Brains, Veins, and Grains

Sccrrreeeeech!

2011-02-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

Still working on the post that I talked about in my last post.Yeah, it's not ready-so why am I here. Because I'm pissed off.

My target right now? The House of Representatives. You know, the people who took an oath to vote on behalf of their citizens, who voted them into office? Here's one of the things at the top of their to do list: defund Planned Parenthood. I mean, it's not like they have anything important to do. The economy is great, both wars in the Mid East our over, and everyone is getting multiple job offers! Yippee hooray! What? Reality is the opposite of all that? Oops.
So, just how much money does Planned Parenthood stand to lose? According to the NY Times, "$75 million"

Why is it that they (GOP) want to cut funding for an institute that delivers much needed health care, including PRENATAL, yet they didn't want to let the Bush era tax cuts end? How many Representatives are taking furlough days? How many would be willing to vote for a pay decrease for themselves? It's not like they need to worry about their own healthcare. Taxpayers get to pay for that.

I realized though, that while the GOP's talk about small government what they actually mean is a government that's small. Small enough to fit inside our uterus's. And for all their talk about free market and voting against government regulation, they sure are obsessed with PP.

Oh, and I hope the men reading this: realize that cutting funding for PP can directly affect you too. PP doesn't provide just birth control and abortions. They provide a whole range of sexual health services for men as well, including cancer screenings, ED treatments, and STD testing.

Now, what can we do? We can start by contacting our Senators, since the bill still needs to go through the Senate.
Find your senators here

We can also contact our Reps and let them know that this is not acceptable.
First, get your full zip code here.
Then go here to find your Rep.

Nothing will change if we don't stand up and make ourselves heard.

Here's the original bill language

My original source: ABC News

Gone Fishin'

2010-12-28T19:24:00.000-08:00

Not really. But I've been gone for a bit -family visit before the holidays, then the holidays, & now my laptop is out of commission. The apparently, poor ol' cpu has passed on. I'm currently getting a 2nd opinion, but I won't get it back for a few days. My sig. other has given me his laptop to use while he's at work, so that helps! Now let's see if I can put something together in the next few days.

ETA: I do have a pretty good idea for my next post, but it's going to require a bit of research before I get it all together. See you in a few days.

I scream, you scream, we all scream...at stupid commercials

2010-11-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

I saw a commercial recently, from Cheerios, that ended with the tagline "More cheerios. Less you." To that I say, no thanks. I don't need less me. I don't define "me" exclusively by my body. I am trying to get to a point where I can fully feel like I am my body, and my body is me, but I am more than that. I don’t think this kind of message is helping me get there.

I wonder if these kinds of advertisements create (or emphasize) a divide between mind and body. Although it's easy for me to say that I am my body/my body is me, it's not always easy to understand for me. This kind of disconnect has been on my mind much more lately, since I recently joined a roller derby team. This is the first team sport I've ever done (outside of gym class, which really doesn’t count, since it’s forced group participation). Until I started training, I hadn't really felt my body as me. I can recognize this, intellectually, but I find that my disconnect really affects my skating. When I let go and trust that my body/myself knows what to do, I skate that much better and I feel the connection more.

All that said, I find that I automatically connect with my body during more individual sports (kayaking, rock climbing). I think it’s because that requires less thinking in regard to other people. In a team sport, you really have to pay attention to everything you do, because your actions could take someone else out. Whereas, in individual sports, you can only hurt yourself; it sounds foolhardy, but I’m not terribly concerned about hurting myself. I would say my motto is probably “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” I think that should be the quote for my tombstone. I trust myself to act & react as needed to not kill myself. I don’t necessarily trust that I can keep other people safe from me. But I'm working on that.

Rant of the day

2010-10-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

I had to take a chemical and biological safety training class today for the lab where I'm volunteering. It was 5 hours. I was told it would be 4 hours. Anyway, that's not the rant (since it wasn't so bad). Today's rant is about people who wear their lab coats outside of a lab/medical office. It's something the biological safety officer remarked on, and something I've seen way too many times to count.
Seriously people, the air can be quite full of allergens at the very least, not to mention dust and dirt- it's really not a bright idea to contaminate your PPE. You're going to contaminate whatever or whoever you are working with when you go back inside, whether it be patients (I'm looking at you, clinicians), animals (whose immune systems may not be prepared for the local environment), tissues, etc.
If you really want to be a good doctor/researcher/whatever, one step is to leave your lab coat at your desk. And if you have one just for wearing outside, you should really think about why you need other people to recognize your special coat.

File under brains?

2010-10-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Today I went to watch the Mr. give a lecture about brain evolution, and why he studies birds. I sat in the back of the room, and directly in front of me was a woman (early/mid 20s, I would guess) with her infant daughter. Although I generally don't appreciate children in college classes, this particular lecture was part of a series that is open to the general public, so I thought nothing of it. The baby babbled some, but did not pose a real distraction for me. Apparently, other people did not have the same experience. Eventually, a faculty member came up to the back of the room, sat next to the mother and whispered "It's being distracting." Although I more often than not refer to children as "it" rather than by gender, it seemed a bit rude, considering that she was already implying that the woman should leave.
The main thing that bothered me was what the whole situation implied. We expect women who get pregnant to continue the pregnancy. Women who proclaim to be childfree by choice are regularly told that they'll regret not having children; they are told they're being selfish; they are asked how they could deny their husbands; they are told that when they do get pregnant, they'll change their minds. We expect women to want children. We expect women to be overjoyed upon becoming pregnant. There is an entire store in my town dedicated solely to baby supplies. On the flip side, we don't talk about Abortion in anything but the abstract. We don't talk about abortion as a procedure that we or someone we love has had. We expect women who have abortions to feel guilt and remorse. We talk with condescending tones about women who "use abortion as birth control." By the way, who are these women? I've never met one. They must be rolling in dough with lots of free time, because abortions are neither cheap, nor are they easy to obtain in many areas. When we do talk about abortion, it's in reference to women who are victims (of rape, incest, health, socioeconomic standing, etc), and not as something that a woman simply chooses to do in order to end an unwanted pregnancy. That's not to say that all women made a difficult or easy choice, only that women make the decision to abort for a variety of reasons, and not all women regret making that choice.

And yet, when a woman does make the choice to continue a pregnancy and keep the baby (because lets' face it, adoption is not really a viable, socially appropriate choice for an adult woman to make; after all, women are supposed to want babies, to give up your child implies that you don't, which implies other characteristics, but I digress), we don't have enough options to help the woman and her child. For all anyone knows, this young woman was a single mother with relatively limited means, who's babysitter got sick. Or she may have a significant other who was not able to care for the child today, and there was no one else she could trust. I don't know her circumstances. All I do know is that this woman was trying to obtain an educational experience and was effectively denied, because her daughter babbled (rather quietly, I may add). How can anyone expect cycles to break if we don't offer some form of support for women without the option of a nanny? It's easy to say that she should have just stayed home, but where does that leave us? That woman should not have had to choose between caring for her child (today) and caring for her and her child's future by improving her education. What this situation really highlights is just that: everyday there are people who have to make the decision to better themselves or provide for care today. And that's just not right. We are all supposed to have equal access to education, but we are effectively denying a large portion of the population. Because they did what society deems "right," they also have to give up something extremely important. And how, in this day and age, can a parent truly care for their child without having the means to improve their own socioeconomic situation?

I don't know how to fix this. Obviously, tolerance and understanding part of the solution. The lecture was only an hour, including the question and answer portion (during which people left, which was far more distracting than the child was). While I generally abhor people who chat during classes or lectures, or text for that matter, this was a baby who was not aware of social etiquette. A little patience would have gone a long way. Should schools or other public venues be required to provide childcare, when hosting a public event? I don't know, though if I were a parent I don't think I would trust some stranger to watch my child. I do think that as long as childcare remains not only "woman's work," but also the work of one woman, there will be no easy solution. More community support may be another part of the answer. Either way, I don't think we can move forward in the world, or rather how the rest of the world views us, if we continue to follow the idea that everyone has to help themselves alone. We are a social creature, no one can support themselves in a vacuum.

This, of course, does not speak to the inequalities that many other people suffer, but it is a problem. To compare how much worse or better someone has it is not my point for this post. People are regularly denied education, health care, housing, food, etc. My point for this post has been to highlight this one situation. I plan to discuss other social issues as they come up on my radar, which is quite frequent. I planned to have a separate blog for my take on social and political issues, but since they are as much a part of my life as my other topics, it only makes sense to bring them here.

Is it Fall?

2010-10-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is the earliest season change that I can remember. I lived in North Carolina for a year, but I don't recall when Fall started. Being from Florida, I'm cynical about seasons. It may feel like it's becoming Fall/Winter for a few days, and then it gets all hot again. Also, Halloween is pretty much always the first cool night of the year (my birthday is the week before, & I really love Halloween, so I tend to notice this).
As it is, it's quite cold overnight and into the morning (it was 43 F this morning) and we've found that the house we're in really holds the cold. So much so that while I'm wearing a hoodie or snuggie (yes, I said snuggie) until around noon inside, but don't really need it outside after around 9am. I finally turned on the heat today, to thaw out the kitties. It works and the kitties were able to come out of their blanket caves. Which is awesome, except now they're all sleeping on the assorted blankets and snuggie while my feet are freezing and all I've got is a hoodie. Thanks, kitties.
Exhibit A:

Snuggie thief

Our radishes are looking really good. The spinach is doing well too, they're just sprouting slower. The daisies have been the slowest yet. Silly flowers, get to growing! I should really take a picture of the plants soon.

I had big plans for today (take pictures of the garden, bake some cookies, READ) since I stayed home sick. Those plans did not happen, but I was sick! And I've got something going on with my sinuses, so my head is a bit fuzzy. I did take my books back to the library, so I didn't completely waste the day. And it's still relatively early, who knows what crazy productivity may happen yet! Maybe I'll get something for my sinuses.

Another day, a new garden

2010-09-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post. Sorry about that. Guess I should start with updates.

The the first attempt at container gardening failed. The cabbage loopers won the broccoli, the kale, and the pepper. But we've started over, with seeds as I mentioned before. So far it's just radishes and spinach, plus some daisies, but it's something. The worst thing about working outside right now is all the mosquitoes. I don't know where they're coming from, since we haven't had rain in over a week, and it wasn't a long rain. I think they might have been breeding in the containers of the garden- they'd have access to the water at the bottom via the pipe you use to fill the bottom or the drain hole on the side. If so, we've got the drain hole covered now, and I'm going to use a rubber band and plastic wrap to take care of the pipe.

The other night I made a second attempt at cooking dried beans. I put 2 cups of kidney beans into the crock pot and set it low to cook overnight. About 5 hours into cooking, the steam made the lid slide and jiggle and woke up the mister. He woke me up and I was all "It's just the rain." Apparently, the sound of the top jiggling on the ceramic led me to dream about rain hitting a tin roof. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have sounds invade their dreams. Anyway, I used most of the beans in a mix with ground beef for tacos last night (tip- baby spinach leaves instead of iceberg lettuce=better tacos, imho), and plan to make a bit more to finish off the rest of the beans in a chili Saturday. Tonight, though, I've decided to roast a whole (free-range) chicken, along with carrots, parsnips, and potatoes. I should probably get started with that pretty soon. I generally don't use a recipe for this, just a generalized version from the recipes I've read. Chicken gets covered (including the cavity) with butter, pepper, and kosher salt. Fill the cavity with garlic. Throw in the oven. I cut up the vegetables and toss them in a bowl with olive oil, parsley, paprika, a little chili powder, and black pepper. If you want something more precise, here's a recipe from Martha "Potatoes that Taste Better than the Chicken". Jaime Oliver also has a good roast chicken recipe.

On a personal note, I've joined the local roller derby team. I had my first practice earlier this week and my legs are finally not so sore. I also got my first bruises, from learning controlled falls. I probably drop my knee a little too hard. Although the team lets the fresh meat borrow gear for the first month, I went ahead and bought my own pads and helmet (both are from Triple Eight) last night. I'm just learning how to do crossovers, so I figured I should just buy the gear now so I can get used to it instead of switching out in a few weeks. I still need to get skates, but I want to try out a few different types first. I've got another endurance training session this week; I'll let you know how my protective gear works out.

Update for today

2010-09-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on making a cantaloupe granita soon, from this recipe. It occurred to me, last time I was eating cantaloupe, that it's got a great texture for a sorbet. But then I found the granita recipe. I'll probably end up trying both, since it's so hot here and I've got the time.
Along the lines of new recipes, tonight I made Spaghettini with lemon zest & chives (except I used linguine) and paired it with sautéed portabella mushrooms and Swiss chard in a balsamic sauce. I thought there was too much butter in the pasta, but other than that it was good.
I won't be getting any broccoli from the garden from my first plantings. We got invaded by cabbage looper caterpillars.

We're still trying to keep them going, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. It's still pretty early in the season (given our region), so I think we'll be able to try again. From seeds though. I should go ahead set up to sprout some seeds.

Good news. For now, at least.

2010-09-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

I just learned this on twitter (thanks to a retweet by @sciam). Stem cell research funding ban suspended This is hugely important! Under the ban (that was just suspended), funds were pulled from researchers using any embryonic stem cells, including the original embryonic stem cell lines that were given the "okay" under Bush. Many scientists, particularly younger scientist working towards tenure, had to scramble after the injunction was served. Although NIH did not take back any funding, grants were completely taken out of the review process. No funding=no jobs. While a new professor may be safe for awhile (safe being relative, they still need to worry about getting published), the grad students and lab techs that depend on NIH funding not only for their research but also their paychecks were going to be out of luck. Sure, grad students can apply for loans, but is that really the best option? Rather than allow the morals of the few affect the direction of science, we should consider the greater good. Advancing our scientific knowledge base is, and always has been, incredibly important. And it's not as if there are no regulations in science. That's just not true. Universities have an Internal Review Board (at least, for human research; there's a different board for animal research) that research proposals must go through before you can even start your research, in order to make sure the research will proceed as ethically as possible.

I think it's clear by this post that I support stem cell research, even from embryonic cells. But- embryonic stem cells have their problems, aside from the ethical debate. The first (and clearest, in my opinion) issue with embryonic stem cells is the fact that they come from a source outside of the receiving patient. Although I assume most people understand the ramifications of that, I'll say it anyway: any transplant from a separate donor requires some form of immune suppression in the receiver. And, of course, immune suppression can lead to a host of other problems. This issue can be overcome, but not easily. Mechanisms of Disease: Nuclear Transplantation, Embryonic Stem Cells, and the Potential for Cell Therapy

Another problem with embryonic stem cells is the formation of tumors. Tumourigenesis, 2010 discusses tumors that develop from embryonic stem cells AND a way to prevent them.

Hopefully those links will work for you (I'm able to get them via my University library login). If not, let me know & I'll see what I can do.

Frontiering

2010-09-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Today's efforts at living both more sustainably and self-sufficiently came in the form of banana bread (to save the too mushy bananas from the garbage), cheddar biscuits (recipe from the Barefoot Contessa), and slow-cooked chili. All of which are pretty tasty, though my biscuits were not as fluffy as I think they should have been (due to my over-kneading, not the recipe). Now that dinner is done, and as soon as I'm done with this post, I'll be heading out to water the container garden and turn the compost. Then I'll be making dried banana chips. A pioneer lady's work is never done.

Welcome!

2010-09-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Hello from my laptop. Hopefully you'll find this blog useful/informative/entertaining/whatever as I move forward in this endeavor. My goal, though self-centered as it may sound, is to contribute something to my environment (globally), and I plan to do my best. Let's see how it goes!