Food safety in China

Some tidbits:

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim. [NYTimes]

Ew.

Product Review: Olive Juice

On the theory that people prefer video:

What's wrong with walls?

Why are people against Israel's building a wall between Israelis and Palestinians to keep terrorists out? Why are people in Iraq upset at efforts to build a wall between Sunni and Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad to reduce sectarian violence? Why are people against building a wall on the border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants? What do people have against walls?

[These are not rhetorical questions. I want you to post comments explaining the problem to me.]

Racist

Would you be friends with a racist? Would it make a difference if they made racist comments about your race/religion/ethnic group, and made them at you?

People like Mel Gibson, Don Imus, and Michael Richards (Kramer) were in the doghouse, even though they apologized. I'm talking about someone who is unapologetic.

Beautiful Day

Wow, it's sooo beautiful out! Well, a little hot, but ok in the shade. Summer is here, and I'm sitting in Bryant Park, by the big fountain, New York grandeur rising all about me, surrounded by the city's typical variegated tapestry of people adorned with the tremolo of bird chatter, eating a delicious salad--it's a New York thing too, here yummy salads are a staple sold everywhere. It's soooo great here! In fact, so great that it's hard to work ;)

New York makes me so happy.

For those who have to know something about my recent family drama, here's the very short version, so you won't lose interest. Barry, who owes me money for years but refuses to pay, accused me of stealing his son's Xbox, filed a police report, and then found the Xbox, all while I was in Virginia. He did not tell the police that he found it, and later the police came to my mother's house looking for me in the middle of the night, waking her and freaking her out. Moral of the story: Barry, as everyone already knows, is still a horrible person.

Jericho is sexist

"A 2006 study by University of California found that one-quarter of its students arrived on campus already taking anti-depressants, lithium or other psychoactive drugs." [OC Register] What the hell is wrong?! This is crazy (no pun intended).

My roommate is mean.

For so long I have struggled with the evil siren or television, wanting to get rid of the thing but unable to because of my one show, Lost. So things were so perfect when Lost was available online, I could finally chuck the telly. That wonderful springtime was short-lived, as now most shows are available online, making it not only as bad as TV, but worse, because I can't chuck the internet. And because I can watch the shows whenever I want, so it's never that there's nothing on. It's bad. Shows like Brothers and Sisters, Identity, 30 Rock, and other missable series have seeped into my repertoire. It is a bad turn of events.

Among them, I've been watching the TV show Jericho, which started strong but now is mostly "not bad". That is, it's still pretty well-done, but doesn't have much of a story beyond the meandering random problems that pop up very soap-opera-like. What's remarkable, though, is that it is the most sexist show I can think of. It's like out of a different era, where the men are all tough and strong-minded leader-types who go out and be heroes and protect the town and shoot guns and punch people and stuff, and the women are all about mothering and cooking and stuff. Men are always ordering people, women never do (except sometimes ordering their husbands to be safe or to do some relationship thing). It's like the 1950s.

NYC!

I’m headed back to New York in minutes! Woohoo!

Product Review: Luna Sunrise

Review summary: Yum!

I used to eat Luna bars like Chinese eat rice. It was a rare day that passed without a delicious-and-nutritious Luna sensation. And it didn't bother me that some idiots wondered if maybe it had estrogen or something in it because the wrapping had pictures of women. What is wrong with people?

Sadly, they changed the formula to low-sugar, and there went the taste. After settling for Clif bars for a bit, I ended up happy with Builder's Bars. (I wonder if any women avoided eating that for fear of testosterone poisoning?) But there's a new sheriff in town: Luna Sunrise.

They are delicious. Yogurt-flavored rather than chocolatey, they really have nothing especially in common with traditional Luna bars except that they, too, are marketed to women. Light and soft in contrast to Builder's Bars' dense caramel-chocolate brick, they are very sweet and easy to scarf down. I tried two flavors, and I preferred blueberry to vanilla-almond, but they were both good in their way.

I recommend them. Go out and get one today.

Egypt

One of my coworkers’ father is from Egypt. He’s a Muslim, but married a Catholic and my coworker was raised Catholic. Her father can’t go back to Egypt, because as a Muslim, that is illegal. Damn!

Reminds me a little of the Bahá'í in Egypt who wanted to say he was Bahá'í, or at least “other,” on his identity card, but was told he had to choose Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.

And Egypt is probably the most moderate Muslim country in the Middle East!

Big guns

Forgive me, I'm still in Virginia and it's hard to post from here. So, here's a factoid to tide you over:

The US spends about as much on its military as all the rest of the world put together. (China comes in second.) That's about $1000 per American. (Israel beats us per-capita, spending about $1400 per Israeli.)

Racist Women

The other day I blogged a study which showed exactly how much women value height in a man. What about race? A study used speed-dating to see exactly how much different people cared about a potential partner's race. And it turned out, interestingly enough, that race did not make much difference to men, but women markedly preferred a man of the same race--except for Asian women, where the preference was only slight. Black women had the same-sex preference much more strongly than any other race. And while women choose most other races (white, black, Hispanic) at a 20-30% lower rate than they chose men of their own race, they chose Asian men at a whopping 65% lower rate. Poor Asian men.

Height and Money

Analyzing women’s choices in online dating allows for a scientific appraisal of how much they value various factors. The results are interesting.

We know that women prefer more height and more income in a man. But how much? For a 5’10” man to be as successful at dating as a 6’0” man, he would have to make $32,000 more. So, I’m barely edging out those six-foot-tall homeless guys. But a 5’6” man would need to make $183,000 more than a 6-footer to match him! A 5’4” man would need to make $183,00 more, and a 5’0” man would need $325,000 more! Those inches are worth a lot.

They looked at attractiveness too, which is an interesting comparison to height, by having an independent group rate people’s looks 1-to-10. An average guy (a “5”) could compete with a “10” if he makes $143,000 more. A lowly “1” would need to make $186,000 more to compete with a “10”.

Nice, nice, very nice

Kurt Vonnegut is dead! So it goes...

The wonderful world of psychopharmacology

With the proliferation of psychopharmacology, things like Prozac and Ritalin, it’s possible to see the scary direction this is going. At first it sounds plausible to treat psychological disorders with medicine, just as we do any other medical condition. However, the problem with psychology is that mental illness is not an infection. It is a matter of opinion, a judgment call about what is “normal” and what isn’t. These judgments change with time and social ideas. For example, homosexuality was once considered a mental disorder by the psychological community. Now it isn’t. What changed? Not an iota of actual data. Just society’s ideas of what should be considered “normal.”

As a result, there is no way to say that psychopharmacology is really treating an illness, and the inevitable result is accusations of overprescribing these drugs. Are all the people on Prozac really disturbed individuals, or are many of them depressed in a sense that is a normal part of the human condition? Are all these kids on Ritalin really bonkers, or are some of them normal rambunctious kids being drugged so for their parents’ convenience? You’ve probably heard of this debate, so I won’t get into it. But the debate is just the tip of an iceberg.

The iceberg is: so what if these drugs are overprescribed? Is there anything wrong with drugging normal kids to make them more compliant, or drugging yourself to make you less emotional when life gives you a bad turn? If we found a medicine that could change sexual orientation, do we have a good reason for telling a gay person not to take it? Realize that it doesn’t stop there. We will soon have medicines to control almost every aspect of our minds. We will have pills that help us concentrate better when we’re working, pills to keep us working hard when frustrated with our job, pills to cheer our spirits when we’re in a funk, pills to make us outgoing when we’re shy, pills to let us just chill when we’re furious, pills to increase our libido when our spouse complains, pills to give us confidence when we’re nervous, pills to give us more will power when we’re lazy or dieting or whatever... it goes on and on. It’s not so alien, really. It’s become standard for people to caffeinate themselves so they can work harder, and drink alcohol to be more social. As psychopharmacology becomes more and more fine-tuned, there’s no reason we can’t have drugs that give us any personality we want, any mood we want, and increase our intelligence, focus, stamina, and mental abilities of all kinds.

As I struggle for weeks now on an incredibly important project which I hate doing and have had a hell of a time concentrating, a magic pill to help me suddenly seems mighty inviting. Perhaps when technology is developed enough, the good really will outweigh any negatives we can think up.

Of course, I have ignored the unintended social side effects. The richer you are, the more you’ll be able to afford these enhancements, creating a serious social division in which richer people really are better. People who do not want to take the drugs will feel enormous pressure to do so, because they will not be able to compete at work or socially with those that do. Various good aspects of our nature may be medicated away because they aren’t socially popular. Still, think of the advantages to addressing all the psychological blocks, issues, anxieties, personality flaws we all have...

What do you think?

Easter date

I have often wondered about the relationship between Passover and Easter. Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus three days after his crucifixion, which took place the day after Passover ("the last supper"). So it makes sense that the dates of each should be related. However, Jewish holiday go by the Jewish, lunar calendar. It turns out, so does Easter.

In ancient times, this was literally true, and Easter was celebrated on the 14th of Nisan, which could be any day of the week, but the Romans pushed it to Sunday of that week, and in time the church came up with its own lunar calculation that doesn't reference the Jewish one. Easter is on the first Sunday after the first (ecclesiastical) full moon after the (ecclesiastical) vernal equinox. I have to stick "ecclesiastical" in there because the church tables don't quite match up with astronomy. (They set the full moon 14 days after the new moon, and set the vernal equinox to March 21.) So, it's not exactly the same as the Jewish way, but pretty closely related.

The orthodox churches are a little different. They still use the old Julian calendar instead of the modern Gregorian one, and they use the actual full moon instead of the ecclesiastical one, so they're often a week different. Still, it's mildly interesting to see the Jewish calendar in the Christian holiday.

Check back

Kind readers, I have been visiting my family and offline. And tomorrow morning, I go to Norfolk for a while. My life is on hold, but check back, surely exciting things lie in wait on this blog.

Happy Passover

The other day, I visited a friend and we went to DC, where we saw people flying hundreds of kites around the Washington Monument, and saw the famous cherry blossoms.

You might want to check out Google's new TiSP service. It's free! Isn't Google cool?

I'm visiting my family for Passover. Happy Passover! These are my two predictions for the seder this year (this will probably mean nothing to my non-Jewish readers):

Cell phones take over the world

Coming to America (from the New York Times)...

In Japan, McDonald’s customers can already point their cellphones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and board airplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets. And film promoters can send their movie trailers from billboards.

In Japan, some highway billboards have codes large enough for passing motorists to read them with their phones. Hospitals put them on prescriptions, allowing pharmacies to instantly scan the medical information rather than read it. Supermarkets stick them on meat and egg packaging to give expiration dates and even the names of the farmers who produced them.