JESUS CHRIST ITS A DEADLINE GET IN THE CAR!!!

My blogging might be a little sparse over the next couple of weeks. I've got a project completion date looming and am already frazzled about it. It's weeks like these I wish I could pack up and live in alone in a cave until I'm done.

I have no idea how blogging doctors do it. Or ANY daily blogger with a real job! As such I will fall back on what I know best, so prepare for more reminiscences from my years of growing up woo-woo. :)

This Mudkip's Gone To Heaven!

WHEE, the Perky Family (not so perky at the moment) went to Florida for Thanksgiving, and we just got back!

I'm not really a beach-and-sunshine kind of gal, but I LOVE the beach in November!!!!! Not many people = more room for me to indulge my obsessive-compulsive beachcombing tendencies to my heart's content. I have nothing more to report until my brain clears from the travel, except that The Great Escape continues to be an awesome book, and that coffee continues to be no match for a good night's sleep. One day I will get one of the latter, and I will cling to that irrational article of faith as a salve for my sanity. Other than the not-good-sleep it was a very relaxing trip. Yay!

Happy Thanksgiving holidays everyone, and for those outside the USA, happy last-bit-o'-November.

I believe!

Someone recently asked me what my favorite animal is.

For the record, I think all animals rock, but at the moment I'm kind of obsessed with the okapi. I fantasize that on some night of the year, if I left out a bushel of leaves and shoots on my porch, the Coffee Okapi would come bestow a pound of Congo Kivu AA dark-roasted beans upon us faithful observers, but I have yet to figure out what night that is.

Anyone have any ideas?

Saturday (Sunday) Recipe: Wonderful Husband Cooks Salmon Fillets!

Oooh, how spoiled I am! WH did the cooking last night, and it was two spectacular fillets of salmon! The recipe? OH SO EASY!!!!

- Get fillets
- Marinate them for a minimum of one hour in: the juice of half a lemon, 1 tsp basil, 2 TBSP parsley, 4 cloves minced garlic, 6 TBSPS olive oil, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper
- Wrap in foil, pour marinade over the fillets
- Bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until done

POOF!!! A magnificent, healthy entree! Serve with rice and a vegetable! EASY AND AWESOME!!! I cannot believe I used to be so scared to cook fish. WH is my hero, all bow down and worship his mad fish-cookin' skillz! B loved this fish so much he ate half of what was on his plate, thinking he was STEALING IT OFF MY PLATE, but it was HIS plate, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

This Perky family vignette brought to you by Yummy Fish Dinner, Too Much Coffee, and An Ill-Advised Breakfast Of Gingerbread.

When am I going to be a grownup?

That's right, I have stumbled headfirst into yet another easily-averted baking disaster.

I had my flour in the clear canister. I put it into the mix. Somehow, the batter wasn't looking right! I added more... and more... and more, even opening another bag.

Finally I realized that what I thought was 5 cups of flour in the first place was actually 5 cups of CONFECTIONER'S SUGAR. Which I had forgotten I had put in the flour canister to keep it fresh. The real flour was in its original bag, inside a clear freezer bag on the milk shelf of the fridge. Great memory, eh?

Of course, there's nothing for it but to bake it anyway and see what happens!!! :D :D :D

UPDATE: I chickened out and re-made the recipe, thus they turned out perfectly, LOL!

Skeptical Parent Crossing #2!

WOW, it's quite the auspicious day for blog carnivals! Skeptical Parent Crossing #2 is up over at Science-Based Parenting!

Man, I need to update my blogroll! I've been missing out! :)

A Skeptics' Circle CENTURY!

Hooray, it's up, the big 100th edition of the Skeptics' Circle!!!

ONE HUNDRED!!! That's a big number, and we humans are easily impressed by big numbers! Unlike Orac, whose mental capacity is infinitely greater!

Read, enjoy! It's good, skepticky, geeky fun!!!

Bastard viruses, got me again!

I caught my boy's stomach virus. BLEH!!! So far I'm managing to grit my teeth and muscle through the day, so it's a pretty mild case. Still, one can only subsist for so long on a diet of glucose popsicles, tea, applesauce and soda crackers, so I'll be glad when these uninvited guests leave my system.

This one is not as cute as Rhinovirus, which somehow comforts me in my pain.

A Parenting Seminar, Ensuing Detective Work, and a Rant

We are lucky to live in a city with a preeminent autism research center, called TRIAD, Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders, attached to Vanderbilt University but privately funded. They put on FREE monthly seminars called "Family First," which are designed to help families cope with common stressors of parenting a child on the autistic spectrum. Wonderful Husband and I attended one Saturday, and it was AWESOME.

This post is not about that awesome seminar. It's about a brush with a True Believer.

Let me start at the beginning, though. There was a great orientation wherein "What is autism?" was addressed. Topics in the orientation were "Understanding ASDs, understanding your child [as an individual person with specific likes and dislikes], prioritizing goals [for behavior, development, and family dynamics], and understanding the characteristics of effective interventions." [emphasis mine]

That last one was very important and well-stated. One thing I loved was that they SPECIFICALLY addressed the vaccines issue, stating unequivocally that "There is no current established scientific link to proposed causes [of autism] such as vaccines, diet, or toxin/environmental exposure." Likewise, they clearly spelled out that "CAM therapies lack scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness in treating the symptoms and conditions for which they are used." And my favorite, "If you decide to try an alternative treatment: Do not take your child out of evidence-based interventions to pay for unproven treatments; consult with your child's pediatrician; become familiar with the scientific method for evaluating the effectiveness of treatments." (That was credited to Stone, W. & DiGeronimo, T. (2006). Does my child have autism?: A parent's guide to early detection and intervention in autism spectrum disorders.)

It was really great they said that and put it in black and white in the orientation materials for parents to peruse at home. Because during the lunch break, I overheard two parents discussing biomedical interventions-- the casein-gluten-free diet, and allergy testing, to be exact. My brain started paying attention to their conversation just in time to hear Parent A mention her "DAN! doctor." Crap, I thought-- isn't that a Jenny McCarthy-related acronym? I couldn't remember, but since the term "DAN!" raised my hackles, I decided to make notes and look stuff up later.

Parent A talked about getting her child allergy-tested through urine and blood samples. "Why should I go back and get the scratch test done when he's older when they can test his fluids now? It's just going to cause him more pain and discomfort!" Parent A was extremely emphatic that Parents B and C get their child's allergy tests done only by one Great Plains Labs. This raised a red flag with me, because I read a lot of Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" columns in the UK Guardian, and I remember the story where the UK media was in a tizzy over MRSA in hospitals... only it turned out the reporters were ALL sending their samples to this ONE lab, which never failed to turn up a positive-- and therefore paper-selling-- result. Turns out the lab was run out of a garden shed by one guy with an unaccredited correspondence-course PhD. Any insistence on the use of ONLY one specific lab is highly suggestive of tainted results.

WH and I kept shooting each other Significant Looks across the table, so I knew he had the same feeling I did about Parent A's dubious advice.

We got home, and I looked it up. Sure enough, the DAN! acronym stands for Defeat Autism Now! and their slogan is "Autism is Treatable!" HOOOO boy. Now I remember them! From their website, the so-called Autism Research Institute:

As you have read in the many media reports of the so-called "Autism Summit," (a meeting in Washington DC in late November, 2003), the Federal Government and several multi-million dollar autism groups hope to be "finding effective drugs for the symptoms of autism" in 7 to 10 years.

NONSENSE! We need to tell them, and the media, and the tens of thousands of families of autistic children who don't know, that many effective treatments are available NOW. If your child has recovered from autism, or improved dramatically, and you would be willing to speak to the media about your child's recovery, YOUR HELP IS NEEDED. The Autism Research Institute has begun compiling an extensive list of families throughout the United States who are willing to talk to the media about their child's recovery. (read full letter and fill out form)

This is bull. Autism is a GENETIC, NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION. You don't "recover" from it! It's something you ARE. Parents of children with ASD are HARMING their kids by subscribing to this "my child needs to be fixed" mentality! Gahh...

I will put this side-by-side with the advice from Stone and DiGeronimo, 2006, thankfully put into our orientation materials by TRIAD, just to make a point:

'Red Flags' for Evaluating Interventions
Be wary if an intervention...
- Offers a cure for autism
- Promises to be effective for all children
- Claims to improve all of the symptoms of autism
- Requires you to suspend your belief system
- Does not provide routine and periodic assessments of your child's progress and the treatment's effectiveness
- Consists of a general "package" or predetermined curriculum that is not tailored to your child's individual needs
- Claims to be the "best" or "only" treatment for your child

I have perused the ARI/DAN! website and found all of these flags, fluttering merrily. To these I would add, "Uses celebrity, personality, or the 'greatness' of a single researcher to market its ideas, and uses the media to popularize its hypotheses, instead of relying on science and evidence to make the case for the treatments it espouses." Speaking of which, oh goody, "ARI proudly sponsors Age Of Autism (editor Dan Olmstead)." Wow, I wouldn't be too proud of that, myself! (Read the link. Srsly.)

Annnnnnnnnnnd Jenny McCarthy's book is PROMINENTLY displayed in a flash movie at the tippy-top front page which gives a very cult-of-personality-looking tribute to founder Dr. Rimland, and a "Want to know more about the autism treatments Jenny McCarthy is talking about?" And oh FSM, they keep mentioning "the mercury consensus paper," which I clicked on, and winced with pain at the horror. Yes, they're talking about heavy metal "detox" through chelation therapy. You know, like the one that killed Abubakar Tariq Nadama? And the "consensus" of which they speak is a consensus of their own participating doctors!!! Not a consensus of the medical community! A consensus of DAN! practitioners. It makes me sick to my stomach to think more children might be subjected to ill-advised and even useless and painful therapies, or unnecessary dietary interventions leading to potential nutritional deficiencies, just because of a slick-looking, medical-expert-sounding website!!!

Now, the DAN! horse has been flogged by better bloggers than I, so I'll move on to look at this Great Plains Laboratory.

I AM NOT A DOCTOR. But this site troubles me. On the very front page, it mentions "New Advanced IgE Inhalant Allergy Test including Candida and Thimerosal." Remember thimerosal, that substance which has shown NO LINK to autism in repeated studies???

Another interesting page-one mention is, "Deficient Cholesterol: A Common New Factor in Autism." Er. Really? :click: Ooooh, lovely, they show us some great-looking research by Richard Kelley, MD, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University-- but wait! That research isn't on cholesterol deficiency in ASD at all! It's on cholesterol deficiency in SLOS ("Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLOS) is a well-known malformation syndrome with principal characteristics of psychomotor and growth retardation, cleft palate, hypospadias, postaxial polydactyly, and a distinctive craniofacial appearance consisting of microcephaly, ptosis, inner epicanthal folds, anteverted nares, and micrognathia." Kelley, R.) Gee, that syndrome seems to have way different manifestations from autism. As far as I can tell, Dr. Kelley makes no mention of autism anywhere in this paper.

But the ASD-cholesterol link is indeed being studied! The Great Plains page does go on to mention research by Elaine Tierney et al. at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. I looked up the paper they cited, and found this: "Although no sample had sterol levels consistent with SLOS, 19 samples [out of one hundred tested] had total cholesterol levels lower than 100 mg/dL, which is below the 5th centile for children over age 2 years. These findings suggest that, in addition to SLOS, there may be other disorders of sterol metabolism or homeostasis associated with ASD." Note the lack of a conclusive link, along with the words "SUGGEST" and "MAY BE." In my opinion, Great Plains Laboratory seems to have trotted out this very real and impressive research which only SEEMS to support their own conclusion but in fact does not. But by golly they aren't letting the lack of conclusive evidence hold them back from marketing cholesterol supplements to parents of ASD kids!!! Note the bottom of the page on Deficient Cholesterol testing, there is both a supplement advertisement and a testimonial, heart-rendingly quoteboxed, "I think Paulina is dying". GAH!!!

Then there is their FAQ, which contains the following advice for skirting your doctor to get their tests run:

Q. My doctor does not subscibe to complimentary therapies and will not cooperate with my testing. What shall I do?
A. Many of the tests that we offer at The Great Plains Laboratory, Inc. are also available through MyMedLab.com which will provide a physician signature for patients who order testing. Contact us, depending on where you live, we may be able to recommend a knowledgeable doctor in your area. Authorization does not have to come from your primary care physician; any licensed health professional can order testing in your state, including some chiropractors, naturopaths, nurse practitioners, or nutritionist/dieticians.

[emphasis mine]

But hey, if you don't like your doctor's answer, you can have one of ours! (You know, a doctor who's familiar with OUR methodologies, not just-- pfff-- medicine!)

Q. How do I find a doctor familiar with GPL's testing and interpretation?
A. The Great Plains Laboratory, Inc. has a database with 3000+ physicians in just about every state and country. Please call our Customer Service Staff at 1-800-288-0383 and a representative should be able to locate a practitioner in your area.

There's the "Our lab does stuff no other lab does" gambit:

Q. I already had the urine organic acid test done earlier by another lab. Can't I get the information from the earlier test?
A. No. No other laboratory routinely analyzes all the compounds that The Great Plains Laboratory, Inc. does. Most test for the inborn errors of metabolism and that's all.

And my favorite, the sales pitch!

Q. Where can I get nutritional supplements that are specially designed for children with special needs and food allergies?
A. Many products are available at New Beginnings Nutritionals.

And also, of course, no dubious website would be complete without copious TESTIMONIALS! Oh boyohboy, there's nothing like a feel-good page to distract from a lack of any scientific evidence of efficacy! If you can't cite studies, play on your audience's emotions instead!!! I did feel sorry for this one poor kid, whom they've already got on a gluten- and casein-free diet: "...We also had a 96 item food allergy scan done and Roan was allergic to apples, bananas, green beans, cabbage, egg yolks and whites and a few other things so we have also been avoiding them." And it's very possibly not even necessary.

Testimonials annoy me, because if they've got so much positive feedback, why not design a study? Get some real research to back up their claims? It's just easier and more profitable to run their business this way, I guess. Sadly, it's desperate parents and innocent children who pay the price.

We will see Parents B and C again at the seminar in December. I keep rehearsing the opening line of my polite-yet-passionate advocacy of science-based interventions-- "So, hey, I looked up that Great Plains Lab, and I saw some things that concerned me..."

The Cuttlefish Has Landed!

Great news, just in time for the holidays-- The Digital Cuttlefish, Volume 1, the recycled tree version, is available for order!

This is one small ripple for a cephalopod, and one giant jet-propulsion for skeptical poetry! CONGRATULATIONS, Digital Cuttlefish! I'm looking forward to getting my crude, mammalian hands on one. :)

Saturday recipie (oops, on Sunday again): Bindi Masala!

It's SATURDAY!!! (I mean, SUNDAY!!!) And that means another attempt by yours truly to cook fresh, wholesome food for my family, whom I make forage for earthworms and grubs the rest of the week. Watch my travails as I attempt to use a stove! Perky Skeptic guarantees no satisfaction and does not stand behind her recipes! Perky Skeptic accepts no responsibility for accidentally-omitted key ingredients, allergic reactions, digestive distress, house fires, or wails of disappointment/horror resulting from the use of her recipes!

I am a Southerner. This means I am genetically predisposed to LOVE okra and tomatoes.

Bindi masala is okra-and-tomatoes which has been CURRIED, and therefore is innately more awesome on a cosmic scale. Okra and tomatoes = Amazing; bindi masala = Shift X. Plus, it's Class 1000 easy to make!

I use:

1/2 of a large yellow onion, diced
2 lbs okra (fresh or frozen), sliced into approx. 3/4-inch chunks
5 fresh tomatoes, diced (or 2 cans diced tomatoes, but the flavor's better using fresh)
1 inch of ginger root, grated
4 cloves garlic, grated
1 bunch fresh cilantro: Separate the leaves from the stalks. Mince stalks, Chop leaves.
3 tsps fresh lemon juice
2-3 tsp turmeric powder
1/4 tsp red cayenne powder
1-2 tsps kosher salt (to taste)
3 tsps cumin seed powder
1 tsp Garam Masala
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 TBSP olive oil (just enough to fry the onions)

Put olive oil in a 5-quart pot, turn heat on HIGH. (Note! My stove is electric. Make appropriate heat-level conversions for gas ranges.) When the oil is hot, toss in the cumin seeds and the mustard seeds and fry them for about 20 seconds-- do not let them burn. Next, add the minced cilantro stalks and the diced onions. Fry until the onions are translucent, and then sprinkle on the turmeric powder, the garlic and the ginger. Stir it around while it all fries up together for about a minute. Add the tomatoes. (If you're using fresh tomatoes, it will start smelling HEAVENLY in a moment!) Stir in the cayenne, the cumin powder, the salt, and the garam masala. Bring to a boil, then add the okra, then the lemon juice. Cover and simmer on MEDIUM heat for about 20 minutes, stirring once. At the end of 20 minutes, turn stove off. Sprinkle about half the cilantro leaves into the pot, then re-cover and just let it sit there for at least 10 minutes, then stir again. Top with the rest of the fresh cilantro leaves, and serve it up hot! :)

Basmati rice is always a good side dish to make with a curry, of course. But with bindi masala, the thing I love most with it is whole wheat toast! Brings back sense-memories of the yummy tomato sandwiches of my youth. :) Also, warm wheat toast is AWESOME for eating with cold next-day leftovers! This dish is as super-fabulous chilled as it it hot-- maybe even more so!

PERKY NOTES:
The astute recipe-watchers among my twos of readers will note that I use a much lower quantity of seeds, onions and powdered spices in this dish than is my usual. The reason is, of course, to let the flavor of the okra and the tomatoes take center stage. Especially when you can get homegrown, vine-ripened local tomatoes, this dish is one I would serve to a queen. The flavors in the tomatoes come out delicate and perfumey, and the curry spices give them an aromatic turbo-charge! I LOVE BINDI MASALA, and I am willing to jump up and down on Oprah Winfrey's couch to declare it to the world.

Health, the Woo-woo Way

I have heard a lot of complaints in my time, both from the alternative medicine crowd and from the mystically-minded in general, that boil down to this: "Doctors can't tell you the right way to live a healthy lifestyle! The rules keep changing! Their nutritional science is ARCANE. There is too much detail to sift through it all! One week, having high cholesterol is bad for you-- the next week, it's not so bad-- the week after, there's GOOD cholesterol which is good to have high-- then the week after, high is bad again! Same with fats. First they tell us a low fat diet is the way to go, then some other doctor comes along and says you need to eat fat to burn fat! Now it's back to low fat being good, but it has to be the RIGHT KIND of fat. Wine is good for you! Wine is bad for you! What's a lay person to do??? Living a science-based healthy lifestyle is HARD!!! Isn't there SOME way I can feel IN CONTROL of my own body, of my own health??????"

For those not in the habit of critical thinking, complementary and alternative medicine is what they turn to... and the lifestyle modifications they make are often rooted in mystical and religious practices.

Let's take a look at one of those, shall we? :)

Qabbalah, the faith I grew up in, has a lot to say about health. The whole basis of the mystical tradition is that words have power to shape matter-- kinda like The Secret, only not trademarked. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century spiritualists took this and ran with it, mixing the Jewish Kabbalah with rituals from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Enochian magic, Rosicrucianism, eclectic pagan and Eastern mystical traditions, and added heaping helpings of astrology and tarot card reading. Passing it off as Ancient Knowledge (of course), they taught rituals, visualizations and meditations that they claimed could alter reality. It was called The Great Work, seeking perfection of the self so that you could be fit to rejoin the essence of God. The Qabbalah, being an emanationist philosophy, teaches that God fragmented its perfect Self into aspects by creating the Universe-- thus The Great Work in and of itself was seen as a healing of the Universe!

One of the preeminent authorities of Qabbalistic healing was Israel Regardie (born Francis Israel Regudy). In his book The Middle Pillar, he outlines the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagrams (which I describe in detail here), and then the titular ritual, The Middle Pillar. He exhorts practitioners to get really really good at the LBRP before going on to the latter, because OMG YOU CAN PHYSICALLY HARM YOURSELF if you do the Middle Pillar ritual wrong. Aieee!!!

Keep this in mind-- visualization is to a Qabbalist what succussion is to a homeopath, i.e., how all the magic is imbued. Qabbalistic practice is full of similar exhortations to do the visualizations correctly or you risk channeling beings from the Inner Planes to come screw up your life and harm you and all your works. AIEEEEEE!!!!

(Er. Dude, I just wanted to meditate, you know?)

My own personal experience was that, after reading The Middle Pillar, I learned that I had very likely been taught the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagrams wrong from birth!!!!! The sticking point was the Qabbalistic Cross. If you would like to go read my description of it right quick, go for it. Then note that in Regardie's book, ve-Geburah and ve-Gedullah are REVERSED from the way my dad performs it, which is the way I learned it! Aieeeeee!!!!

But, you see, it is well-known in hermetic magical circles that some parts of the literature are DELIBERATELY distorted so that only initiates of a certain level will hold the True Knowledge! So maybe the book was deliberately distorted! ...Or maybe the book was showing the correct way, and my father's Hermetic Training had been distorted!!! Maybe I was harming myself and not knowing it!!!! Aieeeee!!!

So I asked my father about this burning health question, and he said, without any further elucidation, "Just keep on doing it the way you've been doing it." This response was, to put it mildly, singularly less-than-satisfying. He gave no explanation, no reason for why it should be one way and not the other! My mind was in a tizzy! Should I keep doing the meditative exercises as I had known them and said them in my head since I was in a cradle, or should I now follow the book by a man considered an Authority on Qabbalistic healing and meditation??? My visualizations were on the line here!!! WAS I GOING TO DEVELOP SOME KIND OF DEGENERATIVE FLESH-EATING SPINAL CANCER?????? What's a lay person to do??? Living a mysticism-based healthy lifestyle is HARD!!! Isn't there SOME way I can feel IN CONTROL of my own body, of my own health??????

Gee, suddenly, science-based health recommendations don't seem so arcane after all.

Worse yet, this is but one example of a system of health mysticism. There are others. Soooooooooo many others. And if you take a close look at each of them (or, at as many as you can bear to scrutinize), they all make great claims but put forth shaky evidence of efficacy. Just take a gander at Quackwatch, look through Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, read a few of Orac's "Your Friday Dose of Woo" entries, peruse Holford Watch (a blog which started out warning people about Patrick Holford's dubious nutrition claims but which has blossomed into a great watchblog for all manner of bad health-related science), peer at Science-Based Medicine. Or Skeptico. Or Denialism Blog. Or A Photon In The Darkness. Or DC's Improbable Science. Just to name a few! It is really difficult to maintain a non-skeptical view of health claims after such analysis.

The research is out there for all to see. Our knowledge base is constantly under review, checked and double-checked by the peer review system and by countless thousands of medical practitioners. There is a simple yet thorough guideline for healthy lifestyle-- exercise, eat according to the Food Pyramid, limit calories to around 2000 per day (more or less depending on age, sex, and activity level). And there are doctors out there who will answer your questions about the best, EVIDENCE-BASED way to take control of your health.

Best of all-- you are free to visualize whatever you want, and you can rest assured that the universe will not be out to get you if you eat your fruit and vegetables in the wrong order. ;)

Just look at your plates. Don't encourage her.

I clicked on my WaPo feed this morning, only to find yet another moose chili story!

WHY is Sarah Palin still in the media??? Ignore her and she'll go away!

Scandal of the day

Shootin' at the walls of heartache (bang, bang), I am the warrior.

OMG Kidsports!!!

Oh, the stress of parenting. My boy is in a week-long basketball clinic, from 5 to 6:30, which is a HECKUVA long day, especially for an autistic kid, and for the mommy of an autistic kid! But, much to my delight, he's taking to it pretty well!

This one is put on by a retired coach who works for the community center. It is not through the Autism Society; it's just for anyone who signs up and shows up. The clinic is for all ages, and so there's a lot of waiting around and sitting on the lines while the other age groups get their instructions, and there's WAY more waiting than ball-handling. The coach is really smart and knows his stuff and is essentially prepping the big kids for basketball scholarships, so he talks a lot about defense. This goes right over the head of the littler kids who, I'm sure, hear only "Blah blah blah defense blah blah."

Despite all this, B is not too disruptive, manages to participate, and even seems to be enjoying himself! YAY!!!!!

I'm certain that a more hands-on program would be better-suited to his needs, where he would get to use his sense of touch in learning. I think he would enjoy ball-drills as depicted in the Bend It Like Beckham training scenes (envision if you will the basketball equivalent), where there's LOTS of movement, lots of ball contact, and lots of repetitive drilling. He tends to lose focus when he's waiting, and when that happens, he tries to converse with the other kids (distracting them while the coach is talking), or he hand-flaps, or falls over "dead" on the floor. :) But the hands-on part will come. For now, I'm thrilled to see him out there hanging out with other kids, just doing what they do and enjoying it.

Also, I've gotten to see some REALLY great examples of the art of basketball! The older kids REALLY know their stuff, and I'd pit them against any college team! In addition, there is this one four-year-old who is tiny like a toddler but is a freaking NATURAL! After only one instruction, he could do the slide-step and the passes, and he sinks a freakish number of baskets! I have never beheld such innate talent in a sport at such a young age before, so that has been cool to watch, too! :)

More as the story unfolds! :)

Math Dreams!

Ok, I normally don't post about my dreams, but this one left a surreal taste in my mouth that has lasted all day.

It was one of those cramming-for-a-test dreams where you've missed half the classes, and this one was a Calculus/physics final.

Items of interest:

1) Apparently my subconscious mind understands the underlying principle behind Calculus, which is a surprise to me. In my dream, I was about to ask someone why we used Calculus to compute the area under the curve, and then I remembered the answer before I asked. IN MY DREAM. And when I woke up, I still remembered the explanation my subconscious came up with, and it was correct. Complete with visual aids, graphs and all.

2) My subconscious does not, however, understand what the hell a cosine is for. In this dream I stared and stared at this triangle and the length of the hypotenuse was computed by multiplying the cosine of some angle by some other number, but it never resolved in the dream. Apparently my subconscious does know that the abbreviation for cosine is "cos" though, because that I could read clearly.

3) My subconscious knows that, if tested right now, I would never get the right answer to one of those "girl standing on a rooftop throws a ball off, how many mph is the ball going when it hits the ground" questions, though it did include a helpful diagram which I recognize from an 11th grade physics exam. Thanks, subconscious!

What I have taken away from this dream experience: I suspect I am starved for mathematical stimuli and am really looking forward to receiving that physics textbook I ordered. Meanwhile, I might do well to work through some Calculus review.

The Creative Process

There's a lot of conversation in the science blogosphere right now about blogger anonymity. I haven't really weighed in on the topic except for a couple of (debatably) brief comments, chiefly because I'm no longer working in the sciences, and I'm not blogging about heavy topics like medicine or law and the like. My writings tend to stick closely to my own personal experiences, and thus are arguably lower-risk than anything that, say, ScienceBlogs puts out there.

For my part, I'm not very good at anonymity. As the internet is a key social outlet for me, I tend to write true to my real-life voice. Still, I've been keeping up the veneer, mainly so my professional contacts and extended family don't see this blog as the first Google hit for my name. Yet if you've been reading my writing for a bit, I imagine it will come as no great shock that I am-- FSM preserve us-- an artist, and a rather stereotypically temperamental one, at that! I've been avoiding blogging my Art Angst here, but hell, I blog about everything else that crosses my mind here, so why not?

In a recent conversation with one of my friends I was recounting my creative process, for no particular reason other than I'm trying to finish a painting and misery loves company. It got me thinking, though-- creativity is very important in math and in the sciences, and in just about any discipline, really! Certainly in writing, which is what connects all of us bloggers, after all. So it made me wonder if anyone reading here experiences anything similar in your own creative process? Mine goes something like this, annotated with accompanying emotions at each stage:

1. Initial idea. Genius!!! Pure genius!!! I am giggly with anticipation.

2. Begin work. Meh-- I might consider it a good start, tomorrow, after I look at it again.

3. Lay down underpainting; start on top colors. Life is perfect!!!! This is what I was BORN to do!!! I love EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE!!!!! World peace is possible! Birds sing, bells ring, small animated woodland creatures do a dance and clean my kitchen.

4. Notice a problem with the (lighting/colors/focal point/lines). The problem is intractable, incorrigible!!! The WHOLE CONCEPT was FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED from the get-go!!! The piece is so horrific-looking it makes me want to claw out my own eyes. I am the WORST ARTIST in the ENTIRE WORLD. I am alone in my misery-- ALONE, I SAY!!!! All is dark in my sight, food turns to ash in my mouth; cliffs are too good for me to throw myself off of.

5. Work the problem through. I am a fevered squiggle of pain and raw nerve. Personal hygiene and sleep are just things that happen to other people.

6. Problem resolved. A nightingale twitters timidly in the distance. A juddering spark of hope glints within my sunken eye.

7. The finished piece begins to emerge. WOOOOO, I AM ON FIRE!!!!! It just doesn't get any better than this!!!! ALL OF NATURE CELEBRATES WITH ME!!!

8. Painting is finished. I am so slick. What was the big deal? Why was I ever worried about this? I am such a cool, together artist. What a pro!

9. Take a much-needed breather between projects. Yay, I finished a painting!... ... ... and now I will never, ever have another idea as long as I live. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!

10. Repeat. Is there any wonder I'm on medication? :D


So, what's your creative process like?

Saturday Recipe: Bhaigan Bharta -or- Perky Roasts An Eggplant!

According to Orac over at Respectful Insolence, one Dr. Cham is touting eggplant as a cure for cancer! Well, the cancer cure is dubious at best, but eggplant is without a doubt DELICIOUS! As soon as I read the post, I began scheming about making curried eggplant for my family.

I've never made this dish before! And still I wing it. So, there you are! This is what I made after cobbling together an idea of how to make this dish by looking at several recipes online, and after of course imposing my own cilantro-stalk-choppin', mustard-and-cumin-seed-cookin' style. I'm told everyone puts their own individual spin on curries, and to me, frying those seeds and stalks adds a dash of magic to the mix and makes cooking fun for me.

I found this dish extremely easy to make. Even though I've never roasted a vegetable before in my life, I completely failed to set my kitchen on fire even a little! So jump right in if you're now craving eggplant as much as I've been! :)

1 TBSP olive oil
1 eggplant, large
1 yellow onion, large, diced
2 fresh tomatoes, diced
1 cup green peas (canned)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 pile of grated ginger of equivalent mass to the pile made by 6 cloves minced garlic
1 handful of minced cilantro stalks
1 handful chopped cilantro leaves
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp red chili powder
1/2 tsp garam masala
The juice from a small lime


1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Cut eggplant in half, drizzle olive oil onto tops, and roast in oven for about 40 minutes (adjust time per size of eggplant)-- until the eggplant is black and soft. Transfer to bowl, run cold water over it to cool it, then peel the eggplant (or just scoop out the flesh from the burnt skin). Discard skin, coarsely chop flesh (or mash it with a potato-masher, if you like it that way). Set aside.

2. Heat oil in pot-- when hot, toss in the seeds. Fry seeds for no more than a minute, then add minced cilantro stalks, turmeric, cumin powder, red chili powder, ginger and garlic. Fry for another minute, then add onions. Fry the onions until they are beginning to brown, about 5 to 7 minutes.

3. Add the tomatoes, peas, eggplant, and lime juice. Cover, lower heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

4. Remove from heat, garnish with cilantro leaves. Serve hot or cold with basmati rice or flatbread. Yum!!!!


Notes from the Perky Kitchen:

1. I tried something different this time-- I fried most of my spices with my seeds. (Not on purpose, but hey! It smelled AWESOME!)

2. Eggplant absorbs spiciness so thoroughly that I can't even taste the red chili powder. I'm thinking that even though I'm kind of a hot food wimp, I would be willing to use a finely-chopped fresh green chili pepper in this dish instead of the red chili powder. Also, I'm trying to figure out how to impart a little more saltiness directly into the eggplant itself. I guess I'll be adding a dash while I'm mashing it up next time.

3. I think all those peas made the dish too sweet for my taste. Next time I make it I'll try using 1/2 cup instead.

A Perkily Skeptical Review Of Two Books

The Great Escape is one of my favorite movies.

There is something about escape stories that fires me up. Escape stories throw into sharp relief what human beings are capable of when we really put everything we've got into attaining a goal! Tales about prisoners of war or politics, armed only with their cunning and resourcefulness, who slipped their bonds and made their run for freedom inspire me to do anything I want in my life! If these people, with so little, managed to achieve the seemingly-impossible-- escape to freedom!-- then cleaning my damn house is just ridiculously small potatoes. Heck, it doesn't even RATE potatoes! More like... small peas! Small BITES of peas taken by an overly-full ant who didn't want to appear rude to his hosts.

Often when I'm working on any tough project that is giving me fits, I'll pop in The Great Escape DVD, and even just listening to that music lifts my burden and helps me to focus on human achievement! "They did that!!! I can do this," I will think to myself.

I love that movie so much, I just HAD to read the book on which it was based-- The Great Escape, by Paul Brickhill, who never escaped, yet who worked side by side with those who did, and who dedicated the book "To the Fifty," the men who were shot by the SS after their recapture. I have read this book again and again, and each time I am struck with how closely the film version captures the events of the book, and though the characters of the film are fictionalized amalgams, their exploits and quirks are easily recognizeable in the original personalities inside that prison camp, Stalag Luft III. It is astounding, riveting, and ultra-awesome... because they DID this. They perpetrated the Great Escape!

There are piles and piles of hard evidence to attest the veracity of the book-- the prisoners who were involved in the X Organization and lived to corroborrate and assist Brickhill's account, records of the Luftwaffe and photographs taken by the ferrets who were camera-bugs, the air pump they used in the tunnel, and more. And BOY did Brickhill do his homework! Not content with his own memory of the events, he accessed everyone he could for information, photographs, sketches, and more:

"Of my own part in the show-- little enough to say. I am a sort of Boswell, not a hero.... Since the war I've twice been back to Germany to dig deeper into the story, being lucky enough once to get into the forbidden Russian zone and fossick once more around the scene of the crime. After the hangman's job was done in 1948 I went through several thousand pages of unpublished reports, getting all the German side of the affair as well as a lot more of our own. And then I searched out the important survivors and filled in the few gaps left."

The man's a natural journalist! The work he put into getting the story right makes me feel confident in his account.

Something about people who escape on foot really appeals to me as well. If worse came to worst, if all the fuel ran out and the roads were closed by hostile forces, etc., we can use the power of our own limbs to seek freedom! Going overland means you have to have the ability to live off the land-- you need the know-how to obtain food, water, and shelter on your journey. So, when I saw in the bookstore The Long Walk, I was overjoyed! Here was an escape story where the escapees walked ALL THE WAY THROUGH SIBERIA, down to INDIA!!!

But alas... something was wrong.

Though the subtitle is, "The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom," several things rang discordant. First of all, the author Slavomir Rawicz was assisted in telling his tale by a reporter named Ronald Downing, of the London Daily Mail. This gave me pause. The Daily Mail has a bad rep for being a wellspring of uncritical thinking, woo-woo-peddling, fearmongering, anything-to-sell-papers tabloid. The foreword by Downing mentions that the Daily Mail was about to launch an expedition into the Himalayas to see if they could find a yeti, and they were given a tip that this guy Rawicz had seen creatures in Tibet that seemed to match the description of yeti. This gave me about six pauses.

Nonetheless, I bought the book and read it through, thinking there might be some truth in it to be teased out.

Sure enough, I was enthralled by the story of the escape. Enthralled by all the walking and foraging. Enthralled with their meeting various tribespeople and receiving life-giving hospitality from the Mongolians.

But the part where they tried to cross the Gobi with no water? That really made me think, "They came that far, only to be that STUPID not to turn back after a day of desert conditions and no water to be found anywhere? What even semi-rational human would do that?" Then I REALLY felt my credulity was being stomped upon, adding injury to the insult dealt to my intelligence, when the party CROSSED THE HIMALAYAS. With no guide and only the vaguest idea where to go. Dressed in rags. With no food.

Once upon a time, I tried to hike part of the Appalachian Trail having packed insufficient carbohydrates, and IT SUCKED. I, sweet little me all full of love and warmth for my fellow living creatures, was actively contemplating ASSAULTING another hiker for his ramen noodles after only FOUR DAYS. I shit you not. If I had thought I could take him, THOSE NOODLES WOULD HAVE BEEN MINE!!! I know full well that one of the chief tenets of skepticism is that just because YOU can't imagine a way to do it does not mean that it cannot be done. Yet at this point, I fear I must call bullshit on the Tibet adventure as described in the book. (And that's not even COUNTING the alleged yeti sighting.) Anyway, why would they DO that when Lhasa was RIGHT THERE, and everybody they met told them how welcoming it was and how well they would be treated, how there was food there, etc.? If you are starving in the wilderness, why would you not elect to stop at Lhasa for a while rather than immediately pushing on into crossing the highest mountain range on earth's surface???

Some other things just rang false to my eye-ears, too-- like encountering the 17-year-old girl and all these men immediately felt an upwelling of big-brotherly-protectiveness for her, rather than "OMG A GIRL and we've been sex-starved prisoners for a really long time, my isn't this awkward!!!" We would all like to think that soldiers would be gentlemen in such a situation, and the book gives us exactly what we want to hear. That, to me, struck me as playing to the audience rather than reporting the truth.

I tend to be an honest sort, and I tend to think other people are telling me the truth unless something really leaps out as a red flag. This is why a skeptical mind is extremely important to people like me, whose picture is next to the word "gullible" in the dictionary (go look!). Thus it's best to rely on evidence when one is evaluating a claim. So, let's look at the evidence supporting The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom.

Well, a quick Google search reveals a nice Wikipedia article on Slavomir Rawicz which indicates the BBC found some evidence. The evidence, turned up in 2006, suggests that Rawicz was in the gulag until 1942 and then released "apparently as part of a general amnesty for Polish soldiers. These are backed up by his amnesty document and a permit to travel to rejoin the Polish Army." Unlike Brickhill, Rawicz never tried to contact the men who he claims survived the trek with him, though it would seem only natural to do so, and likewise the Cantonment in India where he claimed to have gone has no record of his being there. Likewise, Rawicz makes no mention of the telephone line running through the Gobi at the time of his crossing, which his party should have been able to see, according to one criticism in the Wikipedia article.

Many commenters on the BBC story remark how, though Rawicz never made the journey, many prisoners of the gulag certainly did make harrowing treks across Asia, taking years to reach their destinations! Rawicz's children make the point that their father wanted to lay down this amazing tale in order to commemorate "all those whose graves bore no cross, for whom no tears could be shed, for whom no bell was tolled and for those who do not live (or die) in freedom." This is admirable, and for this I give Rawicz props. He has, in fact, told a gripping tale which gives anyone who reads it immediate sympathy for the gulag survivors, and especially those escaped or released but left to make their own way home overland.

However, I really wish the publisher would label this book, say, "a fictionalized amalgam of the heroic journeys made by gulag victims unnumbered and unsung" instead of "True Story." The word "fictionalized" here is important to me, because the author probably did indeed hear tales from other soldiers who had themselves walked through Asia to freedom, but he spins a tale whose particulars really do seem to be impossible. In my opinion, this important omission lessens the impact of an otherwise gripping narrative, and the resulting memorial to those who made these harrowing treks in real life is diminished in the process.

To me, the most heart-touching part of "The Long Walk" is Rawicz's foreword, in which he speaks candidly about his experiences:

"I, like so many, lived for many years with awful nightmares, reliving the past, my mind invaded as if by a tape of endless, awesome experiences. I grew bitter, silent, and even more restless than the restlessness of my youth. I could not sleep or relax, and sometimes I wandered unconsciously for days from my home for no reason, later to reemerge into reality once more.... I hope The Long Walk will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves. I had to tell my story as a warning to the living, and as a moral judgment for the greater good."

This much, we know is true.

Skeptics' Circle 99!

Hey, look! The NINETY-NINTH Skeptics' Circle is up over at Ferret's Cage!!!

All hail the Ferret King!

GOOD MORNING!

"And what a looooooooooove-ly morning!"

Fireworks

I knew Obama passed the 270 mark before I even saw it on my computer. Seconds before MSNBC called the race, fireworks began blasting off all over my city! It's incredible. I have never witnessed a presidential election where this much excitement and-- yes, I'll say it-- HOPE was palpable in everyone. It's about time we had a President who INSPIRES people.

And for goodness sake, how awesome is it that we'll be hearing that rich baritone delivering State of the Union addresses?!

Going to bed now, a happier woman!

Super Tuesday in the USA!

Voting-- it's a right, a privilege, and a TOTAL TURN-ON!!! Go do it. ;)

UPDATE: THE VOTE, it has BEEN CAST!!! Civic responsibility is so HAWT.

Saturday (Sunday) Recipe: Perky Gingerbread Cookies!!!

Oooooooooooh, gingerbread, how I love thee! Is it the warm spiciness, the molasses-y richness, or the velvety sweetness that makes Autumn = Gingerbread in my mind? Who knows, but as a seasonal association it is unrivaled in my brain!

Originally I got this recipe from The Food Network site, whereupon (in 2001, at least-- as of writing this post the Food Network server isn't speaking to mine, so I can't tell if the recipe's still online) it is entitled "Ginger Munchkins" and credited to Linda Bailey. Well... there is some peculiar pathology at work in my genome which makes me CLINICALLY INCAPABLE of following a recipe as written. So the first time I ever made gingerbread, without ever having made this recipe, I modified it in mid-flight.

You see, I was working toward a VISION. My vision was to try to duplicate THE BEST GINGERBREAD COOKIES I HAD EVER HAD, which were shared with me by a co-worker whose wife and four-year-old had made them. They were soooooooo molassessy that they were close to black! Yet ever-so-moist! And you could really, REALLY taste the spices that went into it. It was like Chai in cookie form!!! I was in love. But alas, no recipe could be gotten from the wife-- the four-year-old was just dumping stuff in, and she was going along for the wild ride, and the result just happened to be AMAZING! This told me two things-- first, that gingerbread is a VERY forgiving medium and I probably had a lot of lattitude for experimenting; and second, that normal, non-four-year-old bakers do not put in enough molasses and spice for my personal taste! Thus did I modify, and thus have I baked ever since:

Perky Gingerbread:

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking soda
2 TBSPS ground ginger
1 TBSP cinnamon
3 tsps nutmeg
1 1/2 TBSPS ground cardamom (called the "Queen of Spices," and for good reason! :))
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups molasses
2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons hot water
1 large egg at room temperature

1) In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves, allspice, and salt. Set aside. (Warning for the kitchen-challenged: DO NOT ADD THE SUGAR!!! That's the part where I always screw up because I think all dry ingredients ought to go into the bowl together, but oh no!)

2) In a small saucepan, heat the molasses until it begins to boil. Remove from heat and gradually add the butter. Add the sugar, then the water. Stir in egg, blending completely.

3) In the flour-mixture, make a well in the middle and pour in the molasses mixture. Blend completely.

4) Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. Do not overknead. Because of all the molasses, it will be a bit soft and runny. (Cue John Cleese's line from "The Cheese Shop" sketch.)

5) Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate OVERNIGHT. (I find it best to quarter the dough and wrap each quarter separately, because the dough is going to become rock-hard overnight by morning and it will be FAR easier to roll out in the smaller quantities.)

The next day-- the fun part!!!

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2) Lightly oil cookie sheet.

3) On a lightly-floured surface, roll out one segment of the dough to about 1/8- to 1/4-inch thickness.

4) Cut out the cookie-shapes and place them on the cookie sheet at least 1/2-inch apart.

5) Pop 'em in the oven, bake 'em until they rise (8 to 10 minutes), cool on a rack, and decorate with this awesome homemade ROYAL ICING!!!


Royal Icing:

2 3/4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
3 large egg whites at room temperature*
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Mix at high speed until thick and shiny. Have fun decorating! :)

(*RAW EGG WARNING. "The American Egg Board states: There have been warnings against raw or lightly cooked eggs on the grounds that the egg may be contaminated with Salmonella.... Use only properly refrigerated, clean, sound-shelled, fresh, grade AA or A eggs. Avoid mixing yolks and whites with the shell." I choose to take the risk because OMG YUMMY!!! But, because I am a freak, I wash the eggs with soap before I crack them. I do not know if this does any good whatsoever.)

PERKY NOTES:

1) Because I am STILL a pathological freak, I find myself tossing more of any given spice in as the mood hits me. Specifically, the sight of the dark powder of the cloves and the allspice on the beige expanse of the flour-spice-mixture tends to drive me SPICE MAD, and I end up flinging a whole teaspoon of cloves and a TABLESPOON of allspice in there, omg!!!!!!! Also... the SUBLIME SCENT of cardamom drives me into spice-madness as well. Soon after baking, I try to navigate interstellar space. The above recipe reflects what perhaps is a more reasonable quantity.

2) My report on last night's near-debacle is that I tried, in a FIT of MOLASSES-MADNESS, to use 3 cups instead of 2. I got a liquidy, cake-batter-like substance unsuitable for cookie dough! So I added another cup of flour and a little more water, stirred it well, and poured the whole gloppy result into my largest rectangular glass baking pan!!! I baked it at 350 degrees for FIFTY MINUTES and got a molasses-gingerbread CAKE for my troubles! The family tasted it this morning, and reported it DELICIOUS! Huzzah!!!!

What have I learned from this experience? Probably not enough to restrain my next gingerbread-induced fit of off-recipe madness, alas. ;)

Slight change in plans...

Omg, the Saturday Recipe has gone awry!!! STAY TUNED, because I'm trying a workaround... I'll give you the Family Verdict once it cools off....

I'M ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT HERE!!! :)