Thursday, May 19, 2011
Looking for Love in All the Right Places
In the run-up to the 2012 election, Republicans are behaving like, well, Democrats. Blind to the road-tested charms of Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, the G.O.P. base is lusting for an upstart savior—the likes of Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, or the tantalizingly elusive Ms. Palin.
by James Wolcott
‘Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line” has been an article of political faith and a staple of punditry since the notion was popularized by Bill Clinton, who barbecued Kennedy charisma into a hunka hunka burnin’ love. Like so many political truisms, the conceit that Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus has a slick, pop-psych plausibility. Republicans: steely, rational, paternalistic, respectful of authority, easy to herd, the party of No. Democrats: sugary, emotional, idealistic, yearning for novelty, hard to marshal, the party of Oh Yeah, Baby, Make Mama Feel Good. In 2008, Barack Obama did get Democrats hyperventilating, whipped up to a creamy froth, while John McCain creaked ahead like a cranky granddad whom Republicans let move to the front of the buffet line, deferring to seniority, as they had in 1996, when Bob Dole turtled to the top of the ticket. But this may have been the last hurrah for the Republican’s hierarchal heirdom. In the Tea Party era, it is the restless conservative Republican who has become passion’s plaything, the toy of impetuous romance, an erotomania only intensified by the lusting for an upstart savior. (No elected Democrat gets his or her fans as Justin Bieber-frenzied as that Republican derringer Ron Paul, whose son Rand, freshman senator from Kentucky, has become the new curly darling.) Republicans grudgingly fell into line behind McCain not because subservience is downloaded into their lockstep brains, but because their hearts’ desires pulled up lame, scratched themselves from the race.
It’s difficult now to recall the improbable excitement that Fred Thompson aroused when he pawed the earth and parked a kingpin cigar in his mouth, indicating his inclination to run. He got off to a slow start that led to an even slower finish, though for a few tantalizing moments he showed signs of animation. At the conservative National Review Online’s group blog, The Corner, Peter Robinson, the author of a book about Ronald Reagan (every contributor to National Review Online has authored a book on Reagan), heard tell that Thompson was starting to tear up the turf in a key southern primary:
Earlier today I talked with an old friend who’s close to the Thompson campaign. At every Thompson campaign stop in South Carolina, he told me, there is something new: real excitement The state troopers are showing that special deference and respect they reserve for candidates whom they actually suspect will soon become the commander in chief. And Thompson himself is pointed, energetic, combative. In other words, the campaign feels as though its achieving liftoff.
An optical illusion fueled by wishful thinking, it turned out. It wasn’t the first stage of liftoff but the final stage of poop-out. Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, didn’t even enjoy that brief tingle of false hope. In 2007 he had been trouncing his rivals in the polls of likely candidates. He looked so good on paper, so forceful, so dynamic, so command-ready, but when he delivered himself in person, it was as if the wrong date had shown up at the door. The door closed before he could retract his scary grin. Mitt Romney—he had a Rock Hudson thing going, shoeblack hair and a well-hung résumé, but even for a shameless, position-shifting phony he seemed a trifle insincere. It wasn’t until McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate that the flaming desire of the far right found its Red Queen. But as of this writing, Palin is undeclared, leaving all that love with nowhere and everywhere to go.
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by James Wolcott ‘Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line” has been an article of political faith and a staple of punditry since the notion was popularized by Bill Clinton, who barbecued Kennedy charisma into a hunka hunka burnin’ love. Like so many political truisms, the conceit that Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus has a slick, pop-psych plausibility. Republicans: steely, rational, paternalistic, respectful of authority, easy to herd, the party of No. Democrats: sugary, emotional, idealistic, yearning for novelty, hard to marshal, the party of Oh Yeah, Baby, Make Mama Feel Good. In 2008, Barack Obama did get Democrats hyperventilating, whipped up to a creamy froth, while John McCain creaked ahead like a cranky granddad whom Republicans let move to the front of the buffet line, deferring to seniority, as they had in 1996, when Bob Dole turtled to the top of the ticket. But this may have been the last hurrah for the Republican’s hierarchal heirdom. In the Tea Party era, it is the restless conservative Republican who has become passion’s plaything, the toy of impetuous romance, an erotomania only intensified by the lusting for an upstart savior. (No elected Democrat gets his or her fans as Justin Bieber-frenzied as that Republican derringer Ron Paul, whose son Rand, freshman senator from Kentucky, has become the new curly darling.) Republicans grudgingly fell into line behind McCain not because subservience is downloaded into their lockstep brains, but because their hearts’ desires pulled up lame, scratched themselves from the race.
It’s difficult now to recall the improbable excitement that Fred Thompson aroused when he pawed the earth and parked a kingpin cigar in his mouth, indicating his inclination to run. He got off to a slow start that led to an even slower finish, though for a few tantalizing moments he showed signs of animation. At the conservative National Review Online’s group blog, The Corner, Peter Robinson, the author of a book about Ronald Reagan (every contributor to National Review Online has authored a book on Reagan), heard tell that Thompson was starting to tear up the turf in a key southern primary:
Earlier today I talked with an old friend who’s close to the Thompson campaign. At every Thompson campaign stop in South Carolina, he told me, there is something new: real excitement The state troopers are showing that special deference and respect they reserve for candidates whom they actually suspect will soon become the commander in chief. And Thompson himself is pointed, energetic, combative. In other words, the campaign feels as though its achieving liftoff.
An optical illusion fueled by wishful thinking, it turned out. It wasn’t the first stage of liftoff but the final stage of poop-out. Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, didn’t even enjoy that brief tingle of false hope. In 2007 he had been trouncing his rivals in the polls of likely candidates. He looked so good on paper, so forceful, so dynamic, so command-ready, but when he delivered himself in person, it was as if the wrong date had shown up at the door. The door closed before he could retract his scary grin. Mitt Romney—he had a Rock Hudson thing going, shoeblack hair and a well-hung résumé, but even for a shameless, position-shifting phony he seemed a trifle insincere. It wasn’t until McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate that the flaming desire of the far right found its Red Queen. But as of this writing, Palin is undeclared, leaving all that love with nowhere and everywhere to go.
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DCA
by Natalie WolchoverOn April 12, 1955, the first successful polio vaccine was administered to almost 2 million schoolchildren around the country. Its discoverer, University of Pittsburgh medical researcher Jonas Salk, was interviewed on CBS Radio that evening.
"Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" radio host Edward R. Murrow asked him.
It was a reasonable question, considering that immunity to a deadly disease that afflicted 300,000 Americans annually ought to be worth something.
"Well, the people, I would say," Salk famously replied. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
In a world where the cancer drug Avastin — patented by the pharmaceutical company Genentech/Roche — costs patients about $80,000 per year without having been proven to extend lives, Salk's selflessness has made him the hero of many medical researchers today.
One of Salk's admirers is Evangelos Michelakis, a cancer researcher at the University of Alberta who, three years ago, discovered that a common, nontoxic chemical known as DCA, short for dichloroacetate, seems to inhibit the growth of cancerous tumors in mice. Michelakis' initial findings garnered much fanfare at the time and have recirculated on the Web again this week, in large part because of a blog post ("Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice") that ignited fresh debate with people wondering if it was true.
The mechanism by which DCA works in mice is remarkably simple: It killed most types of cancer cells by disrupting the way they metabolize sugar, causing them to self-destruct without adversely affecting normal tissues.
Following the animal trials, Michelakis and his colleagues did tests of DCA on human cancer cells in a Petri dish, then conducted human clinical trials using $1.5 million in privately raised funds. His encouraging results — DCA treatment appeared to extend the lives of four of the five study participants — were published last year in Science Translational Medicine.
The preliminary work in rodents, cell cultures, and small trials on humans points to DCA as being a powerful cancer treatment. That doesn't mean it's the long-awaited cure — many other compounds have seemed similarly promising in the early stages of research without later living up to that promise — but nonetheless, Michelakis believes larger human trials on DCA are warranted.
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Ketterer Continental
Your Fleetwood not cutting it?
This monster motor home features a Mercedes-Benz truck chassis, a massive, luxurious cabin that includes a real kitchen, dining with seating for five, a master bedroom with a king bed plus a shower, toilet and sky light. Actually, the main bedroom features a bath tub, too, so you can soak after a hard day of… whatever it is that the wealthy do when they’re “camping.”And if you fancy a quick jaunt through the country, a Smart car lives in its butt.
Abbottabad
If you are interested in how news starts to follow a narrative especially when facts and boots on the ground are sparse, study the details of the reports on Abbottabad. I happen to have been through Abbottabad as it's on the tail end (or beginning, depending on your direction) of the Karakoram Highway and have a sense of the place. The media has repeatedly defined the city as a suburb of Islamabad (the Pakistani capital) and as a military garrison. Also, interesting, is the description of the house as a mansion/luxury compound and a fortress.
Abbottabad was founded as a British Hill Station, a place where English military officers and officials would escape the heat of cities like Peshawar, Rawalpindi, or Lahore (Islamabad, the Pakistani equivalent of Brazillia, didn't exist yet). The city is a popular tourist destination, weekend getaway, and honeymoon spot for middle and upperclass Pakistanis. THE honeymoon spot is another town called Murree which is higher in the mountains, Abbottabad is sort of a second tier spot.
The city is about 100 km from Islamabad over a road that takes roughly two hours to drive if the traffic isn't terrible which it often is. Many news organizations are reporting the distance between Islamabad and Abbottabad by drawing a straight line on a map without looking at topography. The straight line from Islamabad to Abbottabad crosses very high mountains. The road that actual people travel takes a more circuitous route.
A big prestigious military academy sits on the north side of the town and lots of military folks build retirement and vacation homes there. This is mainly because the Pakistani brass have the the type of money/sway to build houses in popular vacation spots. If you show up in the town center you wouldn't think of the town as being any more or less of military town than any other town in the region (the military has a heavy presence throughout the area). All the cities here have a large number of tribal people and the central government needs the military to reign them in.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The Tao of Travel
by Rolf Potts
If there were an "A-List" of living American travel writers, Paul Theroux's name would be at the top. He revitalized the travel writing genre with his 1975 book The Great Railway Bazaar, and since then the prolific author has written more than a dozen travel books (and 28 novels or story collections) from regions as far-flung as Britain, Patagonia, the South Pacific, the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and Africa. His reflection on the joys of Maine in the wintertime, "The Wicked Coast," appears in the June issue of The Atlantic.
Theroux's newest book, The Tao of Travel, is not a narrative account of a single journey, but what the author calls "a distillation of travelers' visions and pleasures, observations from my work and others'...based on many decades of reading travel books and traveling the earth." Excerpting travel insights from writers like Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Freya Stark, Charles Dickens, Graham Greene, Pico Iyer, and Susan Sontag, The Tao of Travel is "intended as a guidebook, a how-to, a miscellany, a vade mecum, a reading list, [and] a reminiscence." Theroux spoke to The Atlantic by phone from his home in Hawaii.
Your one-time mentor V. S. Naipaul once told you, "A book needs a reason for being written." Why did you write The Tao of Travel?
Over the past 40 or so years people have asked me what my favorite travel book is, and there's no simple answer. The fact is that I have hundreds of favorites, and so I wrote this book, which is a personal anthology. It's not just a listing of the books I like; it's an explanation of why I like them. It's an elaborate reading list, you might say, to get people interested in those books.
Read more:
If there were an "A-List" of living American travel writers, Paul Theroux's name would be at the top. He revitalized the travel writing genre with his 1975 book The Great Railway Bazaar, and since then the prolific author has written more than a dozen travel books (and 28 novels or story collections) from regions as far-flung as Britain, Patagonia, the South Pacific, the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and Africa. His reflection on the joys of Maine in the wintertime, "The Wicked Coast," appears in the June issue of The Atlantic.
Theroux's newest book, The Tao of Travel, is not a narrative account of a single journey, but what the author calls "a distillation of travelers' visions and pleasures, observations from my work and others'...based on many decades of reading travel books and traveling the earth." Excerpting travel insights from writers like Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Freya Stark, Charles Dickens, Graham Greene, Pico Iyer, and Susan Sontag, The Tao of Travel is "intended as a guidebook, a how-to, a miscellany, a vade mecum, a reading list, [and] a reminiscence." Theroux spoke to The Atlantic by phone from his home in Hawaii. Your one-time mentor V. S. Naipaul once told you, "A book needs a reason for being written." Why did you write The Tao of Travel?
Over the past 40 or so years people have asked me what my favorite travel book is, and there's no simple answer. The fact is that I have hundreds of favorites, and so I wrote this book, which is a personal anthology. It's not just a listing of the books I like; it's an explanation of why I like them. It's an elaborate reading list, you might say, to get people interested in those books.
Read more:
Chess For Three
[ed. Looks kind of like a pizza to me, each piece poised to capture a pepperoni.]Finally, a Chess variant board has been developed that accommodates three players, without compromising of the rules, strategies, or competitive challenges that make Chess the best board game in the world.
The only changes from conventional chess are some protocol issues that must be followed to maintain order where the teams border each other, which is simple and necessary. Also, please notice that the trajectory lines orienting from the outer rank, are simply visual aids to help guide diagonal moves passing through the center.
If the path is clear, a diagonal move starting from the outer rank can pass through the center and sweep back around to where it originated.
The complexities of the third player are infinite. Your threatened piece may be allowed to maintain occupancy as your position is beneficial to the threatening player. But how long can it last?
This scenario may exist all over the board. There are multiple trust and doubt situations between all players. An unexpected move might well result in a cascading massacre. Defense is crucial since a diagonal move through the center, or a horizontal move around the center can sneak up behind you. A player can be checkmated by a combination of both other players or ultimately one player can checkmate both other players at the same time.
Description and Rules:
Five Free Scientific Calculators
by Richard Byrne
In my school we've occasionally had a problem with scientific graphing calculators growing legs and walking away for good. I'm sure we're not the only school to have that problem. One possible solution to the problem of disappearing calculators is to have students use calculators on their laptops, netbooks, or tablets. Here are five free calculators that you can either use online or install on your computer.
Microsoft offers scientific calculator that you can download for free (Windows only). Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 is a graphing calculator that plots in 2D and 3D. Of course, the calculator does many other functions such as solving inequalities, converting units of measure, and performing matrix and vector operations.
Encalc is a free online scientific calculator. Encalc describes itself on its homepage as follows, "Encalc is an online scientific calculator. Its strength lies in its ability handle units and dimensional analysis, to define variables and its large database of constants. Parenthesis and scientific formulas are also supported." One of the features that I really like about Encalc are the explanations of how different variables and constants function within an equation or formula.
Web2.0calc is a free online scientific calculator. While it won't replace the TI-84 Plus, it can do what your average high school student needs it to do. The best part is, you don't have to use it on the Web2.0calc site because they offer three widgets that you can use to embed the calculator into your own blog or website.
Speed Crunch is a free scientific calculator application for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Speed Crunch performs all of the functions necessary for high school Algebra and Geometry courses except graphing. In addition to performing all of these functions, Speed Crunch has a "math book" containing commonly used equations and formulas. One Speed Crunch feature that appealed to me from a design standpoint is the color coding of equations to differentiate between constants and variables.
Graph.tk is a free online graphing utility that I found in the Google Chrome Web Store. Graph.tk allows you to plot multiple functions through its dynamically resizing grid. To graph an equation on Graph.tk just click the "+" symbol to enter a new equation. Click here to watch a short video of Graph.tk in use. One thing that the video doesn't show and isn't clear the first time you use Graph.tk is that you need to delete the existing default equations before you start.
In my school we've occasionally had a problem with scientific graphing calculators growing legs and walking away for good. I'm sure we're not the only school to have that problem. One possible solution to the problem of disappearing calculators is to have students use calculators on their laptops, netbooks, or tablets. Here are five free calculators that you can either use online or install on your computer.
Encalc is a free online scientific calculator. Encalc describes itself on its homepage as follows, "Encalc is an online scientific calculator. Its strength lies in its ability handle units and dimensional analysis, to define variables and its large database of constants. Parenthesis and scientific formulas are also supported." One of the features that I really like about Encalc are the explanations of how different variables and constants function within an equation or formula.
Speed Crunch is a free scientific calculator application for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Speed Crunch performs all of the functions necessary for high school Algebra and Geometry courses except graphing. In addition to performing all of these functions, Speed Crunch has a "math book" containing commonly used equations and formulas. One Speed Crunch feature that appealed to me from a design standpoint is the color coding of equations to differentiate between constants and variables.
Mommy Hates Daddy, and You Should Too
by Dahlia LithwickThe competition to get your favorite disease recognized in the bible of mental health, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, can be as fierce as the talent contest in the Little Miss St. Paul Contest. The American Psychiatric Association is contemplating adding something called "parental alienation syndrome" (PAS) to the new edition of the DSM, scheduled to be published in May 2013, and the question has launched a national lobbying and letter-writing campaign on both sides. That angry letters and editorials might play any part in a debate about mental health and custody disputes probably tells you most of what you need to know about the validity of PAS.
What is parental alienation syndrome? William Bernet, a professor of psychiatry at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an advocate for its inclusion in the DSM-5, describes it as "a mental condition in which a child, usually one whose parents are engaged in a high conflict divorce, allies himself or herself strongly with one parent, and rejects a relationship with the other parent, without legitimate justification."* There is no doubt that an ugly divorce can affect kids' relationship with their parents or cause children to choose sides, often in anger. In fact, that probably happens more often than not. But Bernet and others who argue for adding PAS to the Sears, Roebuck catalogue of mental health want to see it recognized as a legitimate mental health disorder in order to "spur insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to [the] charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment."
They want, in other words, to affix a name, some blame, and also a price tag on a broad range of child responses to a custody fight—some perfectly justified and some not—in the hopes of expanding its use in court.
And what's the downside to including PAS in the DSM? Well, for one thing, with a minimum of three participants needed to diagnose it, PAS starts to look less like a mental health disorder than an epidemic. It assumes that one crazy person (the mother) brainwashes a second crazy person (the child) into telling lies about a third person (the father). Just because a lot of parents have experienced blocked visitation and unreturned phone calls doesn't make every instance of that conduct the result of a medical "syndrome." Joan S. Meier, a professor of clinical law at George Washington University School of Law, has explained it this way: "PAS is a label that offers a particular explanation for a breach in relationship between a child and parent, but insofar as that breach could be explained in other ways, it is not in itself a medical or psychological diagnosis so much as a particular legal hypothesis."
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Photographic Mugs
Just a week ago, we walked into our local cafe, and our barista handed us our latte in a mug that looked just like a lens. She even topped it off with camera-shaped latte art and creamer in a film canister.
We just about died, but then we woke up instead.
Behold, our Camera Lens Mugs that look JUST LIKE your favorite lens.
Now, picture yourself sipping on a sweet tea vodka while basking in the sun or having the coolest desk in the office with your lenticular jelly-bean holder or scooping a delicious ice-cream fudge sundae out of your amazingly versatile lens mug. You can even turn it into a nifty flower-pot!
Consider yourself set for all future fellow photo friends' birthdays/graduations/weddings/long-lost-sibling-reunions. It's the best gift they'll get.
Hear, hear! You are hereby proclaimed King/Queen of camera-geek-dom, and the Camera Lens Mug is your chalice.
via:
We just about died, but then we woke up instead.
Desperate for our dream to come true, we wished on shooting stars, wishbones, found pennies, fallen eyelashes, and sure enough, it worked.
Behold, our Camera Lens Mugs that look JUST LIKE your favorite lens.
Both "Nikon" and "Canon" mug models are equipped with an easy to clean, heat preserving, stainless steel lining. Also, a lens-cap lid (omg), rubber-grip focus and zoom rings (omg), and an auto-focus switch that actually switches (OMG)! To top it off, the "Nikon" mug zooms when you twist its grip.
Mugs that are so realistic, you might have to use post-its just to remind yourself which is for coffee and which is for taking photos. (Please note: Photojojo is not responsible for any liquid damage that may occur as a result of improper labeling).
Now, picture yourself sipping on a sweet tea vodka while basking in the sun or having the coolest desk in the office with your lenticular jelly-bean holder or scooping a delicious ice-cream fudge sundae out of your amazingly versatile lens mug. You can even turn it into a nifty flower-pot!
Consider yourself set for all future fellow photo friends' birthdays/graduations/weddings/long-lost-sibling-reunions. It's the best gift they'll get.
Hear, hear! You are hereby proclaimed King/Queen of camera-geek-dom, and the Camera Lens Mug is your chalice.
via:
Electronic Daisy Carnival
The 15th Anniversary of Electric Daisy Carnival offers a high-spirited landscape full of new adventures, expanded possibilities and exciting ways to grow together in celebration through music and art.
The Thousand Word Stare
by Mark O'ConnellI used to be the kind of reader who gives short shrift to long novels. I used to take a wan pleasure in telling friends who had returned from a tour of duty with War and Peace or The Man Without Qualities with that I’ve-seen-some-things look in their eyes—the thousand-page stare—that they had been wasting their time. In the months it had taken them to plough through one book by some logorrheic modernist or world-encircling Russian, I had read a good eight to ten volumes of svelter dimensions. While they were bench-pressing, say, Infinite Jest for four months solid, I had squared away most of the major Nouveau Romanciers, a fistful of Thomas Bernhards, every goddamned novel Albert Camus ever wrote, and still had time to read some stuff I actually enjoyed.
I was a big believer, in other words, in the Slim Prestige Volume. Nothing over 400 pages. Why commit yourself to one gigantic classic when you can read a whole lot of small classics in the same period of time, racking up at least as much intellectual cachet while you were at it? I took Hippocrates’ famous dictum about ars being longa and vita being brevis as a warning against starting a book in your twenties that might wind up lying still unfinished on the nightstand of your deathbed. Aside from the occasional long novel––one every twelve to eighteen months––I was a Slim Prestige Volume man, and that seemed to be that.
Even when I went back to college in my mid-twenties to do a PhD in English literature, I still relied on a kind of intellectual cost-benefit analysis that persuaded me that my time was better spent broadening than deepening—or, as it were, thickening—my reading. Had I read Dostoevsky? Sure I had: I’d spent a couple of rainy evenings with Notes From Underground, and found it highly agreeable. Much better than The Double, in fact, which I’d also read. So yeah, I knew my Dostoevsky. Next question, please. Ah yes, Tolstoy! Who could ever recover from reading The Death of Ivan Illych, that thrilling (and thrillingly brief) exploration of mortality and futility?
There’s a memorable moment in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 where Amalfitano, the unhinged Catalan professor of literature, encounters a pharmacist working the night shift at his local drug store whom he discovers is reading his way diligently through the minor works of the major novelists. The young pharmacist, we are told, “chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pécuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers.” This causes Amalfitano to reflect on the “sad paradox” that “now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
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Gut Feeling
For the first time, researchers at McMaster University have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behaviour.The findings are important because several common types of gastrointestinal disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression. In addition there has been speculation that some psychiatric disorders, such as late onset autism, may be associated with an abnormal bacterial content in the gut.
"The exciting results provide stimulus for further investigating a microbial component to the causation of behavioural illnesses," said Stephen Collins, professor of medicine and associate dean research, Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Collins and Premysl Bercik, assistant professor of medicine, undertook the research in the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute.
The research appears in the online edition of the journal Gastroenterology.
For each person, the gut is home to about 1,000 trillium bacteria with which we live in harmony. These bacteria perform a number of functions vital to health: They harvest energy from the diet, protect against infections and provide nutrition to cells in the gut. Any disruption can result in life-threatening conditions, such as antibiotic-induced colitis from infection with the "superbug" Clostridium difficile.
Working with healthy adult mice, the researchers showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behaviour; the mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has been linked, to depression and anxiety.
When oral antibiotics were discontinued, bacteria in the gut returned to normal. "This was accompanied by restoration of normal behaviour and brain chemistry," Collins said.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Private Realm of Fantasy
by Tracy Clark-Flory It's National Masturbation Month, which feels like it should be worthy of comment -- especially given that I'm on the "sex beat." But writing in defense of masturbation is so incredibly passe; it hardly seems a practice in need of month-long activism. Most of us have left behind the pathologizing Christine O'Donnells of the world and abandoned the mythology of hairy palms and blindness.
Pornography, the No. 1 sign of solo loving, is in no short supply -- and for the very low price of free. Even the title, National Masturbation Month, sounds like a relic from a priggish past -- one before the Rabbit became a household name. Cheap vibrators are now stocked at neighborhood drug stores and diamond-encrusted numbers are available in boutique sex shops. Porn and dildos have been democratized -- power to the people!
So, now what?
Well, we could stand to work on our uneasy relationship with that thing behind masturbation: fantasy. There may be unprecedented access to pre-packaged, quick-hit titillation and expert guidance on the bodily mechanics of personal pleasure, but the American erotic imagination is still congested with political correctness and shame. Masturbation has by no means conquered all social taboos -- will it ever, really? -- but when it comes to fantasy, we could all use some loosening up.
A Genetic Archive
by Leonard CassutoIf I told you that you have a virus, there's a good chance that you'd go running to your PC to check that your antivirus software is up to date. Perhaps you'd discover that your computer had been infected by a highly contagious bug -- a software microbe that threatened the health of your hard drive.
But a computer virus is just a metaphor for an actual living thing -- the most abundant form of life on earth. In "A Planet of Viruses," science journalist Carl Zimmer goes back to the source and surveys the world of real viruses in nature. His absorbing account combines epidemiology, marine biology, genetics, biochemistry, and population history (among other pursuits) as it hops from virus to notable virus -- only polio is oddly missing -- to tell a story that emphasizes both the long history of viruses and their fundamental importance to how humans have evolved and lived.
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Wikipedia and the Death of the Expert
"Learners are doers, not recipients."—Walter J. Ong, "McLuhan as Teacher: The Future Is a Thing of the Past"
by Maria Bustillos
It's high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.
It's been over five years since the landmark study in Nature that showed "few differences in accuracy" between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Though the honchos at Britannica threw a big hissy at the surprising results of that study, Nature stood by its methods and results, and a number of subsequent studies have confirmed its findings; so far as general accuracy of content is concerned, Wikipedia is comparable to conventionally compiled encyclopedias, including Britannica.
There were a few dust-ups in the wake of the Nature affair, notably Middlebury College history department's banning of Wikipedia citations in student papers in 2007. The resulting debate turned out to be quite helpful as a number of librarians finally popped out of the woodwork to say hey, now wait one minute, no undergraduate paper should be citing any encyclopedia whatsoever, which, doy, and it ought to have been pointed out a lot sooner.
By 2009 the complaints had more or less faded away, and nowadays what you have is college librarians writing blog posts in which they continue to reiterate the blindingly obvious: "Wikipedia is an excellent tool for leading you to more information. It is a step along the way, and it is extremely valuable."
Wikipedia's Rough Riders
How come Wikipedia hasn't turned into a giant glob of graffiti? It certainly would have by now, were it not for the multitude of volunteer sheriffs of the information highway who ride around patrolling the thing day and night.
There is a bogglingly complex and well-staffed system for dealing with errors and disputes on Wikipedia. There are special tools provided to volunteers for preventing vandalism, decreasing administrative workload and so on: rollbacker, autopatroller and the like. Then there are nearly two thousand administrators, who are empowered to "protect, delete and restore pages, move pages over redirects, hide and delete page revisions, and block other editors."
by Maria Bustillos
It's high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.
It's been over five years since the landmark study in Nature that showed "few differences in accuracy" between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Though the honchos at Britannica threw a big hissy at the surprising results of that study, Nature stood by its methods and results, and a number of subsequent studies have confirmed its findings; so far as general accuracy of content is concerned, Wikipedia is comparable to conventionally compiled encyclopedias, including Britannica. There were a few dust-ups in the wake of the Nature affair, notably Middlebury College history department's banning of Wikipedia citations in student papers in 2007. The resulting debate turned out to be quite helpful as a number of librarians finally popped out of the woodwork to say hey, now wait one minute, no undergraduate paper should be citing any encyclopedia whatsoever, which, doy, and it ought to have been pointed out a lot sooner.
By 2009 the complaints had more or less faded away, and nowadays what you have is college librarians writing blog posts in which they continue to reiterate the blindingly obvious: "Wikipedia is an excellent tool for leading you to more information. It is a step along the way, and it is extremely valuable."
Wikipedia's Rough Riders
How come Wikipedia hasn't turned into a giant glob of graffiti? It certainly would have by now, were it not for the multitude of volunteer sheriffs of the information highway who ride around patrolling the thing day and night.
There is a bogglingly complex and well-staffed system for dealing with errors and disputes on Wikipedia. There are special tools provided to volunteers for preventing vandalism, decreasing administrative workload and so on: rollbacker, autopatroller and the like. Then there are nearly two thousand administrators, who are empowered to "protect, delete and restore pages, move pages over redirects, hide and delete page revisions, and block other editors."
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