Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Food / Drink ... Health / Nutrition ... Science ...
Here’s another “interesting article” post from me. Yea, yea, I know, people usually do this sort of thing thru Twitter, and do it with a lot fewer words. Seems much more efficient, right? Well maybe, but I try to squeeze all the “juice” that I can out of an interesting article and share it with the world. And that wouldn’t go so well on Twitter. So, here’s another article post for you, this time from the October, 2015 Scientific American (gonna be about science, right?).
This one is called “The Fat Gene”. Sounds like it’s about the question of genetics and obesity — many people claim that obesity is driven largely by genetics and not all that much by eating and exercising habits. Thus, the fact that they are overweight is not their fault. There is some solid evidence for the existence of such “fat genes”, although it remains that for most people, being overweight is driven more by eating and exercise patterns — i.e., too many calories go in, and not enough go out. Although heredity may make it harder for some people than others to maintain a proper weight, in most cases, genes are not destiny with regard to weight.
But the article in question is not about that. Instead, the authors are searching for clues about how modern humans evolved from the great apes and early hominids. Many aspects of our past are written within our genes, and scientists are » continue reading …
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Brain / Mind ... Society ...
“Let me let you in on a little secret,” said [former Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice, a Stanford Graduate School of Business professor. “There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.”
This quote comes from a recent article about Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Bloomberg site. The article says some interesting things about Putin, but the grander implications of Rice’s quote have attracted my attention. That is, for the human race as a whole, tribalism trumps one-world mentality.
The question of whether humans are hopelessly tribal or are moving (however slowly) towards a “one humanity / one planet” mentality is an important one; it ultimately forms the foundation on which every nation, especially the most powerful ones, build their foreign policies. It sets the tone on how we act in getting along with other peoples from other nations. Can we proceed with ultimate trust, or do we need to forever stay on the defensive? The question applies not only at the international scale, but in our own lives today, as we increasingly interact with peoples and groups who have different customs and cultures than our own (whether they currently live within or without our national boarders).
Obviously then, the tribalism question has become a political one. Liberals say that tribalism is not destiny. Here’s a good quote from Rosabeth Moss Kanter in the Huffington Post:
Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people » continue reading …
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Food / Drink ... Personal Reflections ... Photo ...
For the past few years I’ve been trying to grow flowers on a little plot next to the parking lot in my landlord’s back yard. The soil is pretty bad back there, full of red clay and rocks. Morning glories and moonflowers have taken pretty well to it, but most other plants (other than weeds) don’t do well, or never get going in the first place.
This past spring I tried to start a number of different flower seeds back there, but only the nasturtiums took to it (I also had some sunflowers come up, but they hardly reached 3 feet and then keeled over after pushing out a few small flowers). During July and August, a handful of petite yellow and orange nasturtium blooms would sometimes greet me on my return home from work. But this summer was quite dry, and by early September only the green leaves and stems remained. And as it started to get colder over the past few weeks, even they made their resolution with the coming of winter. But a few plants decided to play die-hard, and yesterday one managed to rage against the dying of the warmth by popping out one last bloom.
So, enjoy this last little act of defiance against the inevitable from my backyard plot. If all goes well and I’m still here in the spring, I definitely plan to buy a variety of nasturtium seeds in different colors and shapes (and maybe I’ll give them a boost by laying down a bag of manure). For now, one last look, and then on with another winter. Oh, PS — I see that nasturtiums are actually edible, all but the seeds. They are related to watercress, and the flavor is supposed to be a cross between mustard and slight sweetness for the flower, and the leaves are peppery. Perhaps I’ll give that a try — next year.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Religion ... Zen ...
I haven’t gotten around to posting anything here lately, this is my first post in almost 2 weeks. What have I been doing with myself lately? Oh, cooking, cleaning, going to work, paying bills, and thinking about life and death. I mentioned in a previous blog that I had a “direct-to-consumer” DNA evaluation done a few years ago on 23andme.com, and along with the genealogy information, 23 also gave you an assessment of your genetically-related health risks. (Since then, the US FDA has stopped them from providing health reports — 23andme still offers genealogy tests). My own results on 23 seemed fairly benign — one or two things that might eventually become an issue, but nothing all that terrible.
Recently, however, I learned that you can access your digital DNA results from 23andme and upload them onto a site called Promethese.com, and for $5 they will give you a very detailed list of how your “SNP pairings” stack up against the SNPedia.com “wiki” database of health-related genetic studies. This seemed like a good idea to me, since my health reports from 23andme were based on a pool of gene studies that appears to have last been updated in 2011 (many months before I sent in my saliva, in mid-2013; incidentally, that was only about 6 months before the FDA shut 23’s health service down). A lot of new knowledge about genes and health must have come out since them. So, I got my results from Promethease (it takes only a few minutes, actually) and have spent a lot of time pouring over them in the past few weeks. Bottom line . . . in great detail, they paint a much darker picture of my susceptibility to a wide variety of diseases than 23andme did.
In comparing some of the Promethease / SNPedia results with the 23 reports, it turns out that 23andme wasn’t always considering the full range of DNA studies available up through 2011, and in some instances, it misinterpreted them!!! For one condition involving eyesight » continue reading …
Monday, October 12, 2015
Food / Drink ... Photo ...
Finally, a new pic! This is a Sunday afternoon scene at Brix City, a small microbrew factory and visitors center (complete with a rudimentary bar offering a choice of 8 different brews at $4 a glass; I had the porter, and it was very nicely done, lots of vanilla notes with some coffee and cocoa, lightly hopped with a firm, malty body). There’s also a wall you can write on, right behind the woman in the pic. You can find Brix on an industrial backstreet in Little Ferry, NJ (just north of Route 46). Worth a visit, if you like microbrewed beer.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Health / Nutrition ... Medicine ...
Like many, many other people, I come from a family with a history of Type 2 diabetes. One study estimates that about 30% of Americans have a family history of diabetes. My grandfather was diabetic, my mother was diagnosed in her elderly years, and her brother (my uncle) developed diabetes at age 50. I’ve reached 62 and so far I’m still OK (my recent physical included both a fasting glucose test and a hemoglobin A1C test, and both came back in the normal range — thank goodness!). But diabetes is something that I’ve been aware of most of my life (when I was a kid, my mother would sometimes make me test my urine for blood sugar with some kind of yellow strips — not a very accurate way to test for diabetes, but perhaps the best that was available to the common person back in 1965). My recent tests inspired me to do some further research on the topic. I thought that I’d share some observations here from my readings. [WITH THE USUAL CAVEAT — I AM NOT A DOCTOR OR MEDICAL EXPERT, JUST AN INTERESTED LAYPERSON WHO HAS DONE SOME RESEARCH]
First off, type 2 diabetes is not one simple, easily defined condition. There are a variety of “flavors” to it. Each version, though, involves the process by which glucose enters the bloodstream from the stomach and intestines after food ingestion, and by which glucose exits, either through conversion into ATP to fuel the muscles and organs which do the body’s work (i.e., cellular respiration); or by being pushed into the fat cells as a storehouse for future ATP conversion if needed (e.g. if there is a famine — something that was once very common for many humans, up thru the 18th Century). Insulin from the pancreas helps to kick start and regulate that process, allowing glucose to enter the cells of muscles and organs in the right amounts. When there is more than enough glucose to cover the current cellular respiration needs, insulin does the dirty work of pushing the excess glucose into the fat cells (i.e., making you fatter, at least temporarily), and signalling the liver to cut back on production. If the glucose stays in the blood for too long and reaches high concentrations, it can start gumming up the works in sensitive places like the heart, eyes and kidneys, causing damage.
Diabetes type 2 occurs when insulin and its regulation mechanisms aren’t doing the job properly; either too much glucose builds up in the blood, or too much glucose is pushed aside by it and there isn’t enough to support the level of cellular respiration needed » continue reading …
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Current Affairs ... History ... Politics ...
Another one of the “not entirely crazy” Republican leaders has bitten the dust. I’m talking about House Speaker John Boehner, who on Friday announced that he was giving up his Speakership position and resigning his seat as a Congressman from Ohio in about a month. Boehner is 65 years old (will be 66 in November), and was first elected to the House in 1990. He beat a Republican incumbent named Buz Lukens in a primary and then defeating the Democrat candidate by a 60-40 margin. (“Buz” . . . now there’s a real middle-American name! Although lunar astronaut Buzz Aldrin hails from the same part of metropolitan New Jersey where I am based. I can’t say that I know of any other Buz[z]’s from this neck of the woods.)
Since then, Boehner has maintained a safe seat, beating his Democratic alternative by margins close to 70-30 every two years. Boehner’s biggest nightmare of course is from within his own party. He could well face a strong primary challenge in 2016; the defeat of seven-term Republican Congressman Eric Cantor last year to a Tea Party primary candidate casts a dark shadow on Boehner’s prospects (recall that Cantor was the House Majority Leader). So, Boehner is getting out while the getting is good.
I never thought much of Boehner. He appeared to dead set on blocking President Obama at every turn, with no regard for the merits. Whenever Obama took action, you could depend on seeing or hearing Boehner on the news that night criticizing whatever was ordered (sometimes in an annoying, whiny fashion). And yet . . . all of that just wasn’t good enough for the “conservative base” of the GOP. They expected that Boehner would get the House » continue reading …
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Current Affairs ... Foreign Relations/World Affairs ...
I’m not feeling entirely optimistic about the Iran nuclear deal. Sure, there are a lot of good things to be said about it; avoiding a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East would be quite an accomplishment for civilization (the word “holocaust” itself has its ultimate origins in the ancient Middle-Eastern Hebrew language, i.e. “olah” meaning burnt offering). Still, I wish that Obama, Kerry and the Dems were totally honest about what the JCPOA agreement with Iran ultimately is: i.e., a huge bet that politics in Iran are going to fundamentally change over the next decade, such that the pro-western urban secularists will take charge as the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard fade into a genteel irrelevance, sort of like the British monarchy. Unfortunately, we’ve been waiting for an Iranian regime change to happen since the last days of Jimmy Carter.
My heart really hopes that Obama is right and that an opening to the urban secularists by the USA will finally put them over the top in Tehran. But my head and my knowledge of history, however limited, is a bit more cynical — it’s a big crap shoot, a real “Hail Mary” pass. I guess that we shall find out how it goes.
The JCPOA has a lot of very optimistic supporters in the liberal big media, not surprisingly. A typical supporter is Tom Friedman of the NY Times, who focuses on the Middle East. I must give Friedman credit for hinting in one of his recent articles that he too realizes that Iranian regime change is a necessary condition for the agreement to really work as the Obama Administration hopes. Friedman was in a bit of a whimsical mood » continue reading …
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Religion ... Society ...
A recent book written by an anthropologist says that as humans transitioned from small hunting and gathering tribes (up to around 15,000 years ago) to bigger and more organized societies (based at first around agriculture, and later also on crafts and trade), they needed to develop “big gods”. Big gods who always keep an eye on us were supposedly needed to inspire people to cooperate with the social and governmental networks that started to develop around the year 8000 BCE. Eventually, one really big “God” was imagined, and monotheism was in business. As was the growth of earthly empires. Other researchers have been pondering this idea, but argue that perhaps societies only needed mini-gods (e.g., magic or nature spirits, or personal superstitions) to keep societies growing. The monotheistic God of Islam and Judeo-Christianity arguably came about by some other process.
The overall idea here is that growing social networks with increasing centralized power (i.e. led by kings and pharaohs) invents god and religion so that it can foster voluntary cooperation among the masses, an internal mental policing to build and maintain trust. The king and his men can’t keep an eye on you all the time, so they rely on a popularly-imagined “big power in the sky” to make sure you stay in line, by threatening you with a cursed life here on earth, or eternal damnation in the next life, if you don’t play nice.
Hmmmm. Interesting idea, one very popular in today’s academic climate where evolution is believed to have the power to explain every social and personal behavioral pattern and belief. THE PROBLEM WITH THE THEORY: unless “big god / big religion” is simply a social meme that was cleverly invented and intentionally promoted by those trying to start big government structures (kingdoms, Pharaohs, etc.) — possible, but were the ancient rulers really all that smart? — it goes against the principle in evolutionary genetics that individuals are NOT selected for traits that cause them to sacrifice for the group (i.e., the disfavored theory of “group selection“). This idea is expressly rejected » continue reading …
Monday, September 7, 2015
Current Affairs ... Politics ...
OK, so it’s still “way too early” to think about the 2016 Presidential election and the state primaries that will select the main candidates. Nov. 8, 2016 is still 15 months away, and the first state primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa will happen in a little less than 5 months. So if you’re not a political junkie like me, ignore the rest of this post and get back to whatever else you were doing.
But if you do like national politics, then we need to talk about what happened on the GOP side over the summer. According to compilations of average polling data from Real Clear Politics, on May 27 (just after Memorial Day), Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul help the top 4 slots in the race, in that order. It looked like the GOP “Establishment” was well in control. Jeb Bush is considered the candidate with the strongest ties to the establishment, but Walker and Rubio are both seen as acceptable. Rand Paul is a little bit different, a bit more of an “insurgent” with his libertarian stance; but like the other three, Paul is nonetheless an experienced national politician (currently a US Senator from Kentucky). Ever since going to Washington, he has been known to compromise and dilute the strict libertarian stances that his father (Rep. Ron Paul from Texas) took. And anyway, Paul didn’t seem like a real threat; he had captivated a tranche of devoted followers sympathetic to his ideological leanings, but he wasn’t expected to generate a broad appeal across the Republican faithful. The Establishment seemed to have the situation well in control.
Now it’s Labor Day and the top four in the nationwide polls are Donald Trump (27.8%), Dr. Ben Carson (13.5%), Jeb Bush (9.3%) and Marco Rubio (6.8%), with Ted Cruz (6.5%) and Carly Fiorina (5.5%) not far behind Rubio. So out of the top 6, we have three people who have never held public office, and a first-term US Senator (Cruz) who previously held appointed government jobs in the state and federal governments (Rubio has one year more experience in the US Senate, but was an elected Florida legislator since 2000). In other words, the will of the potential primary voters seems to have shifted away from » continue reading …
