph where I tease you with things I will be writing within the next few days.

I am torn. I am not sure I want to give up ‘the granola’ but I’ve also wanted to consolidate. Why have two spaces when I could only have one? But why mix things up too much? But then, why make it so complicated for friends to hear my voice? And back and forth it goes.

The real problem is that I like the idea created by the title ‘the granola rules’ and being ‘the granola’. It rings a lot with what I want to say in that blog. I’m playing with changing around my categories to reflect it. Maybe posting as multiple people. One is the author breaking into publication and considering screenplay writing (or rather, being begged by her husband to do it), the other is the science observer and pseudoscience critic. And what about Amka on poor ‘testing the cultural divide’? Well, all the posts in that blog have been transitioned over into amichopine.com/blog. Those words come from a woman caught in the middle of living earth life, and especially between two cultures. Suddenly, after being far enough away from an intense and difficult encounter with Russian culture, I have something to say there now too.

Writers block is not my problem right now. Time and not letting myself really post until I get at least the blog at amichopine.com up in good form are my foes here.

Here are some personal updates: I’m getting a tonsillectomy. Yay. I guess that means no more chips and salsa for a while. But I had to do it before I went ahead and got my eyes fixed, which is happening in March. That makes for a total of three surgeries within about 2 months. The eyes are done one at a time. I'm also in physical therapy. On one level, I'm feeling a bit overmedicalized. (Is that a word?) And yet, isn't this moving forward? By the beginning of April I will be completely healthy. I will see better than I've ever seen. I will run faster than I've ever run, and more safely too. And I'll be able to smell my baby's poopy diapers better than I ever have before.

I can't wait!

Topics I'm dying to write about, either here or at amichopine.com/blog: fibromyalgia. Doc around the Clock has some interesting posts on it and I have a bit more to say. And mothering as a demanding career not to be taken lightly.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

New Years Resolutions?

Don't have any. Not anything that I've coined as such anyway. But I do have general goals in mind for the coming months and days.

1. Maintain my exercising, including participating in a couple of 5Ks. I'm not sure I would bother putting it down as a goal, but a couple of things have made me feel the need to focus energy on this. I've had mutinous tonsils (they've attempted a coup 4 times this past year) and a whiny knee that started having a tantrum.

2. Finish rewrites for a short story and submit it somewhere. This is a short story I wrote for a Halloween contest at Codex.

3. Finish a novel by June. Have a couple outlines for it somewhere, but I think I'll just write a new outline. Outlines, by my definition and for my use, are chapter summaries.

4. Other things, that are important to me but none of your business.

5. Start a real personl/professional website. After only a few month stay, I'm leaving blogger behind. Testing the Cultural Divide has died due to server problems, but the posts in it will still be at the new place. I've been working on this a bit here and there, and husband is currently working on it. I'll keep this up, for posterity's sake, but in the coming days I'll stop posting here. So, to my handful of readers, get your RSS feeders ready for the move, to be announced soon.

Faith through Adversity

2006-12-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

I can't get the picture of her out of my head right now. It isn't just her face, it is her holding her little baby, a tube coming out of his nose and taped to his head.

"He looks so good," I said stupidly. He did look healthy, except for the tube, but we all knew that in a few weeks he would be dead of the brain tumor he had been born with. A baby hoped for, prayed for, another one gone. Three of her children had died of cancer, and a pair of twins had died from complications of premature birth.

And now she is gone too, along with two more children. The family was hit by a drunk driver early sunday morning.

All that is left is the father, Gary Ceran, and two kids. In total, he has lost his wife and 7 children. Do you want it to get worse? His mother died two years ago, and one of his brothers just a few months after that.

And after all of that, after everything, he forgives the drunk driver and is praying for the man. It is is faith in God that is carrying him through this.

Writers of the Future Semifinalist

2006-12-25T22:54:00.000-08:00

Today, I got a new laptop. One of the first emails to read on it was my semifinalist notification for the Writers of the Future contest.

What does that mean? Basically, that out of about 1800 entries I was in the top 12-20 or so.

Okay so yeah, I was jumping up and down and screaming just a little bit today.

Who needs graphics anyway?

2006-12-25T22:52:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the graphics folks. I'm having some technical difficulties that have been overwhelmed by the holidays.

Fear Tactics in Advertising

2006-12-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

On the whiteboard in the women's workout area:

The average American gains 8-11 pounds during the holiday season.

WRONG. Not only is this wrong, it even exaggerates the 7-10 lb here and here for that. These all use different calculating methods. They are still not quite as good as using a scale in water(runs usually around 300 dollars), or caliper measurements (technically difficult) but much closer than the devices that measure electrical resistance to estimate body fat.

Just losing weight will make you a smaller version of what you are now. You will just be a skinny FAT person.

Please note that this sign is in the women's weight training room of a gym. The women who will read this sign aren't just dieting. They are exercising. This simply is not true of this population. Not only that, but the statement encourages the culture of anorexia.

The rest of the sign is about seeing the in house personal trainers for a free one hour consultation. I have plenty to say about that in another post. But for today, the point is that this advertisement isn't about encouraging these women to reach a little farther, be a little stronger, a little better, and most certainly more confident. This advertising is telling them that if they don't sign up with these guys, they will gain weight or if they lose it, they will still be fat. It is all about fear.

Guess what, women (and men). You don't need them. They aren't worth your time or money. Need some encouragement? Get a friend. Need some knowledge? There are plenty of books, magazines, and websites out there that will tell you everything these guys will teach you, and more. The last thing getting fit should be about is being afraid of failure.

I'm printing this out, along with the references, and bringing it in tomorrow.

Thoughts I Had in my Kid's School Today

2006-12-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this from the school, in a notebook. The old fashioned kind. I tried the modern kind last week, but I forgot that its batteries run out in only an hour and I started talking to other parents and I lost what I wrote. I haven't written this much long hand for a long time.

Now I want to edit that. The last sentence belongs more towards the end of this writing because I'm anticipating writing such long hand rather than having actually accomplished it. I have written on occasion the paltry paragraph or two in long hand.

It's a different process. It slows things down, lets the brain have more say in between words, but doesn't listen to the brain as much because my thoughts race ahead. I skip letters in words sometimes because my hand is too slow. I am compelled to get the next thought down before it evaporates into the churn of new thoughts vying for the chance to be put down in ink – to be made permanent.

Why am I in the school? It's a Saturday morning. My children are taking tests for the gifted program they are a part of. They do not like the tests because the tests are boring and take away from their free day. There are kids here today who are so frightened they cry or throw up. Testing anxiety for some of them, pure and simple, even if they know the material very well. But there are some kids here that are sacrificing their Saturday and confidence to their parents' ambitions.

I have seen parents yell at the administrators who are simply giving them their children's test scores that say their child is not suited for the program. I hope the child is not berated. Children should be celebrated for what they are, not made into something that they aren't.

Last week, (the one in which I lost my work because of the battery) I wrote about overhearing the conversation of two parents speaking about what they want their children to be, or rather what schools would best help their children become a doctor or a lawyer.

A doctor or a lawyer- only the best schools for that, definitely. I asked myself and I would have asked them if I were a braver person, "Is that why we have our kids in this program? Is it to put them under high stress in college only to have even more stress on their jobs? To give them work that divorces them away from family?

Not to say that these aren't worthy professions, that there isn't a great amount of good that comes of them. (Though I hold my reservations for some kinds of lawyers.)

It is the mention of those two jobs together, "a doctor or lawyer", in elementary school, in regards to a seven year old child, that gives me pause. It is the goal of something big, prestigious, well respected, lots of money – that is what that phrase says.

The ambition ignores who the child actually is and seeks after a difficult life for the child in order to gain recognition from everyone else in the world, when they only need the love of their own family and the recognizing of who they really are.

Being a doctor, a lawyer, a writer, a teaching, a CEO, a computer programmer, or whatever else a person is will only bring one joy of that is what they are well suited for and enjoy. If that is true, then they will be successful and secure.

Being loved for who they are will teach them to accept others. They will gain the capacity for compassion, generosity, self-confidence and the love of friends and family. Those are the markers of a life well lived.

My hand aches. I haven't written this much longhand for a long time.

Boys and their Toys

2006-12-05T20:16:00.000-08:00

It starts young. Very young.

Since our big people mover suburban broke down, we had to use my husband's commuter car to transport the family on Sunday. Our curly headed toddler boy had never been in this car, simply because it isn't practical to move the carseat. But he had always liked it. The car is loud and looks cool, having been souped up by some young-uns before we got it. The sound was always the herald of Dad having arrived home.

So when we put him in it, he said, "Fast fast! Vroom Vroom!" We'd never heard those words before from him. He laughed and bounced the whole time he was in the car, saying Vroom, Vroom!

BTW, the suburban will be fixed tomorrow. Yay!

DONE

2006-12-03T20:13:00.000-08:00

Has anyone watched that TV show Monster House? When a project gets completed, it gets stamped and a voice proclaims "DONE!"

That's how I feel. Almost.

Accomplishments for the past two weeks.

Weaning the 20 month old: DONE
Carpets cleaned (we have our own machine to do it): DONE
Christmas shopping: DONE
Thanksgiving weekend with family: DONE
Relief Society (a women's class I teach once a month) lesson: DONE
Teaching Fiction unit with daughter's 3rd grade class: DONE
PTA literature Reflections processed and delivered. Now I need to get them back from judges and combine scores to get winners. Deadline is tuesday.
End of track/Christmas party/cast party for daughter's 6th grade Shakespeare play with Russian food samples: DONE
Big Gas Guzzling monster family mover incompacitated. I did a thousand+ dollar job at this. And that is when we know mechanics who will barter for labor. Actually, it isn't really my fault, but it was partially my ignorance the struck the death blow for our differential drive. I hate ignorance. I'm spending my life irradicating it.
Pediatric Grand Rounds: DONE

Am I bragging, am I whining? I don't know. But mostly, it is DONE and I'm glad.

Pediatric Grand Rounds: A Recipe for Granola

2006-12-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

1 1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries (Or dried blueberries and/or apples) - the last thing added but the first thing noticed and savored

Neonatal Doc reminds us of the reason why pediatricians are in practice: the worth of human lives.

Bella, of rain on tulips, describes the last two years of journeying through the suspicions, questions, testing, diagnosis, and finally the treatments of a child with a unique genetic abnormality. She finds that caring for a child with extra challenges puts life into perspective.

Dr. Crippen from NHS Blog Doctor, who brings us a story about a sham medical association designed to promote the fear of milk and the sale of a baby formula. I always get irritated with moms who are very anxious about what is going in their kid's gut, but are feeding their wee little ones bottles.

4 cups old-fashioned oats - the bulk of the granola: the practice of pediatric medicine

Have you ever wondered just what exactly Shinga, of Breath Spa for Kids, does when she works? I did, and was very impressed when I read about it.

Maybe not quite so normal, but still beautiful as every child is, Clark Bartram's newborn at Unintelligent Design this week demonstrates to us a common form of polydactyly - which is an esoteric way of saying "too many fingers and toes."

Rob from Musings of a Distractible Mind brings us an interesting case of a 4 day old infant with inconsolable crying. What is the diagnosis? The answer may suprise you and leads to an interesting discussion.

Neonatal Doc, in the article he submitted for this edition, wonders why parents hear something that contradicts what was actually said. I wonder why my kids do the same thing.

Dr. Jest finds himself in the middle of a discouraging conflict between parents where children are the currency of blame.

1 1/2 cup sliced almonds - the protein: the practice of parenting

Awesome Mom wants to know if her kid's doctor has a blog.

Laura, who Adventures in Juggling a demanding job with parenting, struggled to let go and let her child fall down sometimes, finding in the process that he became more independant and could climb higher.

Purple Kangaroo finds that dealing with ill children has a lot to teach us about raising well children as well.

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon - Granola tastes blah without some salt and spices.

There is a great discussion over at Flea. How can we have doctors who are experienced with healthy children when they are trained with a bias towards illness in children?

1/4 cup vegetable oil - a little grease to aid the cooking process

Rdoctor offers us some advertisements and an interview with an insurance specialist.

1/4 cup honey – Advances in medicine and technology

Medgadgets has a great lead on a type of very low friction fabric that could be enormously useful for sufferers of a disease that Clark Bartram described to us: Epidermolysis Bullosa, as well as other skin disorders.

1 teaspoon vanilla – studies and information

Food allergies are being clinically diagnosed more and more. Is Anaphylaxis the new Asthma?

Bartholemew Cubbins on Autism shows why chelation therapy for the treatment of autism, a method widely touted by alternative medicine, is not only ineffective but may actually be harmful.

Sumer Sethi from Sumer's Radiology Site presents to us a paper on Holoprosencephaly And Patau Syndrome.

Credit where credit is due

We had a lot of wonderful submissions for PGR. Thanks to everyone for participating. I'd like in particular to thank Shinga for her great help. And to Clark for starting and administrating PGR. Grab your next helping at Blog, MD.

Directions for cooking the granola:

Preheat oven to 300 F. In a bowl mix the oats, almonds, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon. In a saucepan warm the oil and honey. Whisk in vanilla.

Carefully pour the liquid over the oat mixture. Stir gently with a wooden spoon; finish mixing by hand. Spread granola in a 15x10 inch baking pan.

Bake 40 minutes, stirring carefully every 10 minutes. Transfer granola-filled pan to a rack to cool completely. Stir in raisins or cranberries. Seal granola in an airtight container or self-sealing plastic bag. Store at room temperature for 1 week or in the freezer for 3 months.

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/146/Homemade_Granola38838.shtml

Pediatric Grand Rounds Will be Here

2006-11-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy, well, uhm... actually very close, I happily signed up to host Pediatric Grand Rounds because I love watching children learn and explore their world. I love how they make the world new all over again for us.

This is a call for submissions. What has a child taught you lately?

Deadline: Saturday Dec 2 at 10:00 pm Mountain Time, which is 12:00 am Eastern Time, Sunday 5:00 AM Greenwich, and Sunday 3:00 pm in Melbourne and Sidney.

You can email your submissions to me using: ami at geekatplay dot com.

Today, a child has taught me that water is not good unless it comes from both the tap and the refridgerator dispenser. Also, white out in bottles are great for making clicking sounds on tile floors in school bathrooms after running away from mom. What the little tike doesn't realize is how good of a homing device this is.

Nanowrimo: Too much to do + Writer's Block = not enough words

2006-11-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that I stopped writing. The reasons are many and varied, but all boil down to two facts: one you know - November is the worst month for me.

The second is that I stopped caring about the story that was developing, even though I liked the individual parts and I loved the premise. I think I actually got writer's block, something I've rarely experienced.

The diagnosis of writer's block is not simply the inability to write. Most of the population has that, including such luminaries as Dan Brown, William Shatner, and Christopher Paolini. Clearly such a lack doesn't necessarily stop one from creating novels.

Nor Writer's Block strictly a lack of ideas. And it certainly isn't laziness.

Writer's Block requires that a story already be in progress, and the author is working hard on it, but has been unable to write more of the story. This usually means that the author has taken a wrong turn somewhere. The solution is to find out where things went bad, erase it (even if they love what they had written before, and start over from that point on.

So that is what I need to do. Hrm... I guess I could still count all those other words in my word count. I don't think that will work though. Not for me, anyway.

The reason this is the first time I've experienced true writer's block is because in every case except this, I always know my endings and my main characters very well. In this case, I didn't. The idea simply hasn't cooked enough in my brain. It is good enough to be a novel, and too much to make into a short story. I thought of it just a couple of weeks before Nanowrimo began, and that isn't nearly long enough. It will probably end up being either the second or third novel I write (unless the other two end up needing more than one book which is a very good possibility.)

So rather than stumble through it and make myself confused, I may write more ideas down for word count but I will be focusing on rewriting the contest piece I recently finished and outlining the novel I want to have finished by next June.

Silicon Implants

2006-11-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

Well, silliness has been vanquished by more silliness in order to enact silliness. Yes, our government has decreed that silicon implants are safe. A company had to go under before that happened, but that's okay. It was just a big pharma monster that deserved what it got.

Breast implants are a pet peeve of mine. They are the ultimate symbolic action by a woman to say "Hey, it's okay to see me as just a sex toy. Look, I'm enhanced!" Ugh. It does not improve your health, it does not improve your personality, and it puts you at risk for several complications.

But maybe I'm a hypocrit, because I'm about to undertake the first steps towards a procedure that I've wanted done for a long, long time. It does, in fact, involve silicon that will be implanted into my body. Maybe.

I took my contacts off for the last time today for a couple of weeks in order to have an exam that will determine the best procedure to correct my vision. Since I have a diopter of 10.0 in my left eye and 10.5 in my right eye, I am not a very good candidate for lasik. There is just not enough cornea to accomodate that kind of correction.

So, I will have either the Visian or the Veriseye (formerly Artisan) implants.

The biggest reason I want them is because I hate my glasses. I do not like the shape they make my face, the way my eyes are much smaller, and I think I still hold a deep seated insecurity from being teased about them in elementary school. I try to deny this, by saying everything else that is true. I want to see things in the middle of the night, and as soon as I wake up without needing to wear my glasses. I want to open my eyes in the water when I'm swimming, or at the very least not be worried about losing a contact as well as be able to see. Messing with contacts is inconvenient and it would save me time.

But I have to admit, the biggest reason is looks and psychological. And so it makes me wonder: I am undergoing a surgery in order to enhance my natural form. Should I look askance breast implants?

Hrm. There is a factor that comes into play. My natural form is flawed. I cannot see well enough to function without correction. A small breast is not a flaw.

Lessons and Miracles

2006-11-19T18:13:00.000-08:00

Around 8:30 last night I got a call from my next door neighbor asking me to be a substitute teacher for a children's class at church, as she was sick. Luckily for her, I had traded with another teacher in the women's class so that I would be teaching next week instead of this week, so I was able to do it.

"Wonderful. Shelly* will be teaching the lesson so you won't have to worry about that," my neighbor said.

Wait a minute. "Shelly is your partner?"

"Yeah. I'll call her and tell her you'll be there."

It was too late now to back out. My neighbor was unaware of my situation with Shelly. It doesn't really matter to you exactly what had transpired, except to know that her and her husband's continuing denial directly harmed their children and indirectly harmed several families including ours. I was more upset at the neglect of her child, causing him to later require extended treatment, than at anything that happened with us. I was angry with her lack of integrity. She seemed to have been far more worried about appearances.

I wondered if I, too, were worried about appearances because I didn't want to now refuse because it might make our neighbor wonder why I didn't like Shelly. But really, none of it, including the hard feelings, was something I wanted to spread about when it wouldn't help anyone. Not to mention that these hard feelings I still harbored weren't worth me not helping out where help was needed.

At nine this morning we went to church and into our different classrooms, today in a different place for me. As Shelly taught the well prepared lesson, I realized what it was about.

No way, I thought to myself. I looked at the lesson manual. It was opened to a place near the end of the book, as appropriate for this time of year.

This woman was teaching a lesson on forgiving others.

For children, these lessons are simple, with stories appropriate to their age, but the concepts do not change no matter how old you are. She told a story of a boy who had worked hard raking leaves and his friend who had then scattered them all over. As she told the story, the thought came to me:

You've fixed what was wrong, you've gathered up all the leaves together again in your own yard. You've done the only thing you could to help their family. You may not be able to trust some things about her, but there are other ways you can trust her. This is where she is at, and that is none of your business except to accept her for who she is.

And then I went home to study the lesson I was to give the next week. When I traded weeks to teach, I became responsible for teaching a lesson that comes from talks that the world leadership of our church gives at General Conference, which occurs every 6 months. A specific one is assigned for each month. This month, my lesson was to come from a talk by Elder David A. Bednar entitled "And Nothing Shall Offend Them". Here is a choice nugget from that talk:

"In the grand division of all of God's creations, there are things to act
and things to be acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:13–14). As sons and daughters of our
Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the
capacity for independent action and choice. Endowed with agency, you and I are
agents, and we primarily are to act and not just be acted upon. To believe that
someone or something can make us feel offended, angry, hurt, or bitter
diminishes our moral agency and transforms us into objects to be acted upon. As
agents, however, you and I have the power to act and to choose how we will
respond to an offensive or hurtful situation."

I'm reflecting on the course of events that transpired today. I had traded which week I would be teaching, making me available to help out during the week when Shelly would be teaching a lesson of forgiveness, a lesson which had essentially been assigned for this week over a year ago by lesson number, and many years ago when the manual was created. Second, my neighbor called me in circumstances which I could not refuse. And then the lesson I studied that very day, again on a subject over which neither I nor anyone involved had any control, was about choosing not to be offended.

These are the miracles that are meaningful. Most real miracles don't necessarily give us what we want, but help us become better people. I would say that these are the ones we should be praying for and looking out for.

*name had been changed

Nanowrimo day 9

2006-11-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

You know why I kept writing tonight? Because I'm a writer. That is the only reason.

I wrote the words to make the count. They were appropriate to the story. But it wasn't fun.

I did it, because this exercise is about endurance. I need to be willing to stay at the keyboard and come back to the keyboard even if I'm frustrated. I need to be able to push through that last repetition of that last set when my muscles can barely even move the iron.

My "real writing" will not be accomplished quite like this where the goal is word count. When I'm really writing, maybe only 20 words will get down in a session, but I will have learned a lot about the story. And I will have sat at the keyboard to work that day, and stuck to it, wringing those words out of my soul with passion.

Nanowrimo day 8

2006-11-08T22:58:00.000-08:00

I had to be at 13,334 today. Just one minute ago I checked my word count at the end of writing a sentence. It was exactly 13,334. That was too good to pass up.

So tonight, I end right on target, just one minute before midnight and the next writing day.

Nanowrimo Day 5 and 6

2006-11-06T21:57:00.000-08:00

Success and joy are boring. So even though I'm excited that I've written 5581 words, bringing my total to a bit over the 10,000 I need to be on track for the 50,000, it doesn't make a very exciting post.

But that is where I am at. We'll see if I whine tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo Day 3 and 4

2006-11-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Day 3

I wasn't going to give up. I had the scene in my head, I liked where the story was going, and I had to log in my word count for the day. So I stayed at the keyboard, despite my exhaustion.

This is the result:

About an hour later, they came up on a house that looked very much like an inn, except for the fact that Joy had made no comment.

I had dozed off literally in the middle of writing that sentence and began writing some kind of dream thing. There is no Joy in my novel. No joy either, so far, really. I've been mean and cruel to my character. Anyway, at that point, I knew it was a lost cause and went to bed.

Word count for Nov 3: 1318

Day 4:

I tried yoga today at our gym for the first time. I'd gone at our old gym before, and liked it before the instructor moved away. It was kind of an active meditation, with lots of focus on breathing and control and relaxation. I wanted that this morning. I didn't get it.

At our gym they are teaching power yoga, it appears. There was very little talk of breathing. This was yoga to strengthen the body, and it pretty much ignored the more spiritual/psychological roots of yoga. If I hadn't been expecting a 'self induced stretching mind/body/spirit massage relaxing treat', I would have been fine with the workout. But as it was, this focused a lot on leg strength and core strength. That is something else I might have been fine with except that, well, I had done a kickboxing workout that did that yesterday(spontaneously because of the time I happened to go to the gym, but I like it and will make a point to attend that class now) and the day before, some a serious lower body strengthening weight session.

Ouch. I probably won't even get legs, buns, and abs of steel from this. Not nearly as much strength than if I had put some rest time in between those sessions filled with squats and lunges and deadly elbow swipes. Ugh.

Before that I baked a cake and cleaned the kitchen. After that, I put angel boy down for a nap, took a kid to a birthday party, then came home to finish preparing my oldest's birthday party, picked up kid from other party, etc. until the party was done at 9:00 this evening. I was exhausted.

Then I wrote.

Word count for today, Nov 4: 1071

I've gotten a little graphic thing, finally. The total is there, in the upper right.

National Novel Writing Month: Day 1 and 2

2006-11-02T23:21:00.000-08:00

Some of you who know me know what this is. Some of you may know what this is regardless of knowing me.

Insane, that is what it is.

One month. 50,000 words.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

In some ways, it was easier last year when my now toddler took several good sized naps. He's down to just one, and sometimes I crash with him, as I did today. Not only that, the poor kid is sick and has been very clingy. I've gone back to nursing on demand, since he doesn't eat well but has always nursed well when sick. It is an ear infection that he's had for about 9 days now. After 10 days if he isn't better, it probably isn't something viral or something he can easily overcome on his own. This is different from how my other kids were managed years ago. I'd hoped he was getting better, but he still had a fever when the advil wore off this evening and he still has a snotty nose. I'll let the medicine wear off more tomorrow and see what happens.

And this year's story just didn't pull me in as much as last year's, in which I basically made my own self the main character of a post apocalyptic story. It was fun to do, and easy to turn off the editor because I never expected to use the material to publish since post apocalyptic is cliche now. I just had always wanted to do one, so it made the perfect excuse to poor so much effort into something I would never publish.

But this one, I think I will try to beat into publishable format. I like the premise a lot. So it is a slower start but the love is deeper.

First sentence:

The last thing Owen heard in his short life was his mama's scream and then the cackle of his own flesh burning before the pain thrummed through his head, silencing the world forever.

Hint: he's not dead.

Word count (I'll get a graphic thingy here when I have a bit of time.):

Day 1: 418
Day 2: 2,109

Carb Wars

2006-10-23T07:56:00.000-07:00

A friend came over to our house the other day. We offered him some lunch since he'd arrived around that time. He politely declined, informing us that he was having a real battle with carbs this month. He wasn't going to eat any carbs at all.

*Sigh*

What I fear is that he doesn't understand the rules of engagement with this particular war.

Let me tell you a secret. In 2005 I lost 70 lbs. Since then, I've maintained that weight. Let me tell you another secret, completely free of charge. I promise you, I won't make a dime off this. I'm doing this out of my own altruistic nature.

THERE IS NO SECRET.

No special diet, no miracle piece of equipment, no pill, no drink.

The equation is easy: calories in vs calories out.

It's one of those simple truths that run deep in the implications and hard in the implimentations.

Modern Organized Religion

2006-10-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

I said a while ago in my post about organized religion that I was going to comment on modern organized religion. I had, at the time, planned something pretty in depth, but I don't think I want to go there any more.

The summary of my thoughts are this:

Small religious organizations are especially at risk for the kind of tribalism that sets them at odds with other religious organizations and beliefs that differ from their own. They must maintain a sufficient membership in order to remain alive. Fear tactics are commonly employed, as well as bashing other religions and beliefs.

Individuals not well grounded in their own beliefs will also resort to attacking* the beliefs of others rather than examining their own, so even in organizations that are 'confident', and so devote much more energy to humanitarian and inclusive persuits, there are many individuals who are highly antagonistic against anyone not clearly in line with their beliefs.

*I think there is a difference between attacking beliefs and arguing beliefs. When attacking beliefs, the goal is not to uncover the truth but to destroy the credibility of the opponent. When arguing, the goal of the individual who is debating is to establish that their stance is the correct one. If that individual has integrity, once they have found flaws in their view, they will reevaluate.

I enjoy discussing my beliefs, and sometimes even arguing them simply because it is an interesting exercise in which I always learn. When I see something I consider false, I tend to try to correct it, but otherwise I feel no need to defend my beliefs. The only reason I've brought them up on this blog is so that, as I blend my skeptical remarks with my religious ones, I'll have a post to direct someone to to show them why I am the way I am. This is simply because I find that as a theist and a skeptic to most paranormal claims, alternative medicine, etc. I am in the minority.

So, this is pretty much the end of my more involved religious posts, unless something interesting comes up.

Information vs. Emotion

2006-10-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was nursing my toddler to sleep this afternoon, basking in the oxytocin glow, the writing buzz, and taking in some church stuff I'd listened to. These are the times when I begin to ponder. It's wierd, but feeling good about stuff always reminds me that I'm very, very lucky. So then I begin to think about what is wrong in the world. I usually go in two directions: the suffering born by the innocent, or the proliferation of falsehoods.

This afternoon it was the latter, and my recent adventures at the Health and Safety Fair. The problem is that a blog like this, or those who have a lot more time to devote to debunking doesn't do a lot. I've thought about writing a whole book, but it has been done by more knowledgable people than me. They are either ignored or recieve bad 'customer' reviews because they are percieved as pushing the evil profit seeking medico-pharma industry.

Maybe a softer voice would work? Maybe the lack of letters after my name, the "I'm just an ordinary housewife" schtick would work? What kind of research, what kind of words to get the point across? And then, who would publish it?

How can I reveal to the world that the alternative medicine industry is profit oriented and not people oriented as they would have you believe? How often even the practitioner is being duped out of money by the school/training/product line whatever. Sometimes the altie practitioner sees a quick road to helping others that goes against the evil corporate machine. It appeals to their feelings. Chiropractic learning isn't so quick though, and is expensive. Those guys have to believe in it from the beginning to put so much time, money, and effort into it.

I was disturbed not only by the blatant lie about Jackie Joyner Kersee being dead, but by what I found when researching other things they'd talked about. I found a chiropractic training website. I couldn't get there directly, but google had a cache of some literature about "The 15 secrets to Lifetime Patients". Here are some examples:

New Patient Advocate:
1. Prepares testimonials, chiropractic analogies,
metaphors, or stories
that correspond to the education of the day.
2.
Inspires the patient by stirring the patient’s emotions. Remember
that
emotions motivate people to act not information
Using an inspirational case or an emotional testimonial is an
extremely effective method for communicating the chiropractic story.
Actual cases and testimonials build trust, security and confidence with your
current patients while at the same time one of the most effective strategies
for stimulating internal referrals in your practice.
Select a case that really impacted you emotionally and represents the
chiropractic wellness model. Communicate the story with passion to your patients.

They are messing around with people to "build practice". They aren't teaching medicine, but business. Scratch that. They are teaching religion.

But they do probably have a point: People are more motivated by emotion than information. This is why alternative medicine works better.

Maybe that is it: an expose on the alternative medicine big machine, not on the veracity of the practices themselves.

But I can't help but think that more than that is needed. A booth at those fairs, for instance. There are a lot of cool things that could be done at such a thing. Imagine an ideomotor demonstration, you know the one where you have the pariticipant hold both their hands out, instruct them that no matter what, they are to keep them at the same level, then have them close their eyes and talk about how there is a balloon tied to one making it light and a brick to the other making it heavy. Give them questions to ask the person who wants to be their chiropractor.

If you don't go to a chiropractor, you Will DIE!

2006-09-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

First of all: Blogger Beta never remembers me and keeps on making me have to log in. That is irritating.

But more interesting is the health and safety fair I went to this weekend. It was sponsered by the local hospital, though it was a city event. This explains some of the booths there.

I got a free spinal screen. Basically it involved a little doohicky with two paddles that had three electrodes on them, to be placed on either side of my spine. Gadgets are cool. I like them a lot, so of course I did it. I gave the baby I was holding to my daughter so I could stand up straight.

They only did the screen on my neck. It looks like they'd go down the whole back if one could disrobe in public.

What it was supposed to do was measure the electrical activity, and it was supposed to fall within certain parameters.

Everything checked out except on the left, some vertebra, I'm not sure which one, but it controls the muscles of my shoulder and arm. It had too much activity going on, by a lot, according to the computer read out. It is also the one that controls my heart, and she was concerned. Very very concerned.

Because, you see, Jackie Joyner-Kersee recently died of a heart attack, and when they did the autopsy on her, they found a horrible subluxation right at the vertebra that controlled her heart. So even a very fit person, like me, should be worried. Then she told me I should look up the Winsor Autopsies.

Wow. That is scary stuff. Maybe I should go to the chiropractor.

Except that, well... Jackie Joyner Kersee is NOT dead.

Her sister in law, Francis Florence Griffith is dead. Mistaken identity? Perhaps, but she died of asphyxiation from having a seizure, not a heart attack.

What is also interesting is that they didn't pick up on the very real and irritating pain I often feel in my right shoulder/arm. And which arm do you think I'd been holding baby in? If you guessed the one that had 'too much electrical activity', you are right. I'm not sure if that has any bearing on it, but it certainly makes it so the "test" isn't very convincing to me.

There was another chiropractor doing a different kind of spinal screening, but it looked too involved and I had three impatient kids with me. So no more razzing the chiros.

Anyway, sorry for the long wait here. I have some short stories to submit and one I haven't begun that has to be finished by Oct 1.

Avast! This be not for the lily-livered

2006-09-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Arrrrr, I be not the nerdiest buccanneer pirate that be here. I be not finishin the landlubbers school, nor be my computer's RAM so hardily sufficient to qualify, and I be cozyin' up to that blasted scallywag privateer, Gates.

Impractical Magic

2006-09-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Marketing Executives,

Just because I like Lord of the Rings and occasionally purchase books from the Science Fiction Book Club doesn't mean I believe in crystal healing, or finding a best friend with numerology, or cleansing diets, or any of the other wacky things out there.

Thank you,

The Granola

***

You know those books you can get page by page. The pages are cards that you collect with hole punches in them, and you are supposed to put them in the special binder you get if you subscribe to it. It is just another way to "monetize" content. Sometimes it might be interesting if it is about a TV show and has pictures and bios - that is, if you are around 12 or so.

Other common ones are recipes. These are a little more useful.

I got a sample pack recently of something to do with spirituality. It got thrown away before I could get a good look at it, but I got an interesting impression.

People crave spirituality, but they don't want the discipline of honest inquiry; integrity; and moral, reasonable, or common sense action.

Religion and Human Organization

2006-09-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

Humans are not solitary animals. They naturally organize into cooperative groups. It isn't so hard to see the advantages of social grouping, whether derived from evolution or by design of God or both. Early on in our history, the very survival of the species depended on this kind of behavior, and it is still to our advantage today.

A number of situations drove early social organization. Early in our history, humans were part of wandering tribes, held together by familial bonds with a hierarchy. As tribes grew and exchanged members, hierarchies began to require something more than paternal or maternal dominance. Tribal interaction was also an ongoing problem. In order to succeed, the tribe needed organization that both met the needs of its members and made the tribe successful compared to its competitors.

By whatever means this happened, what seems to have occurred was a specialization of authority: temporal authority and spiritual or mind/body authority. Chiefs and Shamans. Sometimes the two were combined in one head, but very often there were those who were good at leading the people to success, and those that were good at leading the people to some kind of understanding that made the world manageable.

As civilization matured, so did this system of chiefs and shamans. Religion had the role of outlining moral behavior and stabilizing a society even amid the upheaval of war, famine, governmental collapse, or any other catastrophe that could fall upon the society. Religion caused societies to transcend their original goals: that of gaining territory or resources. Instead, societies with highly developed religions tended even more towards cooperation.

It was something that temporal leaders learned to take advantage of. By utilizing this influence, leaders of groups from primitive tribes to empires learned that they could use religion to gain more power. It is a problem that has plagued the natural development of the relationship between the human and divine since the dawn of time.

In modern terms, it gives us Islamic Terrorists. It gives us religious pundits who use their followers to lift themselves up, gaining their self worth from worldly acclaim and using their influence to grow their membership, to increase profit, and grab power. It gives us plain religious bigotry, and other bigotries rationalized by usually misunderstood religious doctrines. In the history of western civilization, we have the Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of heretics, the need to flee homelands in order to worship freely, etc. These are all evils that have the involvement of organized religion.

These are what secularists point to when they say that the true evil is organized religion itself.

What is not realized is that this problem with social manipulation is not inherent in religion, but is a flaw in the human character. It is the reflection of our primitive, natural past where our survival depended on our ability to acquire or maintain territory and resources. In all of the examples listed, the primary causes can be reduced to political figures using religion to gain power. Secondary causes would be fear of "other tribes" – a natural response that would increase the survivability of a local gene pool.

What happens when we take religion out of the equation? Exactly the same thing: The Great Purge in the Soviet Union where approximately 28 million people were killed*. Cambodia. China and Tibet. The systematic discrimination of religious views in many institutions of higher learning in the United States.

The fact of the matter is, when humans organize themselves, there is a high likelihood that they will pick a scapegoat group to act against. It is one of the most primitive ways to power.

The purpose of religion is to provide a check against those kinds of destructive behaviors by teaching people doctrines that call for civilized behavior. All moral laws that govern society today have religious foundations. All concepts of ethical behavior derive from philosophies that are either implicitly religious or originated from religious thought.

Religion is the sire of science, literature, ethics, and just about everything that elevates us above our natural origins. Religion is the Apple. It's Pandora's Box. It is the elusive meaning to the question that has haunted us since the dawn of intelligence: Why?

Without religion, we would still be living in packs, struggling for subsistence living, not thinking beyond the next day and not knowing our true potential.

Next: The shape of modern organized religions

Phishing for Phools

2006-09-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, phishing scams. These can be through email or instant messaging. Sometimes, it is over the phone.

Had a lovely one a few years ago allegedly in regards to my Paypal account. It stated flat out that it had to verify personal information. Warning bells clanged in my head. I checked the URL of the link. Sure enough, it wasn't directed towards the paypal server. It could be a virus, but curiosity overcame my fear and I clicked on the link. Turned out that it was a straight up scam seeking my identity, not my computer's soul. It was amazing the amount of information they asked for: Full name, birthdate, social security number, bank account numbers.

How many did they send out? If only one person in 10,000 fell for it, they probably had at least 100 identities.

Got one from a Chase imposter this time. I wasn't brave enough this time to click on the link, but I did look up the info on it.

http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/report/3163

Here is a clue about how to detect these things. The obvious one is that the company you have an account with will not initiate information gathering over the computer. If you recieve an email that leads you somewhere asking for all kinds of information that you think is from a company you have an account with, it is a scam. Companies that have your sensitive information do not send mail requesting you to 'confirm' that information.

But another good clue is where it is actually coming from. Listen up a bit class.

Let us take a domain, say "wwwDOTrespectedcreditcardcompanyDOTripyouoffDOTcom"

com is the Top Level Domain. Lets make a rough analogy to help things. You could call this a street or city or maybe a state, or a country.

ripyouoff is the Domain Name - this is the key here. The name just to the left of the Top Level Domain is always the actual registered domain name and this is where you will go. In our analogy, this would be a house.

respectedcredicardcompany - while in our thinking, being first (after www, of course) would mean precedence, this is untrue in domain names. This part of the URL is a sub domain. That is, it is a part of the Domain name. There can be more than one subdomain in a URL. In the analogy, this part would direct you to a room in the house.

So are you going to the respected credit card company? No, you are going to a house called Rip You Off, and in that house is a door with a sign, paint still wet, that says "Respected Credit Card Company" which leads into a room with con artist who will take you for all you have.

But lastly, if in doubt, call the company you allegedly got an email or instant message from. Your safety is important to them, because identity theft hurts them as well. They'll tell you what you need to know.

September 11th

2006-09-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

To all those fathers and mothers, wives, husbands, children, siblings, friends, partners; to all those that lost, may you be comforted and lifted up in your grief on this day.

To all those who departed on that day, may they find rest.

To all of us, may we leave the anger behind and find peace. May we choose the proper action if our brother refuses peace, and may we do it with love and mourning rather than victory.

LDS Skepticism

2006-09-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Jared* at the LDS Science Review has an interesting article on the encouragement of skepticism by LDS leadership.

http://ldsscience.blogspot.com/2006/08/skepticism-in-church.html

The article is pretty LDS centric, being an LDS blog. In speaking about interpreting claims of divine revelation, we are told to reject it if it is contrary to (among other things) "known facts, demonstrated truths, or good common sense."

Following the spirit of the advice, one could easily expand it to any special claims made by people, especially those where the person making the claim has some advantage to be had if you accept their story.

What does blogging mean to me?

2006-09-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sarabeth, of "I was once HP" just tagged me with this meme.

1) Are you happy/satisfied with your blog's content and look?

I actually have two blogs, and the answers are different for both of them. I'm more particular about the content of Testing the Cultural Divide, and I'm pretty ready for a change in the look there. But here is where I'm more relaxed. As a result, the look of the site doesn't concern me as much. I'm pretty happy with the content of both of them though. I do need to spend some time on the sidebars.

2) Does your family know about your blog?

They do. In fact, I've gotten every female member of it to start one. I think it is a great way to keep in touch with family when one doesn't live close.

3) Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?

I'm not embarrassed at all. I want more people to read it. It has always been a public venture. Of course, I don't post much of my private life on either of my blogs.

4) Did blogging cause positive changes in your thoughts?

In my thoughts... hmm... I'm not sure blogging has had that effect on me, except perhaps my enjoyment of posting. But maybe it has. I started blogging partly because I had so many words and phrases that had accumulated but had no home that I was actually getting irritated. Now, I have a couple of places for them.

5) Do you only open the blogs of those who comment on your blog or do you love to go and discover more by yourself?

I do like to go discover more by myself, but I've barely had time to write in my own blogs or even read all that are on my blogrolls now. So mostly I just open the blogs of those who comment. Comment here, so I can visit you!

6) What does a visitor counter mean to you? Do you like having one on your blog?

I really like having a visitor counter and seeing where people are from. Like Sarabeth, the blocked addresses are interesting, but I tend to think they are probably disguised spambots.

7) Did you try to imagine your fellow bloggers and give them real pictures?

No.

8) Admit. Do you think there is any real benefit in blogging?

For me, there is. I'm a writer who hopes to get published by a brick and morter publisher. Blogging both hones my skill and is a place where I can gain an audience before I even publish.

9) Do you think that blogger's society is isolated from the real world or interaction with events?

The society isn't isolated, but individual bloggers may be.

10) Does criticism annoy you or do you feel it's a normal thing?

Both. Except, it depends on what kind of criticism. I love constructive criticism. I actively seek it out for my fiction.

11) Do you fear some political blogs and avoid them?

I hate politics, so I typically do avoid political blogs. I don't think they are good sources for unbiased knowledge about what is going on with governments and society.

12) Were you shocked by the arrest of some bloggers?

When and where?

13) What do you think will happen to your blog after you die?

I really should make hard copy of it. Any maintenance of it would probably be forgotten, as my husband doesn't read either of my blogs.

14) What do you like to hear? What song would you like to link to on your blog?

Star Trekkin across the universe!
On the starship enterprise, under Captain Kirk!
Star Trekkin across the universe!
Only going forward now 'cause we can't find reverse!

Okay, back to reality, where I still can't find reverse. Like Sarabeth, who tagged me, I love U2. I tend to appreciate intelligent lyrics and interesting music from just about any group, except country. I've really tried to like it because a lot of people I like do, but it just kind of grates on me.

15) Five bloggers to be the next "victims"?

MommaTN
Rinda
Jordan
Clark Bartram
Ketchup Queen

Journey to Belief (Conclusion)

2006-09-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

(part 1)(part 2)(part3)(intermission)(part 4)(part 5)

For the second time in my life, (the first time was, as it is for many a young person taught the Bible, young earth creationism) something that had been taught to me by people whom I loved, admired, trusted and respected turned out to be wrong. If I could not trust feelings to bring me closer to the truth, then what could I trust? What, then, was the Holy Spirit?

I realized at that point that people have had those same kinds of feelings for many a false thing. They've had much, much stronger feelings than I ever had for beliefs that completely defied logic and reality. They've martyred themselves for these false premises. And yet, the feeling, the joy that brings one to tears, is inconstant. It cannot be trusted to yield truth, only a good emotional experience.

If there was a Holy Spirit, how could I know I was learning through it, then?

These questions bounced around in my head for quite a long time, but it was only when I stopped being upset about my personal, emotional deception - when I realized that I wasn't living life at all, even though I had that life in such generous terms, that I began to understand the answer to my question.

How could I know I was learning from the Holy Ghost?

Because it will illuminate Truth.

A journey appeared in my mind then, of my own past, of instances and thoughts I'd had. These were thoughts that I had never been able to forget. They reverberated in my soul, ringing through all the years of my life. Some of these thoughts were for very specific situations and did not seem to show a big picture at all. But many thoughts were leaps of knowing where the pieces of the puzzle did not merely fit together, but the joining of it seemed to glow with rightness. All in all though, those intense experiences did not happen very often. I can count them on my fingers. But they were real.

Then another thought entered my mind:

Tread carefully. Real Truth is precious and rare. Most of the time, you can't really know a thing. Like the evolution of man, the thought continued. The theory is sound, the pieces we have fit it, but we can never call it knowledge simply because we never observed it. Should we have the chance to observe it, we'd be surprised but at the same time it would make perfect sense and fit even better into what we'd already observed.

It isn't about whether I'm right or wrong. My worth should not tied up in that. If something I've learned turns out to be wrong, even if I thought it right for 70 years, then I must let it go and I cannot tie my self identification up in it. If I don't have enough information, then I should file the subject under "need to learn more before I should have an opinion".

Yet we can't really leave our emotions completely out of the equation: that would demolish important things like compassion and love, and our plain enjoyment of this fascinating puzzle. But we must be careful of our emotion. We must evaluate not only the data, but our motives in believing the things that we do. I can experience emotion because of my beliefs, but my emotions should not be the reason for my beliefs.

It does take careful study, no matter what we think of the matter. And we should look at all sides. We can't dismiss God so easily, really, but neither can we believe in God easily. It is something that should never be taken for granted. Truth, mostly, is that we can't know a lot of things right now, but we're expected to try to learn as best we can, with our best observations, with our critical minds, and even sometimes with our hearts.

Help, My Skin is Aging!

2006-08-31T12:18:00.000-07:00

I just want to jump in here and say something. I would say it is granola uncensored, but I'm not capable of writing without editing at least a little bit. I would say totally unresearched, but I couldn't control the urge to grab a picture and quote. But it is a rant, and it isn't really researched very well. So if I'm wrong, it's my misconceptions that are showing, and I won't mind if someone tells me to hike my slip up a bit.

I don't really like dermatologists very much. They are out to prey upon the insecurities of women. The local one here runs advertisements all the time about erasing the devastating effects of aging. Oh the horror, the absolute horror. What is this disease, this aging? I'm scared doc, make it stop!

Luckily, they quickly present us with a solution to that which stalks every poor woman out there: come in for dermabrasion.

Ever since this service came out, I've thought that dermabrasion was one of the silliest things. How can it do anything really lasting? All dermabrasion does, correct me if I'm wrong, is take off the dead skin cells. Maybe the treatment is a little better than a good facial scrub. But after a week, what has your 100 dollars purchased you? I would say, nothing much. But this comes to us from a source that should be respectable.

Alternative health sources really aren't any better.

I once had a Prickly Pear Facial, which is a cool name even if it says nothing but "naturally, this will irritate you". Most people aren't supposed to use it more than once a week, and some people (like me) should really keep usage down to two times a month. My face looked convincingly red for quite a while - longer really than they said it might on sensitive skin. The next day my skin looked pretty nice. Not "Wow, I'm a new me!" nice but not bad. And the next day it was normal. I have actually wondered if the effect of it was inflammation rather than anything restorative or protective or whatall the effect was supposed to be.

I recently found a good quality moisturizer at a big corporate arm bender retail store that gave me about the same effect. It lasted me about 6 weeks and cost a lot less than the facial. Plus, I didn't have to mess around with it for about 30 minutes, get all red faced (unless the Milk comes in to admire my deft skill at applying lotion), and I could use it every single day. Like all of my facial moisturizers have been since they came out with such products, it is SPF 15, but for some reason it seems to do an extra special job than the last stuff I had. Dove Deep Moisture Day Care.

At Bath and Body Works, there is this new Patricia Wexler MD line of products. Her picture and her name upon the product is one of the reasons I dermatologists kind of bother me. There is a lot of medicotechno garble that I haven't heard about anywhere else but in this line of products. Of course, I don't research the latest in "Trying to look 16 years old when you're really 60", so I might be wrong. They are going to give me a free sample of "Wexler MMPi*20(tm) Skin Regenerating Serum, Professional Strength" so I might try it. I wonder if it comes in any strengths other than professional? Maybe there is a "aphrodite strength" for the really rich woman, or a "too-pathetic-to-pay-for-professional regular strength" for regular gals like me. Anyway, at 27 bucks for a .5 oz jar, it is going to have to go really, really far to get me to give up my current favorite, which is only $7 for 1.69 oz (that's 50 ml to you sane metric users out there).

Of her prices, Wexler, who wants to be my 'daily dermatologist' says "I believe great skin shouldn't be a luxury." To which I ask, "Does this count towards my deductible? Or maybe even my cafeteria plan, that would be okay too." No? Hmmm.

Girls, we don't need anything fancy to keep our skin healthy. Just do all the things we should be doing to keep the rest of our body healthy, moisturize, and protect from the sun. Oh yeah, and remember to let a doctor give your skin the once over on occassion.

Wrinkles will come. Let them come. We're still strong and beautiful. Now, go out and compliment someone.

Journey to Belief (part 5)

2006-08-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

(part 1)(part 2)(part3)(intermission)(part 4)

So far, except in replies to comments, I have only postulated a god or gods that exist and the benevolence of deity as the only state that matters. Up to this point, really, I haven't commented on if such deity resembles the Judeo-Christian god or is a pantheon of gods or something more like what Buddhism and other eastern religions describe.

To go any further, we must now deal the human experience. I have struggled to write this because frankly, I'm limited. I'm very limited. I really only understand part of what has gone on in western traditions. I really only understand what I, myself, have experienced.

But even that is a very tricky mess to tease out.

Most accounts are second or third hand at best.
Accounts suffer from misinterpreting because of cultural context.
Accounts suffer from transmission errors
They suffer from cultural contamination: mental illnesses, for instance, interpreted as heavenly visions that conform to cultural expectations of what those visions should be like.
Accounts may actually be stories misinterpreted as real events. Job, for instance, may very well be a parable rather than a real person.
Accounts may be purposefully deceptive, for whatever reason.

That's so much garbage to go through that some people, understandably enough, just throw their hands in the air, exclaim Occam's Razor and be done with it.

And then we have personal experience. How are we to interpret our own personal experience?

When I was pregnant once, the music from the end credits of a movie I had thought was stupid made me cry. It made me feel that tearful joy that many of my religious contemporaries have classified as the Holy Spirit testifying something, but it had no meaning to convey. There was no clarity in the emotion. It was merely an emotional reaction, probably because I was pregnant. My feelings had betrayed me. They were illogical. Except during that pregnancy and post partum period where hormones ruled, I didn't cry again, for good or ill, for two years. I let nothing touch me.

I wish it was a vacation keeping me from posting.

2006-08-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

Family stayed at my house this past weekend. The weekend before that I went to three social functions and entertained two different visitors I hadn't seen in years. This coming weekend we will have a friend from Japan staying.

You may have thought up until now that I was a rather nerdy introvert, not the social butterfly these occurances make me out to be. In this, you would be right. While I've been enjoying this contact a lot, when it is all over I think I'll find a closet somewhere to live in all by myself.

I have been working on the next post and thinking about comments. I hope to post something in the next couple of days, but may find myself unable to. My younger girls are in school, my oldest is starting school next monday, and I have a toddler.

I know there are very few of you out there, but still I feel obligated to say I haven't forgotten your very interesting questions and comments, or this series of posts, or this blog.

When I get done with the series, remind me to tell you of the chiropractor who sells himself with little yellow fliers headed by "A Doctor's Confession", with picture of his cute daughters and even testimony of prospective patients who go to him because of his cute little family. Gag.

Journey to Belief (part 4)

2006-08-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

(part 1)(part 2)(part3)(intermission)

I tried replying to the comments yesterday. In fact, I wrote for about an hour, stupidly doing my work in the comments window. Of course, blogger burped and I lost it. They are great questions, and some of it lead to what I wanted to discuss anyway.

Just because gods come into existence doesn't mean we must either worship them or follow their commandments. My idea that they must evolve from an infinite meta-universe makes no comment on just what they are. They could be any of the following things:

indifferent - if this is true, there is no point. It is just as if there was no God.
malevolent - if this is true, such a being does not deserve our worship or respect.
benevolent - if this is true, we need to pay attention.

This doesn't even approach traditional definitions of God such as omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omnipotent. Every single one of those characteristics are points of seperate discussion, and they have been argued for millenia.

The suggestion was made by ex utero that it is arrogant to believe that such beings as would evolve into gods would ever bother with us. It may be inappropriate to believe that all such beings would pay attention to us, but I do not think it egocentric to believe that some would, in much the same way that some of us pay attention to different species on this planet. Making such an assumption does not make humans a special case, because it does not exclude any other intelligent or even non-intelligent beings from the same attention.

Ex utero also proposed an interesting question: "Would I care to believe even if God were real and all the facts in the bible were historically accurate, but there was in fact no after-life and that death were final?"

The no afterlife god of this proposition is malevolent, for if this is truly the god of the bible and that god is lying to us about the afterlife, then that is not the only thing going on. For that god of the alledgedly historically true bible does have power great enough to create an afterlife even if there was no natural one, or is lying about the power he has. To not give us an afterlife and then lie about it is, in fact, not a god I could believe in or worship. However, the bible=historically true/there is a god/but no afterlife proposition has a variety of logical problems with it, and it has even more inconsistencies with the doctrine and facts of my own religion, such that I, myself, cannot consider it a sufficient reason to reject a belief or worship of God.

I had a very similar question I proposed to myself once: Would I regret having lived my life believing something false and basing a lifestyle on that if, in the end, death were final?

My answer was different from ex utero's. I decided I would not regret it. Why? Because my lifestyle had honor and goodness, the standards it held up to me were worthy to keep me always striving to become better than I am, and the philosophy it was based on had pure love at its core. In short, I do not act in order to gain heaven by divine decree after I die; I act in order to create heaven where I am. I have been, and I will be, but where I am now is the only thing that can be acted upon. This is true with or without an afterlife.

It is clear that the difference in our approach may have something to do with the religious backgrounds we came from, but I do not want to address that right now.

When I wrote of my "careful construction" that bothered Sarabeth, I did wonder if I should refer to it in this way or not, and opted to go ahead despite cultural references such as 'house of cards'.

We all construct our beliefs using our experiences and knowledge. Some of us humans take no thought to the process; letting 'memes' (for lack of a better term) and our reactions lay where they fall, unquestioned, their construction being a pile of whatever came by. Others attempt to put this information together to create coherancy, but may lay bad foundations or no foundation at all, or use poor materials, or do not measure properly. And others may be very exacting, but still find that a material they used was defective, so that they must now go in and replace it throughout their construction. We will always find new technologies, better methods, and better things to build with, so that our construction should never be considered complete. Of course, I couldn't get all of that information in, but that was basically my idea.

And finally, MommaTN, thanks for the kind words.

Next, separating emotional motives for belief or lack thereof from reasonable motives.

Journey to Belief (Intermission)

2006-08-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

A lot of interesting points have come up in my comments. Ones that I hadn't thought about addressing originally as I detailed how I came to my beliefs. As I always do, I'm also questioning why I wanted to share these thoughts, making them open for discussion, and then questioning why I wouldn't want to share them.

It all comes down to being human. Like all of us social creatures, I want to be understood and accepted. I guess I feel the need to explain how I can be skeptical, and still believe in God and be deeply religious. Perhaps I am still fighting the ridicule of that fellow student from all those years ago. Do our insecurities ever really change? But also, I always wonder if my thinking has been clear, logical and precise enough to pass a rigorous test. Will some large oversight be pointed out to me, wreaking havoc in my carefully constructed set of arguments, causing me to start over again? Will I ever, ever be satisfied?

Probably not. Not until the bright flash of death reveals or does not reveal the ultimate answer. But then, isn't that how we should approach knowledge? Never satisfied that we are Knowledgable. Willing to give up what we thought was true in exchange for something that is more true, and yet making this exchange conservatively, unwilling to let our opinions drift with the prevailing breeze.

C'est la vie.

(part 1)(part 2)(part3)

It's a Test! PGR is up.

2006-08-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

So, I decided to take the test over at Unintelligent Design.

1. Which of the following is a new indication for breastfeeding?

A. Breasts can’t be confiscated by airport security.

2. You arrive to work at a Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit(NICU) to find that you will be caring for a set of three day old triplets. The mother of the infants wishes to discuss kangaroo care for her children. Which of the following is the most appropriate way of handling this situation?

A. I'm sorry but there are no animals allowed in the NICU.

3. When can dietary improvements have the most impact on our risk of coronary artery disease?

D. Hmmmmmm jelly donuts. Purple is a fruit right?

4. Which of the following potential long term benefits of breastfeeding has recently been studied?

A. Xray vision.

Really. It helps if the mom already has X-ray vision. I think it is so like, the babies can just look at mom and see how much milk is in.

5. Which illness can result in exercise intolerance and periodic bouts of coughing in children and adults?

C. Hand, Foot in Mouth Disease

I had my foot in my mouth once during yoga. It was really gross, so I started coughing a lot.

6. What has recent study shown to be a potential link to increased sexual activity in teens?

D. Music with degrading lyrics.

7. Other than family, who should be involved in making decisions about the medical care of a child?

D. Brittney Spears

Dr. Bartram has clued us in to how very, very smart she is.

8. What statement does 43% of the American public agree with?

A. There's always room for Jello.

Purple Jello, of course.

9. What has led to the dramatic decrease in pediatric Hemophilus influenza type B (HiB) infections over the past decade?

There wasn't a right answer listed for this one, because it is obvious that the energy vibration of the earth's atmosphere is not harmonious with HiB, or I guess I should say that HiB has evolved into disharmony with that vibration and so is no longer flourishing.

10. What should be taken into account when deciding to resuscitate a premature infant?

A. The gestational age.
B. Parental wishes.
C. Medical condition.
D. All of the above.

11. Which child focused strip mall establishments do the American Institute of Ultrasound Medicine think you should avoid?

A. Timmy Tobacco's Wacky Shack
B. Chucky Cheese After Dark
C. Lead Based Pottery By You
D. Prenatal Portraits with 4D ultrasound.

All of these are bad institutions to be sure, but Clark forgot to mention the worst of them all: Sanrio (The Hello Kitty store).

12. What popular strategies were not supported as effective means of reducing the incidence of allergic disease and asthma in a recent study?

A. House dust mite avoidance.
B. Stress Management
C. Increased dietary Omega-3 intake.
D. Both A and C.

See, now I was stumped on this, until I came across Clark's use of the plural, because I'm a word geek. That's what I am. And my geekiness revealed to me that if he used strategies in plural, there must be more than one strategy, and there was only one answer that involved more than one strategy: D.

Hmph... I only got 8 wrong. Smarter than I thought. I guess I should go read the posts, and so should you if you want the real answers.

Journey to Belief (part 3)

2006-08-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

(part 2)

After an experience that I may relate someday, I found myself questioning again. My personal "pascal's wager" was all well and good, but it what about embracing truth? Had I really made the right choice, the choice to believe in God? So I crawled back through everything I knew, and I found yet again that black box of science: the beginnings of the universe.

It's a troublesome place, really, a gap filled with anthropic principles, quantum fluxuations, spaghetti monsters, and other philosophical bogeymen. And that is the problem, really. There is no evidence for anything before 10−33 seconds had passed. That is an incomprehsibly short time for us mortals, but it is still not the instant of coming into being.

To imagine that this instance happened one single time, with all the special qualities of the universe that make intelligence possible seems so beyond probability as to be ridiculous. The odds are worse than winning any lottery. It makes us special in a way that, philosophically, leaves a bad taste in our mouths after Galileo and Copernicus. And it screams intelligent intervention.

The other option is to imagine it has happened enough times for a universe like ours to occur. And if it has happened that many times, then there is probably more than one universe in which some form of complexity has occurred that resulted in intelligent information processing. Can we impose a limit on the number of universes created? Because if we can't, then it is infinite, such that even the that miniscule fraction of universes that contain intelligence is infinite. And if that is so, the deity must have evolved.

But what of the nature of that deity?

To be continued

Journey to Belief (part 2)

2006-08-07T17:05:00.000-07:00

(part 1)

This encounter was not the beginning of doubt or questioning. That was a process that had already begun. But it was a sort of touching stone for me. I must, above all, I thought, base my beliefs on logic and reason rather than emotionalism.

The problem was, I wanted to just plain believe in God, desperately. I wanted the simple faith that so many of my fellow Saints (Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons) and Christians had. In a way, I hated over thinking things. It got in the way of just living. This 'rebelliousness' kept my development on hold for many years.

But after a while, I found I could no longer coast along in life. I began to question if I lead my lifestyle simply because it was what I'd been taught as a child. Our religion expected others to convert. What if I found out it was false and there was a truth out there I had to grab on to, convert myself to? Could I do it? Could I do what we Mormons wanted, even expected non-members of my church to do? Am I afraid to do what is right because I fear what those around me will think of me?

And then I read something that inspired me, in an odd way. It was an idea I gleaned from physics. I've since tracked it down to Einstein when he spoke of his theory of relativity as being "too beautiful to be false." Physics has a lot of this idea that the truth will naturally be beautiful. That concept rang in my head. It felt right, but that kind of thing is not enough for rigorous truth. It was a feeling, after all. A feeling and concept that supported what I wanted it to support. What it did was cause me to ask, "Is that really enough?"

To which question, this thought replied:

We can't know if there is or is not a god. I would not be able to find any absolutes on this search.

There is only one way for a person to know that he is correct in regard to the existence of an afterlife and God. That is if he believes in those things and they turn out to be true. If he believes and it is not true, he will never know that he has been wrong. If he doesn't believe and it is not true, he will never know that he has been right. And if he doesn't believe and it is true, then he will find out that he has been wrong.

This is actually a version of Pascal's Wager.

It isn't a fear of God thing, as Pascal's hedging of the bets seems to be, unless you desperately fear being wrong or simply going to the grave not knowing a thing. It is simply a statement of what we can and cannot eventually come to know with absolute certainty regarding God. It is a statement that makes a leap of faith towards the existence of God at least a reasonable proposition to pursue.

Because, no matter what view we take on the world, we make an assumption that is the foundation of our philosophy. It is an assumption that will rule our emotional responses and our motivations. It is an assumption about something that we cannot possibly know, which makes that assumption a leap of faith.

To be continued

Journey to Belief (Part 1)

2006-08-06T16:58:00.000-07:00

When I was 17, I participated in a regional science fair. During the banquet, I got into a conversation with one of my 'colleagues' about evolution, God, and creation. I noted a particular speculation I had at the time that God intervened during those 'punctuated' events of Gould's punctuated equilibrium theory.

"Well, what did he do, bring them up to his lab in the sky and genetically alter them?" my acquaintance mocked.

"I don't know, but God has a bit more finesse and power than that," I replied. "He doesn't need a lab."

It was my first experience talking to a skeptic about creation, but certainly not my last. I was angry, upset, and felt ridiculed. I deeply wanted to be accepted by those around me at the time. These were the people I felt most comfortable with. I find it ironic that if I had followed the course my feelings pushed me to, that professors and science colleagues alike would have congratulated me on freeing myself from the shackles of my religious delusions. But I could not have been considered a free thinker or a critical thinker, despite their accolades. Instead I would have been a follower of social pressure.

But that also meant I could not believe in God because of social pressure.

To be continued

Book Meme

2006-08-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Clark Bartram of Unintelligent Design has tagged me, with a very cool meme, I might add. I love books. I love stories. I love reading. I hadn't had time to read enough lately. My dear milk man, seeing my predicament, bought me a subscription to audible.com with an Ipod. I think this qualifies as just about the best gift I've ever been given.

1) One book that changed your life? Ender's Game. It isn't that the story radically altered my outlook, or that I love that story in particular (I enjoy Speaker for the Dead more) but what it brought into my life: an appreciation for the author that lead to several encounters that have changed my life. Sounds like I'm a fan chick, and on a level that's true. I mean, I helped found and continue to pay for a site in honor of Ender's Game. But I've seen a lot of people far more intense about Orson Scott Card than I, and who've read the book over 20 times.

No, what happened is that OSC told me two different things at two different times that made me yearn for the craft of writing. One: We need more voices that speak the truth. Two: I am a good writer. I'm going to have to admit to feeling scared about it, and sometimes thinking it makes me an arrogant little bit of cereal to even think I can aspire to what I want.

2) One book you have read more than once? Lord of the Rings. I never wanted to leave that place.

3) One book you would want on a desert island? Some big History of the World that is chock full of biographies.

4) One book that made you laugh? I haven't read many humorous books in my adulthood, not because I don't like to laugh. I enjoy comedies a lot. I don't know why. Anyway, I read Cheaper by the Dozen way back when I was a kid and loved it. So I was excited to see it come out, with none other than Steve Martin playing the inventor dad who is obsessed with making things more efficient not because he wants it done fast but because, at his core, he is lazy. Hmmm, I think I ended up marrying that guy... Unfortunately, the movie disappointed me a lot.

5) One book that made you cry? The Yearling. A lot of books have made me cry, but that is the definitive answer for me. It's the book that I immediately think of when I think of books that make me cry.

6) One book you wish had been written? If I tell you that, then someone will take my idea and write it before I get around to it. But this blog doesn't have much of an audience just now, does it? Okay. Imagine a girl raised by monsters, now out and about in the real world. There is some pretty cool magic involved, but I'll let you discover that someday yourself :)

7) One book you wish had never had been written? Nothing really came to mind as being so very awful that, as Clark said, free speech should be curtailed. But maybe it isn't the writing that should count. Maybe if Mien Kampf wasn't written, Hitler would have drowned in his own hell rather than make so many other people suffer.

8) One book you are currently reading? The Stand. This is not a second read, but the first time I've read it and it is the first book I've ever read by Stephen King. I got it after listening to his book, "On Writing" and gaining a lot of respect for the man and the stories he must write. I was never a fan of horror, and even his good movies didn't entice me enough to pick up the books. I did read Lawnmower Man and thought: wow, the movie has almost nothing to do with the short story and Hmmm, he is pretty good, if a bit gory. If he wasn't writing horror I might like him. But alas, he is a Best Seller and very popular and I don't want to be just another tag along reader. It wasn't a huge barrier. Just enough so that when I went into the bookstore I tended to pick up other authors. He's still gory, though.

9) One book you have been meaning to read? A whole lifetime of books, but Will in the World is next in my audiobook library. Scratch that, this post has taken so long that I'm listening to it now.

10) Now tag five people. My mom, my sisters MommaT and deafkik, Dr. Charles, and the Fine Art Doctor, Jordan Grummet

Bad Run Beats Ephedra

2006-08-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

My run was horrible today. It was so bad that, for the first time since I began running, I stopped running in the middle of it and started walking instead. Even my walking was just about the slowest ever, since I recovered from last year's giving birth and later surgery.

Part of me is very irritated with myself, disappointed.

The other way to see it is that:

a)I got out there.
b) I stayed out there, and kept on walking at least, for the full half hour.
c)I was recovering from a small bit of food poisoning the day before.
d)I was listening to Stephen King's On Writing and learning good stuff
e)I'd stayed up late the night before, writing a story.

So I guess it isn't all that bad, really.

It is much, much better than taking Ephedra.

Also known as Ma huang, selling this herb was prohibited in the US a couple of years ago, with good reason. What I knew of it was that there had been several deaths from heart valve problems in otherwise healthy women, some sports guy had died, and the radio was splattered with "if you've ever taken phen-phen, call Cha Ching Lawyer firm for a free test to see if you've suffered heart valve damage".

Which was why I was surprised to see signs popping up in front of the local herb places. "Ma huang sold here, while supplies last." and "Ephedra is here!". It appears that in 2005, Utah courts ruled that lower doses of the herb were okay. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050416-9999-1b16ephedra.html

I've gotten some spam email with headers like "That drug ephedra that was banned because it was too effective." A short search reveals that, in fact, this is the claim that sellers of the product are touting: that ephedra was banned by evil pharm because it worked too well. Of course, this goes against the studies that showed that it worked very poorly at the higher doses supposedly effective while stressing the circulatory system too much.

I'm not going to get into the fact that lawyers overstated the problem, or that the supplement companies are understating the problems and vastly overstating the benefits, especially overstating the benefits of the lower dose (It wouldn't suprise me that though it is being sold now in lower doses, people are taking it at the higher "more effective" dose). It's just frustrating how short a memory people have, or how much they are willing to risk to lose weight 'effortlessly'.

There is no substitute for effort, people. No diet, no pill will provide all the benefits exercise can provide, even on bad run days.

It's a Flea Circus!

2006-07-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

Our host, none other than the illustrious Dr. Flea, provides for our viewing pleasure a grand circus of minute proportions. Grab your popcorn and let's go!

Of interest to me is Tara's post on Aetiology about biofilms and ear infections. First, I had never really heard of biofilms, and though they appear to be a frustrating occurance in medicine, as a molecular biologist wannabe, they seem really really cool. Second, we have a family history of problems with ear infections. My dad -> me -> at least three of my children. Interefering with that bacteria's ability to excrete gunk and encase itself in a biofilm sounds like a good thing to me. I bet that kind of drug could help other chronic infections like sinus too.

And then there is Dr. Gwenn's post on what to tell our children, and media posting images that are bad for anyone, any age.

Fun was had by all.

Money First, Your Health Last

2006-07-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

Mike Adams is the Health Ranger.

With a Nome de Plume like that, it is tempting to just make fun of him. Nevertheless, that is the title that he claims for himself on a website sprinkled with pictures of him posing for the camera, a male model being at one with mother nature.

What is a Health Ranger, you ask? He would tell you that he strives to "educate people around the world on how to achieve and maintain peak human health." His efforts, he says, are purely altruistic, since he has no need of money because he is already a successful entrepreneur, having founded and running a software company.

Indeed, as one reads his personal site and his informational site, you find that he isn't selling any products except books. As a writer myself (a title that I admit needs no credentials except to claim the occupation for yourself, and to actually write), I was somewhat disbelieving of the number of works, both books and articles, written since 2001, that have his name on them. There are, besides uncounted articles on his website, 33 books with his name either as primary or as co-author on them. The reason he claims to be able to write so much is because his diet is so incredible that he has become a "superlearning machine".

It becomes tempting to take on every single claim he has. Everything is such a classic example of deceptive health claims that it seems almost like he's read "How to Spot Quackery" from Quackwatch and then put it into action. The thoroughness of his content boggles the mind. It's like the clearinghouse of bogus medicine. It's a little frightening, really. He urges his audience to avoid all MDs and western doctors and all prescriptions. It becomes clear while reading his site that he makes no exceptions, even for serious illnesses like cancer. Cancer, he claims, can be cured by diet, exercise, and being in the sun. What is even more frightening is that my friendly neighborhood oracle has revealed that all references to him online were positive and of a believing nature. It's high time to take this guy down.

The registration information for his health websites reveals the same email listed for registrant, admin, and tech contact though it is not his own name. This, in itself, is not so very unusual but is the sign of a small organization. What is slightly more disturbing is that it is out of Taiwan. The email contact domain was webseed.com.

When one goes to webseed.com they find that it is part of the network of Truth Publishing, who he is partnered with, and where one can purchase all of the books that he has authored and co-authored. A little more research reveals that Webseed is a software "tool for generating Web pages that improve search engine rankings and increase site traffic" (http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/48221) created by Mike Adams, who is the president of Arial Software. Ahh, that software company of his. It turns out that Arial Software is an industry leader in mass email marketing software.

Mike Adams, the self appointed Health Ranger, is responsible for software that creates bogus content for webpages to increase hits and email spam. It appears he doesn't care so much for what he is stuffing down the gullet of your computer.

He has generated a huge amount of content through his websites and books. His claim is that " As the information flow accelerated, I was writing articles, books and reports at blinding speed. It was all coming out too quickly to type, in fact, so I started recording all my articles and books, and using a team of transcriptionists to convert my audio recordings into text."

His software, Webseed, "is designed to work like a mail merge engine for Web documents, creating search-phrase-targeted Web pages that contain natural text instead of the repeated keywords generated by conventional meta-tag tools." and "lets the user create high-density pages containing chosen phrases."

It is my contention that Mike Adams decided to put his own software to good use, not only by creating a website, but by actually writing books that he make a profit off of. The software doesn't do the actual writing. He or his "team of transcriptionists" have, in fact, written every word there. But it would not surprise me to find a number of sentences and phrases repeated throughout his works, strung together by subject. Perhaps it is entire paragraphs. There is a great deal of content that this can't account for, but I believe it is the foundation of his network of health fraud.

I will admit this: I haven't read any of his books. I don't have the time for the free ones. Even if I did I don't trust downloading something from one of his sites. And I don't care to give him money to read the ones he charges for. If I did, I could find that they were all written by a human. Based on their summaries, this wouldn't make them any less full of deceitful fear mongering.

Is he a healthy guy? If those are pictures of him, he looks to be. (BTW, there is no way he could get that body or the stats he's claiming without a whole lot of exercise to go with that diet of his.) But I don't believe he believes the stuff he is selling. It's just a scheme to make more money selling content.

(Just want to apologize for the long pause in posting. We ended up going out of town quite unexpectedly, just as I was digging into this interesting tidbit.)

Do Religious Conservatives Really Oppose HPV vaccine?

2006-07-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

I was going to have something to say to the religious people who opposed the HPV vaccine. You see, I'm religious, and morally conservative. I strongly believe in abstinence until marriage. And I approve of the vaccine whole heartedly. There are a number of reasons why a young woman who is being abstinent could find a need for the vaccine: sexual abuse, rape, or marrying a husband who wasn't abstinent.

But then I looked for these adamantly opposed Christians. I found a lot of articles decrying religious conservatives for their objection to the vaccine, but no religious conservatives objecting to it. It seemed that everyone coming down on those who oppose the vaccine were merely circulating a very small handful of out of context quotes.

I went to the site of the Family Research Council. Nothing about it on the front page. Nothing about it on their bioethics page. So I searched on their site and came up with their official press release about the subject:

"The Family Research Council welcomes the news that vaccines are in development for preventing infection with certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease. We also welcome the recent reports of promising clinical trials for one such vaccine. Any medical advance in this area holds potential for helping to protect the health of millions of Americans and helping to preserve the lives of thousands of American women who currently die of cervical cancer each year as a result of HPV infection. Media reports suggesting that the Family Research Council opposes all development or distribution of such vaccines are false. "

Emphasis mine.

Even Focus on the Family says:

"Recognizing the worldwide detriment to individuals and families resulting from HPV, Focus on the Family supports and encourages the development of safe, effective and ethical vaccines against HPV, as well as other viruses. The use of these vaccines may prevent many cases of cervical cancer, thus saving the lives of millions of women across the globe. "

I do need to note that both of these organizations disapprove of mandatory vaccination.

But there are two serious problems with this kind of reporting, besides the fact that it clearly shows a bias that skews the reporting.

One: it serves only to further divide our nation.

Two: Christians could easily be taking a clue from mainstream media about what opinions their peers have. Do you think, as soon as they hear quotes that one of their groups opposes the vaccine, that they are going to run to the primary source to find out if that is true? It is the people least likely to think rationally about things that will simply acquire the opinion that HPV vaccines are evil because mainstream media and every blog out there said that their leaders opposed it.

So, as a result of this kind of reporting, there may be fewer girls who get the vaccine than if their doctor just said "Hey, we have this vaccine against HPV, here are some good reasons why you should vaccinate your daughter."

"But she is going to be abstinent."

"She's a good girl, I'm sure she will. But what if her future husband isn't? What if something happens? Wouldn't it be better if she were protected? And now is a good time, because she won't even have to think or worry about it should any of those circumstances occur."

But now there is this supposed controversy. Now the mother can reply "Well, I'm a Christian, and we don't do that."

Thanks, media.

A couple of thoughts on evolution

2006-07-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm here again, on the very same day. Cooling down after a great writing session, I came across a great post over at Feminist Mormon Housewives.

Evolution and Agency

It was an interesting process, reconciling my belief in God and in evolution. I could not ignore the facts - that the earth is billions of years old and that everything we've ever found in the fossil record is consistent with evolution. The "God made it look like that to test us" idea was absolutely preposterous. (And not something my parents ever taught me, BTW) We already have enough baggage without needing to believe in a God that lies just to make things harder for us.

What is fascenating to me is that this 'poof, there it is' idea of creation actually leads to a world that is smaller and less wondrous in scope than the idea of a universe vast in time as well as space. God is smaller to the YE creationist than to the theistic evolutionist.

Grand Rounds is cool and so is writing

2006-07-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

Grand Rounds is up at RangleMD's place. I really liked his idea of having a theme, and then pretty much sticking to it. It made GR a bit less bulky, and made me think. I think this is a very good way to keep blog carnivals from overgrowing their place in information garden.

Anyway, I'm not writing as much here (like I have much of an audience that cares) because I'm writing! I have lots of interesting things that pop in my head for this particular blog, and I'm listing them in a topic page, but I'm working hard on a story that I care about a lot. And while I say that, I want to thank the discussion about Quantum Quackary over at Unintelligent Design for sparking a solution to a problem in this story. And Phill and Sarabeth Gordon over at Tales from the Womb and I was once HP (I always read that as "I was once a computer... hehe) who asked me a couple of hard question about the story a some months ago that has helped me to really solidify some of my explanations as well as add a couple of extra doses of tension.

Three Ideas to Fix Medicine in the US

2006-07-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

RangelMD asked a question for Grand Rounds that I've been thinking about a lot, with having kids, with parents getting older, and self getting older.

First:

Paperwork: take a clue from PCs and other electronic media: have standards for interfaces that are the same, no matter what is going on behind the interface. Like, the same exact form to bill any insurance company. The same form for well, whatever you need forms for to communicate between hospitals, clinics, departments, whatever. Am I right that this is a problem in medical land?

Second:

I would like a lifetime medical record that follows us wherever we go. Lots of technology ways to go about this, but really – medicine needs to join the rest of us as far as technology information goes. Imagine seeing a patient for the first time but knowing before you meet them (because on their 'chart' are high priority "things you should know about this patient" always on the 'front page' for new encounters) that they have diabetes or having your patient's visit with a specialist available to you as soon as it's occurred?

And the grand finale:

It is unethical for money to be generated off of the suffering or fear of individuals without any involvement in the alleviation of that suffering. This means it's wrong for stockholders of insurance companies to gain dividends when profit goes up because insurance companies have either increased the costs of policies, denied claims, or decreased compensation, or any other way they weasel as much out of both patients and doctors as they can. Furthermore, it is unethical to reduce the income, either by reducing compensation or failing to increase compensation at the rate of inflation or incurred costs, of those directly involved in patient care in order to increase or maintain profit.

What I would like to see happen is that health insurance companies, HMOs, hospitals, etc be regulated to become non-profit organizations, with a different merit system set in place other than increasing profitability. I do not mind a well paid CEO, but I do mind their having stock and holding a direct interest in increasing the amount of money the company involved in health care makes rather than how good it is at meeting the needs of its customers and health care workers.

Bonuses could be given to the appropriate people for such things as reductions in the rate of medical errors or hospital acquired infections, or advances in research and increased rates of cure or better maintenance of chronic conditions. To insurance workers for prompt and appropriate management of cases and accounts, and satisfaction ratings from patients needing services.

Pediatric Grand Rounds

2006-07-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

Shinga from Breath Spa for Kids is hosting this week's Pediatric Grand Rounds. She did a really fantastic job in organizing it all. I'm heading there now to check things out.

Placebos Work!

2006-06-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

For the days and days since I've started this blog, I've wanted to put that headline up.

And now I have an excuse.

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060630_placebo.html

"People who take their medicine regularly, even if it's a placebo, have a lower risk of death than those who don't..."

It seems to be more than positive thinking, but also a tendancy to comply with their health care practicioner. They are more likely to take care of themselves better, apparently. The experts are also saying that the give and take of someone caring and someone being cared for may also influence it.

But we can't take this as an excuse to say "anything goes". Obviously, the fact that doing something is better than doing nothing is why control groups need bogus pills or treatments to really be equalized with their legitimately treated comrades. But understanding why placebos work is equally important, since this will help us improve treatments that are proven to provide benefit.

Every Kid a Scientist

2006-06-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

During an online discussion once many years ago, I mentioned that I thought that babies were natural scientists. One person slammed me for that remark, informing me that it was insulting to scientists who had had many years of education. There was no way a baby could be doing the same thing a scientist was doing. That attitude may stem from the competition that naturally arises among scientists, that leads to a sense of exclusivity of the title, but it is an unfortunate one.

Why can't we think of babies as little scientists? It doesn't matter if what they are discovering isn't exactly pushing forward the edge of knowledge. They are still employing the scientific method:

Observe
Hypothesize
Predict
Experiment

Then do it over and over and over again.

Certainly this isn't the only way that babies and young children learn, but it is a key method they utilize. I would say they use it a lot with speech, for instance. They do not know how the sounds of words are made, and must learn for themselves.

This natural way of learning can be thought of as the first steps towards scientific literacy and critical thinking? Can it be developed educationally in the same way that math and reading skills are developed?

I think early critical thinking may already be well integrated into early education. "What is wrong with this picture" types of games, sorting, pattern recognition, put the pictures in order – these are all activities which are the foundation of early critical thinking skills. But often these kinds of activities disappear once reading and arithmetic have been established. Such a curriculum could easily continue to be integrated with reading comprehension as well as science. I was surprised at how poorly my 5th grader's accelerated class understood finding, evaluating, and citing their sources when doing a report on a state. This is basic stuff. Why has it been neglected?

In high school, I think it would be appropriate to have a critical thinking skills course mandatory.

As a parent, I can do something, though. There are plenty of opportunities to help my growing children evaluate the world around them in a more rational manner. I try to ask my kids "Why?", and "How do you know that?" "How did you come to that conclusion?" I ask them this even if I agree with what they've said. We criticize commercials regularly not just for being stupid, but for manipulation and errors. We do the same thing with mail advertisements. We talk about how lab scientists, paleontologists and archeologists, and historians discover things and why or why not those discoveries can be thought of as reliable.

Certainly, I'm not as good as this as I'd like to be. What parent meets their own expectations? But I do try to think of my children as scientists, discovering their way through this world. I hope they never stop trying to discover.

A Little Bit of Coconut: the granola Speculates about Big Boobs

2006-06-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Since posting about Public Breastfeeding on my other blog, I've been thinking about why breasts are an object of sexual attraction, and why we have tissue that supports the mammary glands so that they are perky. They don't have to be to function, and usually aren't despite good support after pregnancy and breastfeeding. Besides, bras are a recent invention.

So is birth control.

Women of childbearing age used to spend most of their time either pregnant or nursing. I suspect breastfeeding, since it was far more exclusive and there was overall poorer nutrition, bestowed a much bigger interval between pregnancies than it does in modern women who nurse. I think it would be reasonable to say that except for a young woman who had never been pregnant, a woman of childbearing years who wasn't pregnant was nursing.

And her breasts were likely to be full at least during some points in the day.

So what if perkiness is meant to simulate full breasts, thus telling the prospective mate that here was a woman who provides plenty of milk for her offspring?

Large breasts, of course, aren't necessary for good milk production but they do signal being well fed as well also simulating the full breast of a nursing mother. Being well fed would be a good signal for having robust offspring who would not only benefit in utero, but also from her skill as a food gatherer.

So, two things: ability to produce milk (full breasts) or simulated ability (perky or large breasts) and ability to eat well (large breasts).

Bill Moyer's new series on PBS

2006-06-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

I don't watch TV much, so this is probably not news to some of you, but I found a cool series running on PBS: Bill Moyer's On Faith and Reason.

Colin McGinn said an interesting thing that I pretty much agree with. Criticism is not persecution.

Also, a plug for PBS - Content like this, and the science shows I loved growing up is one of the reasons PBS needs to stay alive. Discovery channel is good, but a lot of their programming is redundant and/or dumbed down or controversied up.

It's Hard to Change a Human's Mind

2006-06-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

Recently I found myself in a debate with homebirth advocates that reminded me why I gave up debating several issues in the first place. I realized that very few people ever debate in order to get to the truth, but in order to support their own position. They seemed to enjoy the debate, and it often seemed to me as if it reinforced their beliefs no matter what information was being put out there. This seemed to be true across the board: democrats or republicans, theists or atheists, evolutionists or creationists.

There is an article in Scientific American about an interesting study by Drew Westen (not published yet, but soon will be) on political bias where self described strong democrats or republicans were shown several statements by Kerry and Bush while undergoing an fMRI scan. Each candidate contradicted themselves. The subjects would come down hard on the candidate that did not represent their party, and let their party's man off the hook. It was the emotional and conflict resolving areas of the brain rather than the reasoning dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that were involved.

If the study proves valid, it only substantiates what we've known for a long time:

We are biased, and we prefer data which supports our bias to an amazing degree, sometimes. The study also showed reward centers being activated once the subject had processed the information and come to a conlusion that agreed with his political leanings. So we feel good when we conform to our own bias.

I speculate that the advantage of this would be to cement social bonds in order to cooperate more, insuring the survival of more members of the clan. It was a strategy that would work with limited information and a need to act. Conservatism (not the political kind, but the slow to change kind) would also protect from taking chances that are too risky. It looks like safe courses of action are rewarded in the brain and as well as in social circles.

It is a strategy that is turning out to be difficult in a more varied society, with so much more information out there that needs to be weighed carefully and less need to act for our own survival.

I especially liked the conclusion of the article: politics needs to be peer reviewed with skepticism being rewarded.

Anyway, remind me to tell the story of how I think I broke my own confirmation bias. One can never really be sure about those things, though, can they?

My Trip to the Chiropractor as a Teen

2006-06-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

When I was a teen I got teased. I'm sure it had at least something to do with my less than stellar social skills, but there were also two things that made me a target for a trip to the chiropractor as well.

My rear end was a little too much rearified (Okay, my butt stuck out), and I ran funny. My parents worried that these things might cause problems so they took me to the chiropractor. One had previously treated my mom for severe, recurrent migraines rather successfully.

At the office, I recieved several x-rays. The chiropractor determined that I had moderate scoliosis. He then informed my parents that scoliosis has a high likelyhood of getting worse over time. However, if I went there 3 times a week and then 2 times a week for six weeks, he could reduce the likelyhood of it getting worse to 20%. (Remember that number) All together, it would cost $2000 (in the 80s.)

Of course, my parents agreed to it. They really couldn't afford it, but what else was there to do? They couldn't let that scoliosis get worse and cause me pain and start squishing all my organs.

But what about what had caused us concern in the first place? Well, the treatments would take care of that too. But I still felt like he kind of brushed that problem aside, even though it was the main complaint.

While there, as well as undergoing adjustments to the neck and spine and a bunch of leg yanking, I also got ultrasound treatment on my neck. Oh, yeah... my neck didn't have a proper curve. I was never given any exercises to do.

Anyway, I endured six weeks of this. I rode my bike to the chiropractor and back three times a week. My lower back often hurt after the treatments. I don't remember if I reported this or not. I do remember thinking: this is supposed to help me - why are things worse? A friend of mine at the time, also with scoliosis diagnosed by her chiropractic uncle told me that he said to come in only if it bothered her, for a single adjustment.

About a year later, I was in the school library reading Discover magazine when I came across an article about scoliosis. 80% of diagnosed cases never worsened and were typically asymptomatic. Remember what the likely hood of me getting worse with treatments was? 20%. Yeah.

As for my big butt and funny running: those reported symptoms which the chiropractor brushed aside did end up causing me pain as I grew older. I have abs of steel now and wear shoes designed to correct overpronation during my runs.

There is an upshot to this story. It was the beginning of my skepticism regarding alternative medicine.

Old World Theories of Disease

2006-06-22T22:31:00.000-07:00

My mother in law, who recently immigrated from Moscow, berated us over the phone tonight for bringing my toddler child up and down the stairs. It made him hot and cold and that caused his pneumonia, which he has thankfully recovered from quite quickly.

While she lived with us over the winter and spring she constantly scolded us for not wearing shoes if we took one step outside. We would get very sick.

Also, we were to massage toddler child's earlobes daily. If we do that, it will make his immunity strong and he will never get sick. She talked a lot about immunity. Some of it made sense, like stress weakens it. But it seems to me from her descriptions that it was more of a psychic entity within her than the multitude of processes we understand it to be.

Another interesting activity I saw her engage in was dressing for the season. This sounds reasonable, except that in this case it was governed by the calendar. She would wear a thick coat and take toddler child out in his furred snowsuit when it was 50F outside before March 21. At 60F, his lighter coat was okay. After March 21, she rarely used the lighter coat at the same 50F temperatures, and herself just a sweater or nothing.

I had heard of this kind of strict calendar adherence, but had thought it was not practiced anymore.

Various other activities have demonstrated to me that she has a very poor idea of germ theory.

This extremely fastidious woman has wiped my child's face with the cloth she just used to wipe the floor. Now, I know it won't kill him. I'm the mom who let him play with a worm, and lets him play in the dirt while I garden. But it still bugged me. I've seen her wash out a toilet a child was sick in, with her bare hands and a rag in the water, with an illness that had already proven to be contagious. The toilet brush was inches away. Not suprisingly, she got sick 24 hours later. It was her poor immune system, from being stressed out, she told us.

Bleach is for making things beautifully white, she has purposefully demostrated to me with the cleaning products I purchased. But it apparently doesn't need to be used on the counter that just had raw chicken juice all over it. A swipe with the three day old sink rag will fix that problem.

Okay, I've vented a little bit. There are a lot of good things about this woman, but her supersitions have driven me slightly batty.

The milk and I both agree that his mother, who we talk to much more regulary now, won't be hearing a lot about our children's illnesses. There is not much she can do about them but worry much more than is necessary (thus depleting her immune system), talk about it incessantly with my brother in law (thus depleting his immune system), and berate us for some strange negligence that doesn't make any sense.

A Remedy for Homeopathy

2006-06-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I used a homeopathic remedy.

My oldest child was cutting her first teeth, and there in the baby aisle was something called teething tablets. I read the ingredients and it seemed like an herbal remedy. Cool. (That's a post for another time.)

They were little white tablets that I was to rub on baby's gums when she cried because of teething. I forget exactly how often, but I think I could use 1 or 2 every two hours.

And they worked!

When I learned what homeopathy really was, I wondered for a bit why those little tablets had worked. After all, babies don't have a concept of 'take a pill, heal an ill' so the placebo connection probably wouldn't be the answer.

The answer: the lack of herbs are in a lactose base. And sugars have been proven to cut down pain.

I imagine the effect doesn't last long, but long enough to distract a child while you draw their attention somewhere else - also a proven pain reducer.

The striking thing about the whole homeopathy problem is that these useless remedies are sold right next to ones that actually do what they say. In drug stores, even. This is authority enough for the very great majority of people. It was authority enough for me at the time, and I'm not a stupid cookie. I'm granola.

So how do we combat this kind of quackary?

Before people are ever consumers.

I strongly believe that critical thinking and scientific method should be taught in our schools from kindergarten on up. And I believe that the already standard health classes everyone has to take should include a chapter on how to detect quackary.

Teaching our kids to think for themselves and giving them the tools they need to detect scams is going to be one of the themes for this blog.

Fresh, Homemade Granola Now Available

2006-06-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

A recent exchange between the granola and the milk.

"Tell me something interesting," said the milk as he lay down in bed.

"Like what?" asked the granola.

"I don't know. I like to hear your voice, it helps me go to sleep."

"Oh, so I'm boring," replied the granola.

The milk couldn't find a way to back out of that one.

Fear and Ultrasounds at the Senior Center

2006-06-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

I got a letter the other day from Life Line Screening.

Apparently, I could just drop dead from stroke at any moment now, nevermind that I'm just 35 years old. A painless 10 minute screening will help me avoid this terrible occurance. Not only that, but doctors can't help me, because they usually can't order diagnostic tests without symptoms.

An alarm goes off, but not the one they hoped. You see, I've just had my annual checkup. I have no symptoms of cervical cancer or HPV, but I had a Pap smear done. I have no symptoms of high cholesterol, but because there is a personal and family history of it, I had my cholesterol checked. In fact, the whole physical was about checking me for diseases that I haven't reported any symptoms for!

Life Line Screening can give me three ultrasound tests in 10 minutes for only $135. But wait, add on an ultrasound Osteoporosis screening for $170. But wait! There is a special price package: all four for only $129! Come to the LocalTown Senior Center on Date.

So, if these tests are so inexpensive and would save so many from stroke, then why isn't it a standard screening test?

I ran to my trusty oracle and asked, "Ultrasound screening stroke"

This is the first thing it told me: http://www.nurseweek.com/features/99-1/stroke.html

The problems? The skill of the technician is questionable. Speed scans are a dubious way to pick up problems. There can be too many false negatives. And these tests are likely to lead to a visit with the doctor, scary results in hand. Doctor, of course, will be obligated to order more, expensive tests that will serve only to tell the patient that "yes, you are old and your arteries show it, but there isn't much we can do at this point but what we were already doing: regular checkups".

It's telling that one of the few professionals who thought these speed scans might not be bad had a different idea for venue: hospitals could offer them up for free and then profit from the additional tests any positives would generate.

"I shudder to think what would happen to me if I didn't have preventative health screenings. Pick up the phone now and call Life Line Screening...to make an appointment for you and your loved ones," says Olympic champion and breast cancer survivor, Peggy Fleming just before she closed the letter by wishing me the best of health. She was a figure skater who went to the Olympics in 1968, for those who don't know, like I didn't before I consulted the oracle again.

I wonder how much money she got from putting her name on this letter?