The Perky Skeptic

How To Make A Geek Girl Cry

2009-06-27T15:26:00.004-05:00

Being chronically behind the rest of the world, I just now watched the last three episodes of Doctor Who, Season 3. I sobbed like a baby at intervals throughout, but especially at the SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER. I never thought I would cry at the SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER, but I did.

Damn you, xkcd!!!!!

2009-06-25T09:26:00.003-05:00

So...

I had to do WAYyyyyyy too much research to get the joke, there-- meaning exactly the right amount to make me happy, because I am a huge nerd. And it was so worth it. Because now it is my FAVORITE COMIC EVER, and I want a huge poster of it to put on my wall, as it is simply my favorite take on a zombie apocalypse EVER, and NOW I AM OBSESSED WITH FIGURING OUT MY OWN ERDOS NUMBER!!!!!! It's going to be quite huge, I suspect. ;)

Also, how to pronounce that name. I'm not typing it correctly here, 'cause I dunno how to get Blogger to do a Hungarian umlaut over the o, which looks like two forward-slashes. Hungarian is a tricky language for the non-native speaker. Found this page LOADED with soundfiles, though! :) While this page says it's a lot like "air-dish," but this one indicates it's closer to "err-desh," as in "to err is human" and of course, the Hungarian speakers would use a gently-rolled 'r' on the "err," which, as the Google Answers page points out, is really hard for an American to do without making the rolled 'r' into an extra syllable!

What I'm curious about is how people in the mathematics community habitually pronounce it-- mathematicians, being notoriously nerdy and detail-oriented (and I say that with all the reverence of one who ASPIRES to that level! :)). I mean, MY GOODNESS, if I were to confront the Zombie Erdos and ask him to sign a paper, I WANT TO KNOW I'M SAYING HIS NAME RIGHT!!!!!!!!

Art: It's a dangerous business!

2009-06-24T18:27:00.003-05:00

Eeee, I can't believe it has been a MONTH since my last entry, gahhhah! I got swamped with art assignment. Which is a good thing! But also, YOWZA, what a tight deadline-- I got given one month to get it all done! ...Er, which is the same time for which I did not blog-- non-coincidentally, I think! :)

Art is not an easy profession. You sit on your butt for HOURS on end staring into a computer (HOW is this different from blogging, again? :D), obsessing over tiny details (perfect job for me), and toward the end of the project I was putting in 18-hour days, and one twenty-hour day. The latter broke my brain a bit, but I'm recovering, mainly with the ol' "hair o' the dog" cure, meaning coffee and lots of it. (Am I the only one who drinks hot coffee in this weather? According to the baristas in my neighborhood, yes. Yes, I am.) Coffee used to make my hands shake so that I couldn't ink when I'd had too much. I solved that problem by replacing all my blood with coffee and just drinking hemoglobin now and again! (Why, yes, I AM still a bit punchy from my long sleepless week, why do you ask?)

Do not ask me how much my pay for such projects typically translates into hourly earnings. No, really. Don't ask. I don't want to weep. No, we artists, especially in the gaming industry, definitely do it for the love. Of sitting on our butts for hours on end staring into a computer. Which is something I believe everyone here can relate to. HA-cha-cha!!!

Best of all, my contract for this set of pieces has me under a non-disclosure agreement forbidding me to talk specifically about the project for five years from date of signature! This amuses me greatly, as to the best of my knowledge, the book is due for release in AUGUST. Ahhhhh, gotta love lawyers! :)

I haven't had much skepticky content on the blog lately, though while I did the art, I listened obsessively to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcasts! Wherein I learned that sitting still for many hours on end, such as on long plane flights or, I dunno, staring at a computer for hours on end, may put one at higher risk for blood clots, yay! (Here's the press release for the actual research.)

The best thing I took away from this month's listening?-- Get up and stretch, or at least flex your calves. :)

Why, yes, I HAVE fallen off the face of the planet! The view's nice.

2009-05-21T09:41:00.002-05:00

Ever since I was a kid, I have done this thing whereby I get nervous about something-- usually something interrupts my routine-- and it takes me forever to kind of recover myself. For a small instance, we had an internet outage when an electrical storm fried our modem, and I got so far behind on Scienceblogs that I just couldn't face reading them for a while. For a big instance, my child is about to be out of school for the summer. O.O ParalysisMENTALCOMAzomgGAHHHHHHH

Now that I've had time to stress out about it, come to grips with the no-summer-school thing, and settle into it, I find I'm really looking forward to it! He and I are going to be summer buddies! :) We're going to make ourselves a summer schedule. Instead of hopping in the car to go to school at 7:30 every morning, we're going to walk to the deli for breakfast, then hike around the neighborhood! Then we'll read books, then write. Then some TV and arm-flapping time, while I make lunch! After lunch, then some math. Then OUTSIDE to play in the yard!!! If there's any Special Thing planned (on certain days we have our Things We Do, like a trip to Citgo on Fridays, and Wednesday Farmer's Market, for instance) we'll do that stuff in the afternoons too.

It is going to be cool and awesome, and I can't wait to spend the summer with my cool and awesome child!

Birthday update, or, Candy Saves The World!

2009-04-28T11:07:00.005-05:00

My day of cake-bakery very nearly turned into an episode of I Love Lucy.

Up until now, I had been mixing all my cake batter (from a mix) and cookie dough and homemade icing by hand, using a wooden spoon twirled between my palms. But, as this was my first cake-from-scratch, I got a little electric mixer.

This was the first time I've used an electric mixer since, er, ever.

The thing does not have a speed which I would characterize as "Slow."

As far as I can tell, its settings start off at "Fast," move on from "OMG" to "WTF," and culminate in AAAAAAHHHHHH RICKYYYYYYYYYYY!!!"

So of course as soon as I started beating the dry ingredients into the sugar-butter, THE FLOUR STARTED FLYING!!! My kitchen was enmisted in a fine white powder! And not the kind with street value! Visibility was down to one foot!!! COULD I make it through to the Batter Side??? Would there be any batter left in the bowl when I was done???

The answer was Yes!!! Batter was achieved! Cake was accomplished!!! And it did, in fact, look like something approaching a castle!... if a castle had been somehow left in the same pasture with the Great Ziggurat of Ur when it was in heat. But no archaeologists were on the scene to complain.

The frosting process got a little sticky (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...*sigh*)-- the hot temperatures and high humidity didn't allow the buttercream to do anything but look blobby. So I ended up cementing the whole castle shape together with royal icing made with an extra egg white and liberal cream of tartar, then when the structure dried I just spackled on the frosting like adobe. (If you're paying attention, now we've got a Mediaeval Castle/Mesopotamian Ziggurat/Adobe Mud-hut.) Since the stuff was too liquidy to do any fine detailing, I made it look more building-like by using candy. Red Twizzler architectural detailing, Dots for the battlements, and Whoppers around the rim like so much insanely boulderlike landscaping. And, not too bad a look, as it turned out! Wonderful Son was pleased, and that was what counted. :) He got to put the final dots on the towers, and that made his day.

Pictures were taken!!! As soon as I quit being lazy I will put one up. The party was fun, the kids played without getting horribly taxed and worn out, and a good time was had by all. This was the most fun birthday party yet, and as the kids get older, I think they're just going to get better and better. :)

There are days when being a parent is like being one of those people who voluntarily sleeps on nails and walks through burning coals. Then there are days like this, when everything was sunshine, cake, and presents. For me, the company of fun adults and happy, awesome, interesting kids was the best present, ever.

Once more, into the breach!-- with cupcakes.

2009-04-23T09:34:00.002-05:00

I... am not a good cook.

Oh there are some things I have learned to do well. But, when it comes right down to it, cooking scaaaaares me. There's this HOT thing that can BURN me!!! And I have to go NEAR it! On purpose!!! It's just WACKY MADNESS, I tell you!!!!! :D

Once I get a recipe or method I like, though, I find I enjoy it. I love, love love cooking curries, for instance! There's all this fiddly little obsessive-compulsive stuff I can do with my hands, like peeling garlic cloves, separating coriander stalks from the leaves, adjusting spice ratios and such. There's a lot for an Aspie to love about this-- once one gets acclimated. :) Personally, until I am acclimated to a task, I always go into it with copious anxiety... which sounds like a dreadful way to go through life, but actually, it kind of turns extremely mundane aspects of life into this HUGE ADVENTURE, so, it's pretty fun on balance. :) OMG DOING DISHES!!! OMGLAUNDRY!!!! See, I can confess this to the blogosphere-- I would not tell people face-to-face what a HUGE DRAMAFEST I find daily life tasks to be, because it is silly and embarrassing. But it is also my SECRET GUILTY PLEASURE! MY ENTIRE LIFE IS SEEKRIT OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY!!! :D :D :D

:ahem: Anyway.

Today's adventure: OMGBAKING!!!

Baking and I have a checquered history. There are so many things that can go wrong when one bakes, and I think I have discovered just about all of them. Shockingly, I am awesome in a chemistry lab, though, so learning more about food chemistry has helped! Now I can view baking rationally as a BIG HUGE ACID-BASE REACTION in my STOVE where the object is to produce zomgBUBBLES!!! so that the cake RISES and is FLUFFY and not all masonrylike and flat like my first cake turned out. (Oh, yes, I managed to screw up a CAKE MIX. That took supreme inattention, yes yes!)

I have since learned not to screw up cake mixes, huzzah! So now the next step-- what's on tap for today is my first-ever scratch-made cake. I have made cookies from scratch, so I think I'm up to the challenge.

The recipe: Yogurt Sponge Cake from this book called Birthday Cakes from Love Food (R), an imprint of Paragon Books Ltd, 2007. Recipes by Oliver Trific, which is just the best name ever and cannot POSSIBLY be his real name and if it IS, OMG!!! Best name ever.

I am going to use this recipe in an attempt to make 18 cupcakes. Wish me luck. I'M GOIN' IN!!!

(:runs into kitchen yelling battle-cry while waving cookbook overhead:)

Random Numbers

2009-04-21T10:22:00.003-05:00

Number of miles walked it takes to kill a panic attack (for me): 3

Number of cupcakes which must be baked by Friday (by me): 4 dozen

Number of paintings needing to be painted in order for me to feel I've accomplished something in my life: 1 more than I've currently painted, as always.

Big Mama is watching you!

2009-04-14T17:07:00.001-05:00

Wonderful Son has gotten the idea that we are watching his classroom via YouTube. :)

Some things on my mind today

2009-04-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

1. How do you tell the difference between a genuine bipolar "I'm starting to mood cycle again so pls adjust my medication, kthx" and "I'm under a lot of stress and being an asshole about it, I need to suck it up and cope" ?

I've been suspecting the former, but the more I think about it, and the more I took in a prescription-strength dose of Sunshine, Fresh Air and Exercise today, I really think it may be the latter.

In which case, my 'prescription plan' is certainly helping. It never fails to amaze me how much more bearable everything seems when copious amounts of sunshine, fresh air and exercise are in the picture. It makes me wonder how much of human well being, nay, even human CULTURE, is due to endorphins. Just feeling your body MOVE, feeling the raw physical CAPABILITY in your sinews and blood and bones, it's pure magic, and it seems to me that nothing will acquaint you with yourself faster. I wonder how much of the total low self-esteem or "I gotta go FIND MYSELF" in the world is due to not enough time spent getting one's body up and moving. It is so easy to get lost in thoughts and worries... just being purely present in PHYSICAL EXERTION is such a relief!

Also, it's a great help in recognizing that a diagnosed disorder is no excuse for being an asshole. It's part of the social contract we humans forge that we all have to learn to cope with our baggage enough to be nice to one another in social situations. This includes not snapping at Spouse and Child when they talk at you at the same time. ;)

2. My blood test results came back. They were all right, but not what I was hoping for. I wanted to see my total serum cholesterol drop 45 points. It didn't. It did, however, drop 20 points. I need to remember that. It's an accomplishment, and I shouldn't beat myself up over it not being a HUGE accomplishment.

So after a brief period of whining, punctuated by the consumption of a few Easter candies, I decided I need to see this as not the end of the four months of lifestyle changes, but rather as the beginning of the next four months. I lost sixteen lbs. over the last four months and am capable of walking much greater distances without my feet blistering up.

3. If there are two slices of leftover pizza in the house, and you've already eaten one of them, the surest way NOT to eat the other is to get the hell out and take a long walk and reward self with black coffee. :) I call this the Perky Theorem of Pizza (Non-)Consumption.

4. Generation Rescue is jerks. Thanks to awesome Science-Based Medicine and to various awesome Sciencebloggers for handling the debunking. Gives me the will to live. And the energy. From not having to wade through all the GR garbage myself.

DESSERT OF GODLESSNESS!!!

2009-04-11T09:08:00.003-05:00

So, according to my internet pal The Advice Goddess, the Pope gave a Good Friday speech that evokes some pretty powerful imagery! BEWARE the rise of Secularism, mah peeps, 'cause you may get stranded in the... DESERT OF GODLESSNESS!!! Oooooh, just like the Israelites in teh bible but 'cept without the manna!!! Or was it matzoh? 'Cause I'd just as soon eat sand. (HAhaha, ok, just kidding. Like many non-Jews, I ADORE matzoh with a passion and have been known to eat a whole box of the crackers myself, denying it to wailing infants beneath my feet like the baby-eating atheists of myth and legend... er, or something like that.)

What the Pope really means, of course, is that we should all BEWARE the RATIONAL THINKING, lest the DESERT OF GODLESSNESS subsume the ENTIRE WORLD, just like Kurt Vonnegut's ice-nine!!! Only DESERT!!!! ZOMG, HEAD FOR THE HILLS AND SAY TEH HAIL MARYS!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

Advice Goddess ALSO imagines something lovely... a DESSERT of godlessness! Now THERE'S a concept I can support!!!!

So, let's hear it! Your idea for the perfect DESSERT! OF! GODLESSNESS! Even if you're not an atheist yourself-- let your imagination run wild! After all, I've never been a Christian, but that didn't stop me from crafting an ELABORATE EASTER CARD, lovingly hand-drawn in Number Two Pencil with ALL THE BUNNIES I COULD CRAM INTO SIX SQUARE INCHES to give to my utter best friend in all the world, my bosom-sister... whom my mom informed me does not celebrate Easter. The stunned horror, the OUTRAGE, of my six-year-old self CANNOT be overstated. "But it's the CHOCOLATE BUNNY holiday!!! WHAT KIND OF SICK FREAKS DENY THEIR CHILD CHOCOLATE BUNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES??????"

I very nearly started the Chocolate Bunnies For Jews movement. If only I'd had access to a printing press.

CLEARLY, my perfect Dessert Of Godlessness would involve frolicking chocolate animals. LOTS of them, all living together in peace and harmony and CELEBRATING the CHOCOLATEY GOODNESS of their chocolatey DNA!!! On a... SHEET of GREEN ICING, all piped up to look like grass. OOOH OOOH, and the frolicking chocolate animals would be arranged in clades according to phylogenetics!!! YEAH! And the lines representing the phylogenies would be, um, LICORICE laces! And all the cute little frolicking chocolate animals would include the transitional chocolate forms!!! NO, WAIT! That sheet of green icing is green icing over a SHEET CAKE, a LAYER CAKE with each layer being a geologic stratum, and baked into each layer are the CHOCOLATE FOSSILS of a given geologic era!!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD I HAVE TO MAKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, a pair of genes walk into a bar...

2009-04-09T13:51:00.005-05:00

(Small digression before I even start the post, which has GOT to be a new record-- I have 6 blog followers??? When did THAT happen??? :D Yay, thank you guys for your support! It makes me all the more motivated to keep blogging during a difficult time.)

So, my son, King Of Echolalia, brought home the phrase, "'Cause that's how God made you" from school the other day.

I was a mite concerned. Wonderful Husband and I want to raise our Wonderful Son to think critically, not to mindlessly accept pat, cop-out platitudes as explanations of how and why things are. Also, WS is SO good at imitating voices that I knew exactly which of his class's educational assistants said it. I know her to be a very religiously-minded woman, but I also esteem her as a responsible educator, head and shoulders above SO MANY educational assistants that I have encountered, with classroom sensibilities on a par with trained teachers. This made me wonder what had prompted such a, well, a cop-out response, and one that evoked religion in a public school, no less!

There was some questioning, in the indirect, inductive manner often necessary to prompt ASD kids to remember and cough up the detail you're specifically asking about. I never got it out of him myself, but Wonderful Husband uncovered the root of the matter.

He was asking her WHY he is beige while all of his friends are brown.

I am inescapably reminded of the Steve Martin movie "The Jerk," in which he cries, "YOU MEAN I'M GONNA STAY THIS COLOR???"

He is one of, seriously, five caucasian kids in his large elementary school. He wants to look like Frederick Douglass when he grows up. I hope he isn't getting a complex about his superficial differences. (He should save it for a complex about his GEEKERY, like the rest of us!!!!! KIDDING, kidding.)

Knowing the question really made me understand both the EA's response, and the fact he asked HER, not me. Because if he had asked me, I would have obsessive-compulsively babbled about phenotypes and molecular genetics. The kid is five. He has NO respect or care for things too small for him to see.

So! Since CLEARLY I can't rely on my own lecturing capabilities, and would REALLY super-rather dislodge the "'cause that's how God made you" explanation from his developing mind, can anyone suggest a resource or way of explaining stuff like skin color and eye color and hair color that DOESN'T compel him to reply mid-way with, "Are you done talking yet, Mommy?" :D

A tune for the time

2009-04-02T13:30:00.004-05:00

The name of the song is "God's Gallipoli" by Poi Dog Pondering, and it's been spooling through my head for the past two weeks or more. It's not a happy song; it captures the bittersweetness of life and the all-too-often sucky end of life-- so it pretty much is right on the point of what I've been thinking and feeling since my father's hospitalization. Worse yet, the tune is spectacularly catchy, the lyrics poetry, and the beat is exactly, EXACTLY the pace of my exercise-walk. Thus I cannot get the flippin' song out of my head. So I'm going to inflict it on everyone who reads this in hopes of throwing my callous, officious, heartless exterior into sharp relief.... er, or something. :) On the bright side, I measured my waist at 27 inches yesterday, which I thought I'd never see again. At least I'm channeling all this obsession over death into, um. Leaving a beautiful corpse?

Ok, now I'm just being silly. ;) I've actually been working on getting my cholesterol down into the "Gee, maybe we won't have to medicate you after all" level, as some of you may recall. My followup blood test is in a week, so I will be sure to report! Now that I've been confronted with how strongly stroke runs in my family, I've been triply motivated to eat right and exercise daily, in hopes of selecting a death strategy of (C) Drop dead on the track at age 90 of a heart attack during a 30 mile run.

Yeah, I'm definitely going through the "anger" phase of grief. But there is hope on the horizon for my twos of poor beleaguered readers left! My son's birthday is coming up at the end of the month, and I have planned a cake that will either be AN AWESOME WORK OF ART or ANOTHER CRAP-TACULAR WRECK!!! Hooray!!!! I can't WAIT to see which it will be, myself! :D

"God's Gallipoli" by Poi Dog Pondering

Sloping head bent to the wind as always.
Slugging it out 'til the end, the boxer
going over the top, in God's Gallipoli.

Set me up Joe, body lean but mind obese,
maple angel leaves once shifted in the trees
when light was a truly wondrous thing.
But now they crackle under my feet
like the old life's longings
of sailors once robust
in buttons and coats now just mud and bone
and teeth beneath me.

Grist for star dust, the bone crushing rock of ages.
Cancer took the spring from my lover and gave us forever Autumn.
No thoughtless smoke now, no blind drink.
No idle lunches dreaming of a whole 'nother world of things.
It's down to brass tacks and saline sacks,
Vincristine injections and early detections.

Take me in one swoop God don't let me dwindle.
I watched the light leave my mother's bed-sick eyes.
She's so scared-- once gone, I kissed her cheek,
and the cold of her skin held on my lips.
It's hard to think, "So this is how it ends?"
stretched out on a bed sheet,
sorting through a wreckage of regrets.

Back in the ring now,
with eye held just high enough to see the prize.
Head bend forward at hip into wind as always.

Slugging it out 'til the end, the boxer.
Going over the top, in God's Gallipoli.

You know the thing that haunts me the most
are all those crystalline moments,
where adrenalin and light filled my belly and head.

And the moon winked as if to say yes.
And I ran in the cold night and sweated and it felt good.
And I could hit the nail on the head
and drive that fucker home.

Going over the top, in God's Gallipoli...

I'm so mad I'm gonna blog about it!

2009-03-18T16:11:00.005-05:00

Greetings XXXXXXXX,

I talked with your father yesterday.

He has given permission to organize a healing.

The target date he and I have agreed on is the 22nd. A master number. This should give each of us enough time to prepare and organize our thoughts.

Here is Wikipedia definition of a stroke "A stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain function(s) due to a disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia (lack of blood supply) caused by thrombosis or embolism or due to a hemorrhage. As a result, the affected area of the brain is unable to function, leading to inability to move one or more limbs on one side of the body, inability to understand or formulate speech or inability to see one side of the visual field. "

We need to reestablish the flow of blood to the affected areas of the brain and also repair the damage that has been done. John's stroke is the result of a hemorrhage, resulting in bleeding in the brain.

Do we need to wait to the 22nd? No. I would just like to make sure we are all working together at that time for the greatest effect.

I would encourage the participation of everyone possible.

Take care,
XXXX

Right, so THAT was an email that greeted me in my inbox this morning, written by one of my father's well-meaning idiot friends.

THIS is what I grew up with. THIS is the big solution to all life's problems from the woo-woo crowd-- "Let's think really hard about it to make it better!" THIS is what they feel the need to INFLICT upon me now that my father is facing some serious end-of-life issues. (He is not living with me or with my brother, btw-- he's still in a hospital in another state, and he will have to be moved to a facility with round-the-clock care when he is discharged. There is NO good solution at this point. All our options are bad.)

I deleted the email, but then I fished it out of my trash JUST so I could shout my reply into the blogosphere:

Dear XXXX,

Let me ask you this-- if a "Healing" actually worked, why does ANYONE ever die? Doesn't EVERYONE wish really hard for their loved ones to recover? Why, specifically, would my father, who seems to have a cultlike following in you and your fellow well-meaning idiots, be experiencing all these issues? You think he hasn't EXTENSIVELY studied and practiced your Newage "healing" crap modalities for, oh, NEARLY SIXTY YEARS??? You think L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley are still alive? How about any of the ancient Egyptians and Chinese mystics you lifted your rituals from? Oh, wait, I forgot-- life expectancy was only about 40 years in those days and modern medicine has already DOUBLED it. Got news for you-- my father's sick because he didn't manage his diabetes for 30 years and his body is giving out as a result. It's simple biology. In further news, death comes for us all, with or without the cruel and false hope these lame-ass "Healings" bring the gullible.

Fucking spare me.

Please don't email me again,
That's Ms. XXXXXXXX to you.

EDIT: No, of course I didn't email the guy this! That would be rude.

Life is fragile

2009-03-12T14:19:00.002-05:00

I am really sorry for the blog slowdown. It has been extremely hectic here. Worse than hectic, actually-- my father has had several acute health episodes in the past two weeks that have made it impossible for him to live by himself anymore. I remember these kind of events happening with my great uncle, and it leads me to suspect we don't have a whole lot of time left with my father.

My father is a very flawed individual. It was he who led me to skepticism-- through the roundabout path of my experiencing the Woo end of the pool firsthand and deciding to climb out and dry off. But because of his health, I'm not going to blog about the woofulness of my family until further notice. This is not something I do lightly, because I think you all know how strongly I feel about the dangers of falling for pseudoscience, etc. But I cannot risk writing anything that he might accidentally come across in his condition. For all his flaws, I know he loves me. There doesn't need to be any kind of heartbreaking confrontation over beliefs to darken whatever time we have left together.

I'm not going to shut down the blog or anything, though you can all see that one of my stress responses is to avoid reaching out on the web, lol. I will be writing about other things, though. Autism woo will continue to be attacked, as will anything else that makes The Perky Skeptic's coffee cup steam. Until I get rolling again, though, I hope you'll all take a moment to hug a family member. Life is too damn short.

Special shout-out to PalMD at White Coat Underground, whose post shook me loose from my lost-in-thoughtness enough to verbalize some of this. It's a great read.

Valentine Party Update

2009-03-02T09:45:00.005-06:00

I'm doing that thing where I avoid stuff again. Argh. This time it's due to sleep deprivation. Bleh. Perky, grumpy Skeptic not getting enough sleep!

ANYWAY! :) On to UN-avoiding some stuff-- like BLOG UPDATES!!!

February was a big month in the Perky Household. LOTS of kid activities and parental stress! But it's all done, and it all went well!!! So, I am emotionally recovering from the rollercoaster, LOL!

The first Big Worrisome Event was The VALENTINE'S DAY PARTY at my son's class! I was asked to do an approximately fifteen-minute crafts project with the kids-- not so easy, because they range in functionality from full-blown inability to participate to Asperger, and the crafts portion of the party was at 3:00 in the afternoon (which is exactly the time when anyone with a touch of autism starts to feel REALLY WONKY), and at 2:30 the kids had gotten loaded up with chocolates, frosted sugar cookies with sprinkles, fruit punch, lollipops, candy hearts and CUPCAKES AS FAR AS THE EYE COULD SEEeeeeeeeeeee! --I'd like everyone to take a moment to picture the scene. Yeeeeesssss. :)

So, I had decided, thanks to some suggestions from Cyberlizard and other friends, to deploy paper doily hearts and rubber stamps! In preparation, I cut and glued a backing of heart-shaped blue construction paper to each doily. Then for enhanced tactile-ness, I bought some red sheets of that sticky-backed craft foam that you can cut in shapes and stick, and I cut large red hearts out of it. My final prep was to buy stamp-pads pre-inked with WASHABLE ink. ;) So, all the kids had to do was peel the paper off the big red hearts and stick them onto the construction-paper-backed heart-shaped doilies, and then we would rubber-stamp happy valentine decorations onto the big red heart! I made a Sample Valentine to show the kids what the finished effect would be, and to assure myself that this entire project wasn't ill-thought-out and impossible. ;)

After the VALENTINE CAKE AND CANDY ORGY, Mr. H announced me to the class (they all know me, but this is the first time I had ever done a project with them). The class was anything BUT ready to give me their undivided attention. They were all really happy, but EB had wandered over to the bookshelf and was rocking. P was at the table, but she had zoned out. T was at the table but inattentive. My own Wonderful Son was bouncing in place and flapping. ET had sat down at the table but was on the verge of fighting with S over a foam-rubber letter B. So the first thing I did was gently extricate the B and say, "I've got something you can each hold in your hands!" and gave them each a foam-rubber heart. ET was less than enthralled, but it sufficed. Then I handed out the backed doilies-- more interest! Pulling the backing off the hearts to stick them onto the doilies was practically a project in itself, and it was tackled with gusto by all. But when I unveiled the rubber stamps, that's when they REALLY got interested!!!

THINGS TO TOUCH!!! THINGS WITH LETTERS! AND NUMBERS!! AND WORDS!!! AND PICTURES!!!!! One of the more generally unresponsive kids actually came over to the front of the table and began methodically stamping every square inch of his red heart, as happy as a clam! My son saw the letters and IMMEDIATELY asked, "May I have a D-A-D?" :) :) :) Everyone seemed to enjoy it; even P seemed to enjoy watching. EB was content to rock, and I had no problem letting him. S got super-hyper when he learned the stamps would put pictures on human skin. Yes, thank goodness for washable ink! S asked everyone if they wanted a stamp, and he gave out many stamp-tattoos. This was soon insufficient, and S became a STAMP-NINJA, stealing every opportunity to stamp his classmates! T (who is the biggest eight-year-old I have EVER SEEN) did not appreciate this, and gave S a shove. S was undeterred, so we had to separate them when T whirled S around and stamped "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!" on the back of his shirt. (I admit, I could not help but chuckle.)

Then the rubber aspect of the rubber stamps was noted, and T started flinging the stamps around the room to watch them bounce-- which they did... really well. It was kind of fascinating, really. Wonderful Son went back to flapping while bouncing in place, and ET got cantankerous and kept trying to take stuff other kids were using. But by this time, everyone had made their valentine, and it was time to go home! WHEE!!! Perfect timing on all counts, really. ;) The kids even helped me pick up all the stamps and put them back in the box, and would you believe, EVERY single letter made it back home!

It was a great time, and fun was had by all-- which is, after all, the point!

Ok, I lied...

2009-02-24T15:12:00.002-06:00

... I did not write the update today. I spent my morning writing a lullaby based on the Fibonacci sequence. It's very soothing and restful. Just the thing for lulling a baby to sleep and edifying at the same time.

"Fibonacci Lullaby"

Oh, zero plus one is one,
One plus one is two,
One plus two is three,
And two plus three is five.

Now three plus five is eight of course
And five plus eight is thirteen,
And going back where it's begun,
Eight plus thirteen's twenty-one.

Thirteen plus twenty-one is thirty-four,
Twenty-one plus thirty-four is fifty-five.
Thir-ty-fourrr plus fif-ty-five
Makes a most magnificent eighty-nine.

Add fifty-five to eighty-nine
And you get one hundred forty-four.
That is the same as the square of twelve
Or two-to-the-seventh plus two-to-the-fourth!
(Yes, that is the same,
That is the same,
Two-to-the-seventh plus two-to-the-fourth!)

Eighty-nine plus one hundred forty-four
Is two-hundred thirty-three.
Fibonacci thir-ir-teen's a
Full reptend prime in base b!

Now one hundred forty-four plus two-thirty-three
Is three hundred seventy-seven!
And this is the product of two primes,
So I'm in number heaven!!!

So we take three hundred seventy-seven,
Add it to two-three three,
That gives us a win, six hundred ten,
To hang upon our number tree.

Three-seven-seven plus six hundred ten
Is nine-eighty-seven of course,
And six-ten plus nine hundred eighty-seven
Is a fifteen-ninety-seven tour de force.
(Yes, that is a tour-,
That is a tour-,
That's a numerical tour de force!)

{Librettist's Note: This next part really works better in Barbershop Quartet style-- maybe with a brass band behind you.}

Nine-hundred-eighty-seven
Plus fifteen-ninety-seven
Is two thousand five-eight-fourrrrrr--
And One-five-nine-seven
Plus two-five-eight-four
Is four-thousand-one-hundred-eighty-one
(-eighty-one!)
Forty-one-eighty-one, how we all adore!!!

Two thousand five hundred eighty-four
Plus four-thousand-one-hundred-eighty-one
Equals SIX-thousand-SEVEN-hundred-SIX-tyyyy-FIIIIIIVE,
(-sixxxxtyyyyyyfiiiiiiive...)
And THAT is the end,
THAT is the end,
That is the END of this number jive!

Quick update! With lots of exclamation points!!!

2009-02-23T19:34:00.003-06:00

Hi there! Yes, I still live! I lived through the stressful stuff, and in fact had a great time at it all, and so did my son! Whee!!! I will blog about it all probably tomorrow morning, and catch everyone up who happened to be CLUTCHING their mouse with white knuckles, BREATH ABATED, to hear how the Valentine party crafts project OF DOOM turned out, how long does a major publishing corp take to pay up when one foolishly neglects to put said company's purchase order number on one's invoice, and just what the heck does a Developmental Pediatrician DO, anyway????

Answers to these questions and MANY, MANY MORE that no one ever asked are coming up tomorrow... same perky time, same perky channel!

"I Wanna Be Vaccinated:" A silly filk on the Autism Omnibus results

2009-02-15T13:11:00.005-06:00

I'm a bit late in trumpeting the results of the Autism Omnibus hearings. This is truly a milestone result in the fight for public health, and a blow to those who would promote infectious diseases over social responsibility, using autism as the bogey-man for their misguided fearmongering over the safety of vaccines. Other bloggers on my blogroll have made SO much more intelligent commentary than I am capable of during this Time Of Melodramatic Overwhelmedness. So I wrote a silly filk instead! :D With all due apologies to the Ramones and to the scansion, to the tune of "I Wanna Be Sedated":

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours ago--
I wanna be vaccinated!
Autism Omnibus dissed Cedillo-o-oh--
I wanna be vaccinated!
Just get me to the doctor, get me all my shots,
Hurry hurry hurry, I think I'm gonna plotz!
'Cause court just ruled them safe and I don't want measles spots,
Oh no no no no no!

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours ago,
I wanna be vaccinated!
Get herd immunity up to nine-o-o-oh,
I wanna be vaccinated!
I'll get the MMR, I'll ask for it by name,
Hurry hurry hurry, it won't make me insane!
I don't need no chelation, vaccines don't hurt my brain!
Oh no no no no no!

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours for me,
Then I'll be vaccinated!
Varicella, TDaP, and Heps A and B,
I wanna be vaccinated!
I won't be in a wheelchair, I don't want polio,
Now I know those jabs will not make me loco,
I don't want influenza added to my woes,
Oh no no no no no!

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours ago,
I wanna be vaccinated!
Deer caught Wakefield fudging results, oh-oh-oh,
I wanna be vaccinated!
Somebody call the media, I'll get 'em on TV!
Hurry hurry hurry, I want you all to see!
Take THAT, David Kirby and Jenny McCarthy!
Ho ho ho ho ho ho!

Jab jab jab-jab ja-jab jab jab-jab, I wanna be vaccinated!
Jab jab jab-jab ja-jab jab jab-jab, I wanna be vaccinated!
Jab jab jab-jab ja-jab jab jab-jab, I wanna be vaccinated!
Jab jab jab-jab ja-jab jab jab-jab, I wanna be vaccinated!

Brains are funny and often ridiculous things...

2009-02-13T09:50:00.003-06:00

Ok, I've realized that I've been accidentally taking a blog-break this past week, and it's because for the past two weeks I have been ultra-stressed, to the point of feeling needles and pins on my ultra-tense skin. My heart is racing for no apparent reason, and I'm a frazzled ball of raw nerve.

I'm not always good at recognizing the underlying causes of my emotional states. I'm usually pretty ok at addressing them once I recognize them, but jeez louise, it's often a major archaeological excavation to tease out the underlying cause from the cluster*&#$ of my overwhelmedness.

The thing that makes me teeter on the brink of insanity the fastest is when my son is in trouble. He's had what I'd like to euphemistically refer to as a Growth Week for the past... three weeks, I think. ;) He's been copying the behaviors of the more-autistic kids, been seeking comfort a lot more, and also being disobedient and disrespectful. No health issues that we can identify-- he often does stuff like that before he gets sick. Though recently we realized he's having subtle allergy symptoms (skin rash, watery itchy eyes) rather than the usual sneezing, and administering children's Claritin over the past few days has REALLY seemed to turn his mood around. He, like me, is a puzzle who has a hard time identifying the sources of his moods and discomforts. Parenting is detective work, and parenting a kid with Asperger's doubly so. Triply so if you also happen to be an Aspie yourself.

Anyway, the reason all this has caused my nerves to hit PANIC is that B's first appointment with a developmental pediatrician is coming up in ONE WEEK, and they sent us a HUGE SHEAF of paperwork to fill out, and I have been PARALYZED by all those forms. Absolutely petrified. Because they ask me all these questions about my child and what if I answer them wrong or address the wrong point as I tend to focus on inconsequentials and miss the big issues half the time and it's MY BABY'S WELFARE THAT IS AT STAKE HERE AND WHAT IF I SCREW UP HIS LIFE, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!

And people ask me if I'm going to have more than one child. Pff! I would spontaneously combust if I had to worry about TWO!

The way I finally figured out what's wrong with me is that we got an appointment reminder phone call last night, and I had a panic attack so badly I just went into complete denial mode and didn't even tell my husband we got the call (Hi, honey! :)). He was seeing to the bathing of our child at the time and didn't hear the phone.

The other stupid thing is that while I've been avoiding the doctor paperwork, I've also been avoiding the contract paperwork for an art project I ALREADY DID, and ALL I HAVE TO DO is sign the contract, mail it, and get paid! BUT OMG LOOKING AT PAPERWORK MIGHT MEAN THE PEDIATRICIAN FORMS WILL EAT ME, ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So all the past weeks I didn't talk about it even when my husband asked if there was anything he could do to help me. All last night I didn't talk about it. All this morning I didn't even talk about it, even though the subject of my signing forms and getting paid so we can pay our gas bill came up. But now I'm quietly sitting at home with a brand-new 1000-piece puzzle to soothe my nerves, and finally I can sort through my own head, and finally I can talk about it.

It's a nice quiet street in an English village, this puzzle. I like puzzles of English villages and English country farmhouses with nice gardens out in front. I have come to realize I'm literally reconstructing my shattered mental abilities when I do those.

And this afternoon I go to my son's class Valentine's Day party and do a crafts project with the kids (the impending nature of which is likewise not helping my nerves). But all is in readiness. I've had a nice walk, a healthy breakfast. Now all I have to do is sip my coffee, and work my puzzle until it's time to go.

And maybe, with Wonderful Husband's help, I'll finally attack that damn paperwork.

If I had no ethics...

2009-02-09T10:13:00.004-06:00

Great news, everybody!!! In response to the economic downturn, I have decided to jump on the alternative health bandwagon and market an Echinacea ointment, to be applied topically to impart ALL the health benefits of ingested Echinacea* to your skin, your first, best line of immunodefense!!!

I'm going to call it...

ECHINO-DERM!!!!!

Pure marketing genius.

_________
* buggering little

No energy? Try eating.

2009-02-08T11:54:00.003-06:00

Losing weight and exercising more is hard. I kind of hate it at the moment.

Again, I would like to seriously hat-tip those folks who have done the awesome work required to lose lots of weight. I am a weenie, needing to drop a scant 24 lbs., some of which I have already shed. But the discipline required is a freakin' PAIN!!! 'Cause not only do you have to monitor yourself to see that you don't eat too much, you also have to monitor yourself to make sure you're eating enough.

So, I started eating less junk. Great! And I started eating smaller portions. Wonderful! And I started exercising more-- two or three miles on the track instead of one. Super! Only now I find myself with NO energy AT ALL. Tired all the time. Weak. Irritable. Angry at the world.

WELLLLLLLL.... I haven't been keeping a proper food diary lately. And, come to discover, I've been STARVING MYSELF. Not good!!! :P So, I need to maintain around 1300 cal/day, and I've slipped down below 1000 cal/day, so, yeah, I THINK I've discovered the source of the "no energy" problem. Like, LITERALLY no energy! Not enough calories to run my life. Dumbass!

This, in turn, makes me feel truly terrible for the chronically hungry. How hard it would be to live your life, to work all day, and to care for children, while having not enough to eat. This world is not fair, and humans need to help each other if we want it to be a better place for all. It makes me wish that all those folks in the EEC who are trying to ban genetically engineered crops would live and work for one month under starvation conditions and see how they like it.

Ok, enough ranting for one day. I hope all is going well for you and yours!

Of chilis and children

2009-02-06T09:48:00.002-06:00

I love love love my little son so much! Yesterday he didn't want to go to the rec center per usual; he wanted to go to the little market and buy produce. :D He picked out some stuff, and we COOKED IT!!! How idyllic is that!!! (Idyllic... wrong word. Pastoral? Er... anyway) He picked out a huge jalapeno pepper with which to spice up our aloo gobi, then picked out all the potatoes while I picked out the tomatoes. I am normally quite the big fat chicken about cooking with fresh hot peppers, preferring the certainty of my 1/2 tsp dose of red cayenne powder. Still, there's nothing like the fresh green flavor of a fresh pepper to liven up a dish, and I knew it wouldn't be very hot since it was so big, so I decided to try it!

My suspicions proved correct when Wonderful Son picked it up and TOOK A BITE OUT OF THE END, ZOMG!!!!!!! I watched him intently, asking, "How is it???" He looked thoughtful, then announced, "Good." WHEW! (It was, of course, spicier toward the stem end, a good chunk of which I excised before cooking).

The dish was delish, and a lovely afternoon was had by all! As mild as that pepper was (for a jalapeno) though, I STILL managed to give my fingertips pepper-burns during prep. I suppose gloves are what the pros use? Or perhaps a larger dose of Deal With It? Anyone with hot pepper experience, please weigh in!

The Bandit Of Love, or, ZOMG MemeTagged!!!

2009-02-04T09:20:00.002-06:00

JLK has stolen a meme from Facebook called "Stupid Mouth Shut" and has tagged me with the contagion of a thousand random iTunes songs!!! ...Ok, twenty-two. Random songs, that is. I am prone to hyperbole this morning.

RULES:
a) Put your MP3 player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
b) For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
c) YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS
d) Tag at least 5 people
e) Everyone tagged has to do the same thing (no they don't, actually)
f) Have Fun! (Step f is not required)

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?
"Blue Christmas" covered by the Del McCoury Band (ROFLOL, I'm so sad :D)

2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
"Leave You Far Behind" by Lunatic Calm (I wanna take you on a roller coaster, I wanna take you right over the line!)

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
"To Whom It May Concern" by Duran Duran

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
"The World Has Turned And Left Me Here" by Weezer (ROFLOL!!! See? SO SAD!!! :D)

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
"Electric Barbarella" by Duran Duran (omgLOL-- yes, of course, how could I not have seen it before? I want to have/be a sexdroid!!!)

6. WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?
"Never Did No Wanderin'" by The Folksmen (ROFLOL-- My mama was the cold North Wind, my daddy was the son....of a railroad man from west of Hell, where the trains don't even run!)

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"Walking On Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox (So true. ;D)

8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"Surf Wax America" by Weezer (I can GUARANTEE this one is untrue, LOL!)

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
"Little Birdie" by The Stanley Brothers (Especially when they're on my roof making their damned woodland creature racket!)

10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?
"Yellow Cab" by M.I.A. (an evasive answer if ever I've heard one!)

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
"Tangled" by Jackie Allen (Hee! My husband is my best friend, so that would be tangled IN THE SHEETS, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... HAHA... HA... hoo.)

12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
"Groove Is In The Heart" by Dee-Lite (Oh YEAH BABY!!! :D)

13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"Relaxation Spa Treatment" by Dan the Automator (...LOL!)

14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"Dark Angel" by Laurie Anderson ( :) :) :))

15. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING? (For the record, it was "Love Song For A Vampire" by Annie Lennox, why yes we ARE big huge geeks, why do you ask?)
"Suckerpin" by Modeselektor (ROFLOL!!!)

16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"I Want To Hold Your Hand" covered by Al Green (Hey, works for me!)

17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
"Sinners And Their Repentances" by Bob Mould (ROFLOL!!!)

18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
"Kiss Me" by Robbie Williams (LOL! "She gave me laughter and hope and a sock in the eye")

19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"Born On a Sunday" by The Art Of Noise (That's right-- my greatest secret is that I'm really Claude Debussy! Suck it, Tchaikovsky!!!)

20. WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?
"Acc-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive" by Johnny Mercer (Oooh, and I AM! :D)

21. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
"Cotton Needs Pickin'" by Ry Cooder (...um...)

22. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
"The Bandit of Love/Cheatin' Waltz" by the Chieftains with Carlene Carter (Aaaaaand I did. :))

So, anyone else want to play? Right now, I'm thinking of:

1. PalMD, to get his mind off his back pain
2. Cyberlizard
3. BabbleOn
4. EvolvedRational, 'cause I reeeeeeally want to know what she keeps on her hard drive! :D
5. My Fair Scientist, who I'm just now getting to know! :)
6. Plants Are the Strangest People
7. Podblack Cat

As always, everyone please feel welcome to play or not, as you like! If you do play and are not on this list, do please leave me a note in the comments so I can come read your results! :)

KIDPARTY!!!

2009-02-02T09:35:00.003-06:00

So, my son got his Very First Ever actual INVITATION to a birthday party! So exciting!! This was his first party that wasn't for a family member or one of the kids of my friends, whom he has grown up around. It was the eighth birthday of one of the boys in his CBIP class, and THE WHOLE CLASS was invited-- so I was resting up, expecting to be assisting at a birthday party with NINE KIDS WITH AUTISM!!! o.O !!!

But, much to my surprise, we were the only ones from the class who showed up. There were lots of kids there-- T comes from a big family, so there were loads of cousins, and a great time was had by all!-- yet I was disappointed. I felt it was my MORAL DUTY to help with the kid-wrangling, and to bring B to celebrate with his friend! It never even occurred to me that other parents of special needs kids wouldn't all rally to the birthday party cause, or not be just as excited as I was to have our kids included in the festivities. That made me wistful... for the five seconds I got to think my own thoughts before being catapulted into the kids' activities, LOL!

The party was at a FAMILY FUN-PLEX!!!!! (-plex, -plex, -plex!)

I am an alien to these things, having shunned them all my life, so I have to describe. :) This was a kind of self-enclosed entertainment arcology with a bowling alley, performing anthropomorphic audioanimatronic animals, a skating rink, an arcade, lazertag, and little-kid area with playground equipment and the balls you jump in and an inflatable bouncy-thing that you jump in. Jeez Louise! I was overstimulated within thirty seconds. But, oddly enough, I grew ACCLIMATED to the freakish noise and fun level (over 9000!!!!)... and was okay within about ten minutes! I actually enjoyed myself! I was expecting to just kind of cope and put on a smiley face for the sake of the kids, but it was actually a pretty great time!

The party didn't try to do too much, which was also a great decision. Clearly, T's parents are no strangers to the concept of kid parties! There were chips and dip for the early part, then the animal-performers got turned on and the kids OF COURSE all got on stage with them, and then they scattered to play on the games and jump in the inflatable jumpy-thing. That latter was the big hit of the party, lemme tell you! The most popular game was the shooting-hoops thingy where you get around 8 basketballs and try to make baskets-- but B and another kid just took a basketball each and dribbled them around on the floor, which was cool too. (I snagged one myself-- and OMG basketball-bouncing is very soothing to overloaded senses!!! Who knew?) Then they had pizza, then played a little more, then the cake was lit, "Happy Birthday" was sung, cake was cut and eaten with ice cream. After the sugar input, the kids scattered again for more jumping, and then the ROLLERSKATING started! :D :D :D Neither T nor B had ever been on skates before but were both game to try. A little girl was determined to lead B around the rink, and she gamely stuck with him, too! It was absolutely, hilariously adorable!

I was SO PROUD of B-- before the party, we had had a little chat about being a good guest, and by golly, he was great!

Here's why I was worried. B is like unto iron filings when confronted with the magnetism of CAKE. But he did well around it! He only asked maybe three times, "Is it time for cake yet?" and even then he only asked me and not the party hosts.

UNTIL.............

Until T's two-year-old cousin leaned over and put his FACE in the cake. Sure enough, B followed suit! Face in cake. Unlike the 2-y-o, who only got a little lick of icing, the freakin' amateur, B is a PROFESSIONAL cake-marauder and got a BIG OL' mouthful! Fortunately, the evidence of child depredation was only on the edge, so the cake was fine for serving, and DOUBLY-fortunately, T's family thought it was HILARIOUS. Whew! They wouldn't even let me clean B off until they had taken pictures, LOL!!!

Being the mom of One Kid, I never understood how anyone can handle more than one. Two would surely crack me like an egg. But seeing these families, all with multiple kids, really made me understand-- when you've got a bunch of 'em, you're just more RELAXED about stuff! I always feel like I have to watch B constantly, make sure he doesn't do something dangerous, run off, or piss off other people, make sure he uses nice manners, etc. Whereas these kids were allowed to run relatively amok-- and yet the world didn't end, everything was ok, everyone had fun. It was an amazingly relaxed time, because I was around an amazingly relaxed bunch of adults! I was really, truly grateful for that.

JQH's Law for arguments with homeopaths

2009-01-30T09:34:00.002-06:00

“Perhaps their homeopathic philosophy suggests to them that any arguments are made more potent if they are greatly diluted with tens of thousands of meaningless words.”

--jaycueaitch, Letting Off Steam

I submit for the internet's consideration that this is the best synopsis of all homeopathic arguments EVER and should henceforth be known as JQH’s Law!

Linkitty-links!!! Skeptic Circle! Skeptical Parent Crossing! Carnival of the Godless!

2009-01-29T13:55:00.003-06:00

The 104th Edition of the Skeptics' Circle is now up over at Space City Skeptics, a blog I have enjoyed since its fabulous inception! Go check it out!

Another great blog carnival, Skeptical Parent Crossing, is up at Skepdad! This is an awesome carnival that I've been privileged to participate in in the past! I always look forward to reading other skeptical parents' writings.

There's a mighty poetic Carnival of the Godless up at Reduce to Common Sense! I'm still reading through all the awesome entries!

GRACIOUS, there's some awesome blogging going on out there!!! I even managed an actual submission to the Skeptics' Circle this time. Clearly I was too busy blogging about squirrels to post much in the way of critical thinking and parenting this month, and also, I haven't been posting as much godlessery. ZIRCON is now my god!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

(Have some more coffee, Perky!)

If I were an astrophysicist...

2009-01-28T17:42:00.003-06:00

... I would just NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP HI5-ING people!!!!!

Why Zircon is AWESOME!!!

2009-01-27T11:10:00.004-06:00

I am reading about the mineral zircon.

ZIRCON!!!!

Sounds like an evil science-villain from a pulp serial, doesn't it! ZIRCON THE DESTROYER, galactic space-emperor!!!! It is not, I found, the same thing as cubic zirconium, the diamond substitute, which is ZnO2, zirconium dioxide. No, the zircon I'm talkin' 'bout is ZrSiO4, zirconium silicate, and apart from the action-adventure name, here's why it's so cool.

Zircon is the oldest known mineral on earth. This is because it is the very first thing to crystallize when molten granitic magma cools to the point where solid crystals are even possible. Then granite forms around the zircon crystals. However, zircon is harder than granite, a 7.5 on the Mohs scale (1 = talc, 7 = quartz, 10 = diamond). Thus this oldest granite part of Earth's first crust eroded away, leaving the zircon crystals to stand as our only relic of the first-ever surface of our planet! Planet Earth's oldest minerals!!! How cool is that???

It gets even better.

We are using a tiny FLECK of zircon crystal from Apollo-freakin'-17 to help us fine-tune date the age of the freakin' MOON!!!

HOW AWESOME IS THAT??? :) :) :)

Here's my utterly sleep-deprived, exercise-sore, underperkilycaffeinated understanding of how it works. Please feel more than welcome to correct me in the comments if I've fluffed it!

To date, our analyzed lunar samples had been from low-lying areas of the moon, which had suffered meteor impacts, and thus the crust had re-melted. Thus, these zircons were younger than the formation of the moon. The fleck, half a millimeter in diameter, which will hence be known as THE FLECK, came from the lunar highlands, and is 4.42 billion years old! That's TWO DECIMAL POINTS, BAYBEE!!!! In geological terms, that's INSANELY precise! We can date it with this degree of precision 'cause zircon crystals often contain uranium, which of course decays into lead at an extremely regular and well-known rate. So you measure the ratio of lead to uranium inside your zircon, and voila! The age of your mineral. The reason we've never done this precise an analysis before is that our technology has advanced considerably since the time the Apollo samples came back. They've got that hoopy frood Alexander Nemchin, who discovered the world's oldest diamond, working on it! :)

The Moon is generally believed to have coalesced out of the debris when a Mars-sized object BASHED into the Earth back when the solar system was still gettin' its shiznit together. KAPOWWWWWW, SPLAT!!!! Ohhhhh the chaos!!! Cats and dogs living together!!! Mass hysteria! So, the Moon cooled off before the Earth did 'cause it's got less mass, and we know about how long it would have taken a Moon-sized glop of magma to cool off enough to form zircon crystals. So the approximate age of the Moon = the age of the oldest zircon we find there + cooling time. NEAT, huh? :)

Finding THE FLECK, this tiny mote, and with our tools of analysis turning it into such a COLOSSUS OF SCIENCE, is hugely exciting to me-- not just in the results, but in the manner in which we get the results! I LOVE IT when huge discoveries come in teeny, tiny packages!!!

It's one small stone for man, and one giant leap for mankind's understanding.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40214/title/Oldest_zircon_fine-tunes_history_of_moons_formation

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16486-moon-sample-contains-oldest-zircon-on-earth.html

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/01/26/2474456.htm?site=science&topic=latest

A skeptical argument for troll-feeding

2009-01-26T10:37:00.006-06:00

Why do I talk to trolls?

I spent some o' my precious time last night feeding a concern troll over on Respectful Insolence. Trolls exist to argue. They only have power if you argue with them, i.e., feed 'em. I've been around the internet block, I know better than to troll-feed... and yet...

Here's the thing. I view troll-feeding as a useful tool in the skeptical arsenal--because I owe much of my skeptical "conversion" to reading skeptics' responses to internet trolls.

Let me back up a bit. Bear with me, won't you, while I take you on a guided tour of how one woman went from innocent technophobe to 83% 4chan. :)

Computers were good for two things, as far as I used to be concerned-- Photoshop, and email. Let's look through my email back then. My dad loves a good conspiracy theory. He used to forward them willy-nilly, without fact-checking, because he "just wants to inform people," claiming he held no opinion one way or the other. Well, way back in the day, my father was forwarding me antivax newsletters, and they scared me silly! THIMEROSAL!!! MERCURY!!! POISON!!!! and the dreaded a-word... AUTISM!!!!!!! I was first-time preggers. Soon afterward I was a new mom-- sleep-deprived, paranoid, and scared all the time that I was accidentally going to harm my child. I was vulnerable, confused, parched for objective information, and the antivaxx Kool-aid was sitting right there on the table in front of me. I even asked the nurse at the pediatrician's office about thimerosal-- she sounded irked, and replied shortly that their office doesn't even order the ones with thimerosal.

Ok... fears temporarily assuaged. But why did she sound so short with me? What was that all about?

Welllllllll....

As a new mom, and a stay-at-home one at that, I used the magic of the internets to connect with other adults throughout the day. It saved my sanity. What did I read? Well, LiveJournal. I started with my husband's friendslist before I made my own. Then, when our friends weren't posting enough to keep my mind occupied, I read the comics blogs my hubby linked to. One of them is Polite Dissent, written by a doctor-- a review of medicine in comic books! HOW AWESOMELY GEEKY! Exactly my cup of Supersoldier-serum-laced tea! Plus, I liked the title of the blog. "Polite Dissent." How clever! How pithy! And look, he has a sidebar full of links!... Hey, lookit that blog there-- it's called "Respectful Insolence." Sounds kinda like "Polite Dissent," only sassier. Lemme check that one out.

*click*

And thus was my skeptical conversion begun.

I read Respectful Insolence voraciously, going through all the archives. I clicked on links on his sidebar-- I found myself addicted to medical blogs! I still am addicted to medical blogs. They are shiny. They make me feel happy, interested, engaged, and intrigued! They stretch my mind and my heart. (Ew.) They are the ultimate human drama, and the fact that the stories are true makes them that much more awesome. I love reading about real people doing real things to help other real people! These blogs, especially the activist blogs like Orac's and others written by docs and scientists in the fight against pseudoscience, denialism and quackery, put forth arguments for vaccination so reasonably and refuted the antivax complaints of which I had read in my dad's emails so deftly that I was able to see that the evidence was FIRMLY on the side of vaccination being good for the human race. In fact, they made me itch to get my own vaxxes updated (which I did, thank you). Kool-aid averted, reason prevails!

Well, one late night I was reading a doctor's blog-- I cannot for the life of me remember which one, alas!!!-- and the author was dandily refuting some antivax canard or other. It was so fun to read that I scrolled into the comments.

These particular comments were plagued by an antivaxxer by the handle of "Sue." She has shown up in many blogs and blog posts devoted to autism and vaccines, and has adopted many handles, "Common Sense" being ironically among them. And what I saw was denialism in action. No matter how many times she had her ass handed to her, she ad hom attacked the arguers as stupid or pharma shills, flagrantly ignored any argument she couldn't refute, resorted to "nuh-UH" and dismissing out of hand any studies that refuted her position, and generally repeated her same already-refuted arguments over and over and over. This went on for pages and pages!!! She argued, people replied, the cycle kept going! NOW I UNDERSTOOD why my pediatrician's nurse was so brusque when I brought up thimerosal-- those who have heard the antivax canards TIME AND TIME AGAIN have refuted them SO MANY TIMES that we just sound SNIPPY to anyone who hasn't heard the whole argument a MILLION TIMES!!!

So, why feed trolls? What good does it do to keep arguing?

Because trolls, through their own incoherent rantings, are making the skeptical arguments FOR us.

THIS was the truth I realized while I was reading those pages and pages of Sue. She was making her own side look terrible, and the people who argued against her just kept on providing evidence-- evidence which was helpful to me in finding objective answers! Reasonable but underinformed people, like me, will read the thoughtful, logical arguments, see the evidence with links to the science, then see the screeds of trolls in the comments for a shining, foetid example of how the other side thinks.

So, take a moment to thank the troll sitting next to you. Thanks, troll! You've helped save my kid from getting measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, Hib, polio, pertussis, and more!!! Jus' keep on talkin'... :)

:Sniffle: I'm so proud!

2009-01-24T14:36:00.002-06:00

My husband's skeptic blog Homologous Trend got its very first troll today!

How quickly the young blogs grow up! :)

More adventures with autism!

2009-01-24T12:31:00.005-06:00

Wonderful Husband and I dealt with a low-blood-sugar-fueled autistic SUPER-meltdown today, which got me to thinking, yet again, about the Frustrated Mom's Curse: "I hope you have a child who acts just like you." I remember my mother uttering this many times to me. When I was a child, I thought nothing of it. "A child just like me? Pff. Wha'EVAH." Nowadays, though... yeah, I see what she meant, 'cause my boy and I are SO MUCH alike it's beyond zany.

You see, my son and I think like mathematicians. At least, like mathematicians as exemplified in the old joke where a physicist and a mathematician were both told to go into a house, fill a pan with water, and boil the water on the stove. The physicist goes into the house and finds there is already a pan of water on the stove, so she simply turns on the stove. The mathematician goes into the house and finds there is already a pan of water on the stove. She gets the pan, takes it to the sink, pours the water out, thereby reducing the problem to the instructed scenario, fills the pan with water, and boils it on the stove.

Yyyyyyyyyep. My son and I, we follow directions, tasks, routines etc., explicitly and to the letter, occasionally to ridiculous extremes. I know this is a characteristic shared by many folks with Asperger's. Yet still it slips out of my awareness at the worst times.

Today, for instance, Wonderful Son accidentally wet himself just a tiny bit before making it to the toilet and asked for a change of underwear. So I took off the underwear, along with shoes and pants (as this happened just exactly when he and WH were about to go out for the day). I asked that when he was done in the bathroom for him to come into his room so I could put new underwear on him and re-dress him in pants and shoes for going out. Well, he FLIPPED OUT!!! He resisted all attempts to get him into his room, he SCREAMED AND CRIED for about ten minutes, through much travail we got him dressed and more or less calmed down.... and FINALLY I figured out he didn't WANT to be dressed in his room, he wanted to be dressed in the BATHROOM, which is where his clothes came off. *facepalm* We compromised by his leaving his room dressed, then pulling pants and underwear down, so I could pull them back up in the PROPER room. It's the pan on the stove scenario EXACTLY!

Considering my own reducing-problems-to-instructed-scenarios quirk, I really, REALLY shoulda figured that one out sooner.

Quick Friday observation

2009-01-23T11:10:00.004-06:00

A crow trying to perch on a phone wire looks very silly.

That is all. Carry on.

So-called "Conscience Clauses" violate your rights to healthcare

2009-01-21T12:14:00.003-06:00

I am seething about this. I put the words "conscience clause" in scare-quotes, because frankly, the very idea scares me.

Simply put, the Bush administration passed a rule allowing healthcare workers not to treat patients whose care violated their moral/religious beliefs. The wording is "Regulation Proposed to Help Protect Health Care Providers from Discrimination."

Oh, I am SO sowwy-- does my need for oo to meet the standard of care for my MEDICAL tweatment make oo feel discwiminated against? Well, I've got an idea! Why not work in some OTHER field where you're not likely to encounter these AWFUL dilemmas? I hear Burger King is hiring!

Here's a great discussion of the medical ethics of the whole "conscience clause" issue, from the ever-awesome PalMD at White Coat Underground.

Also, I'll link back to my own post about it, from months ago, here.

Anyway, the rule went into effect on January 19th. I think the Obama administration needs to get rid of that festering piece of crap.

Why am I re-ranting about this now? Well, I just saw this on Pharyngula. Seems a woman (I can't bring myself to call her a medical practitioner, and there is apparently some confusion over whether she is a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician's Assistant) in New Mexico's Presbyterian Health Services Rio Rancho Family Health Center has made a habit of "accidentally" pulling out the IUDs of patients who explicitly wanted them left in! Seriously, click on the linked article. It must be read to be believed.

One of her victims is suing her. GOOD, I say! There is a word for administering a non-consentual procedure, and it's "assault." [Edit: Whoops, I think the word is actually "battery." IANAL.]

Those noisy woodland creatures

2009-01-20T10:02:00.003-06:00

I grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. My dad read it to me when I was six, and I re-read it many, many times after that.

The impression I received from that work is that Men, humans that is, are clumsy, noisy creatures who stalk about the wilderness making a huge racket and every animal and elf can hear them coming for miles away. ZOMG we r not 1 wit teh Nature!!! I used to practice moving as silently as I could through the woods, so as not to be one of those awful, unmindful humans (this was before I learned that moving noisily is a good thing, letting snakes know to get out of your way). Such a contrast to those noble, quiet woodland creatures! They live so in harmony with their environment that they almost ne'er make a telltale sound to give their presence away!

Now that I am grown and have had many chances to observe animal behavior, I would like to call bullshit on that premise.

I have a poorly-sealed window in my bedroom.

From this window, I hear the little woodland creatures, going about their natural, morning things, one with Nature in every respect, living in harmony with their environment... AND MAKING A GODAWFUL RACKET!!!!!! O! M! G!!! I will hear the most HORRENDOUS RUSTLING in the bushes and think a PACK OF URBAN COYOTES must be trying to get into our trash cans!!! I flip up the curtain, only to see two teeny freakin' Carolina wrens hopping about. Yelling at each other. I cannot type their call. But I will try: MREEEEEECHHHHHHHHHHH MREEEEEEEEEECHHHHHHHH MREEEEEEEEEEEEECHHHHHHH is an approximation of the noise that greets me.

And the birds are not the worst offenders in the Lack O' Stealth department. Oh no.

That honor goes to... the squirrels.

Let me paraphrase Mark Twain and say that two squirrels amount to a permanent riot, and there ain't any real difference between three squirrels and an insurrection. They like to play on my roof. I say "play," but the fact is, I have NO IDEA WHAT they're doing up there. Playing squirrel rugby? Staging squirrel Civil War reinactments? Fighting for the rights of albino squirrels to get married? 'Cause if they're up there just hopping around from place to place, and managing to make THAT MUCH racket in the process, then these particular woodland creatures need remedial woodland creature lessons!

It's not the noise I mind, it's the not knowing what they're up to. In fact, it drives me to irrational acts in my own house. We have at least one mouse at the moment, and sometimes I think it is using construction equipment. When the noise gets to be just TOO MUCH, I feel dissed! It's like the mouse has NO RESPECT for the fact that I could eat him! "HEY! I am bigger than you!!! At least PRETEND to be scared of me!" Or, every now and then, I will just burst into the room whence the noise emanates and yell, "What ARE you DOING in there???" As if I expect an answer. I just want to SEE the construction equipment, that's all!

Now, I must state for the record that all our good foodstuffs are put away out of the reach of rodents, sealed in airtight ceramic or glass containers, or refrigerated-- all except for the junk food. Normally, after a bout of extreme noise, I will discover in the pantry that a tin of cocoa has been chewed through-- a little mouse-head-sized hole in the plastic top. One day I came in to find an ENTIRE BAG of chocolate-covered espresso beans emptied out. I had to dump the Halloween candy that had been stored in the pantry, because mice had found their way into the jack-o'-lantern and eaten an entire candy necklace, leaving the chewed-up bag behind. Those mice are NOT eating right, 's all I gotta say.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the creatures of a true woodland. These birds and squirrels and mice I have the opportunity to observe close at hand have adapted to an urban environment where their only natural predators are house cats. If so, I'd say the cats have the advantage. Cats, at least, know how to be quiet!

Nowadays, when I read about those silent-footed Hobbits stealing through the woods without a rustle, I think, "OF COURSE they're quiet! All they have to do is be less LOUD than the other animals!!!"

What's in your hoard?

2009-01-15T08:23:00.002-06:00

I just finished a pic of a dragon resting on its hoard, and the thing is super-detailed, so while I was drawing it I was thinking, "MAN, this is a LOT of gold coins and stuff!" It really reflects a certain archetype of the dragon as, first of all, this creature of immeasurable AGE, and secondly, obsessive-compulsive in the extreme.

What a LUST for shiny things it must have! What a raging compulsion, to be triggered at the merest glint of the objects of desire...

Then it occurred to me how familiar this is sounding. Yes, that's the exact same feeling that washes over me EVERY TIME I visit the gravelly area near our local coffee shop and deli which has TONS of fossils in it. I cannot seem to set foot in it without being irresistibly drawn to search for them, and before I know it I'm sitting plopped in the gravel sifting for crinoid stems!

I've got an embarrassingly large hoard of them.

So, how about you? Is there anything that makes you feel particularly dragony? Any large hoards around your house?

On Day 4 of prescribed dietary fiber supplementation...

2009-01-10T14:03:00.002-06:00

... one idly wonders if one can DIE from taking the recommended dosage of psyllium seed husk.

That is all. Carry on.

Ode to Scienceblogs, having gone dark for a few measley hours

2009-01-10T09:26:00.003-06:00

(With apologies to Keats)

Thou still unravish'd bride of logic best,
Thou foster-child of Science and slow thought,
Oh 'net historian, who canst thus express
An educational post more sweetly than e'er taught:
What physiologic lessons haunt thy ISP
Of cephalopods or humans, or of both,
In Michigan or Minnesota freeze?
What Chopra-fiskers here, what denialists loth?
What mad pursuit of reason? What woos struggle to escape?
What snark and satire? What mad comment'ry?

Heard arguments are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye intertubes, rock on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Type to thy loyal readers text alone:
Fair reason, cached on web, thou canst not leave
Thy blog, nor ever can those bits be bare;
Bold lover of science, never canst thou be deleted,
Though beset by antivaxxers, do not grieve;
Thy words won't fade, thou hast not been defeated,
For ever wilt thy points stand, fair and square!

Ah, happy, happy blogs! that cannot shed
Your code, nor ever bid the Net adieu;
And, happy scientist, unwearied,
Forever fisking woo forever new;
More sciencey love! more happy, sciencey love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
Forever explaining wonders of the world;
Inspiring human passion for the skies above,
That leaves a mind elated and employ'd
In search of hidden beauty yet to be unfurl'd.

Who are these coming to the Comments sections?
What strange crank or mysterious priest
Cries his logical fallacies to the skies,
And all his spurious arguments with rhetoric dress'd?
What little corner of these electron shores,
Or scientific peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this wretched morn?
And, 'net community, thy Comments all this morn'
Will silent be; and not a sysadmin to tell
When thou, all desolate, can e'er return.

O bugger! How I wish thee back! I've need
Of science men and women and their thoughts
On shady con-men and their herbs and weed;
Thou, ScienceBlogs! dost tease us, overwrought,
For seems eternity: No new entries yet!!!
Yet when old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of all this woo,
Saying science is a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'We seek truth through RCTs-- that is all
Ye know on earth-- now science go forth and do!'

Best Song Ever!!!-- at the moment ;)

2009-01-08T10:21:00.003-06:00

Wonderful Husband left th' iTunes on the Genius setting, having made a playlist based on Anthrax's song, "I'm the Man." I happened to click on it, and it was on Random, and it played this AWESOME exemplar of the early 1990's Seattle sound! GAH, I had forgotten just how GRUNGY the growl of the guitar, how RASPY Chris Cornell's vocals, how utterly this song helped define a whole musical movement!

Also, the lyrics are hitting my Aspergery-ear JUST right today!!! The poetry is in the assonance, seriously! Not a lot of songwriters pay enough attention to vowel sounds, IMO! "Soooooooo down... sooooooooold out..." Hear that glorious repetition, not just of the long O but of the OW as well-- it makes the whole segment just LOCK INTO PLACE like a couple of legos!!! "Rooooooooolling... Ooooooooold now..." OMG he does it again!!! I just LOVE that!!!

Then, of course, who can overlook the unforgettable Best Line Ever, "I'm lookin' California and feelin' Minnesota!" ROFLOL! I feel like that EVERY morning before my coffee!

ANYWAY, the second verse is more of the delicious same, with its inter-clicking sounds... the band truly earns its name! I will now quit babbling and let you see it/read it/whatever you like! The Vid has Chris with his shirt off, though. ;D

Soundgarden Outshined

Written by Chris Cornell

I got up feeling so down
I got off being sold out
I've kept the movie rolling
But the story's getting old now
I just looked in the mirror
Things aren't looking so good
I'm looking California
And feeling Minnesota
So now you know, who gets mystified

Show me the power child
I'd like to say
That I'm down on my knees today
It gives me butterflies
Gives me away
Till I'm up on my feet again
I'm feeling outshined

Someone let the dogs out
They'll show you where the truth is
The grass is always greener
Where the dogs are shitting
I'm feeling that I'm sober
Even though I'm drinking
Well, I can't get any lower
Still I feel I'm sinking
So now you know, who gets mystified

Show me the power child
I'd like to say
That I'm down on my knees today
It gives me butterflies
Gives me away
Till I'm up on my feet again
I'm feeling outshined

Health stuff: followup internist visit

2009-01-07T09:01:00.004-06:00

So, finally had my followup visit with my internist, after the Blood Test Of DOOOOOOOOOM-- ok, blood test wasn't that bad, but it did indicate that I need to lower my cholesterol by a whopping 45 points, or I risk being put on medication to lower it.

Medicating my high cholesterol with a drug like Lipitor or whathaveyou is undesirable to me because of one big huge factor-- my bipolar disorder. My particular variety of hypomanic BPD is VERY nicely controlled by low doses of both paroxetine HCL (Paxil, or Seroxat for you Brits :)) and oxcarbazepine (Trileptal). This combination of meds makes me feel my perfectly normal perky self, I suffer no side effects, and I'm FREAKIN' LUCKY in that regard. Adding another med to this cocktail is risky, because both oxcarbazepine and Lipitor are well-known for being twitchy other-drug-interactors, and frankly, I'd rather risk heart disease than my emotional equilibrium. It's a quality-of-life thing. For those who don't know about bipolar disorder, the hypomanic variety is such that my highs are not all that high-- not like the people who spend their life savings on a shopping spree, or impulsively buy a plane ticket to someplace halfway around the world while in manic phases-- but my lows are just as horrific and stygian as any depression you can imagine. Rather not have those anymore, thanks.

So, my Awesome Internist has prescribed fiber supplements. I think I can tackle that 45 points with my Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes(TM) and with this added fiber. I've got 3 months to lower those numbers, and I think I can do it.

Those aren't the only numbers I'm interested in lowering. My latest weigh-in indicates I've lost 8 lbs. since my last doctor visit! I'd like to lose 10 more, not necessarily in 3 months, but maybe in 6. I've been exercising more-- 30 minutes on the track in the morning, plus whatever I can con the kids into walking/running with me in the evenings. Also I've been exercising portion control over what I eat. This seems to be a major contributor to those missing 8 lbs. ;) Funny how that works out.

OOOH! But here's my latest MAD SCHEME!!! I've decided to buy lettuces by the head and just EAT THEM like they were a bag of potato chips! Why am I doing this, you might well ask? Well, I never get enough leafy greens, so snacking on them seems like a good idea. They don't have a lot of calories, so you can eat them and not feel guilty, and what better snack than a high-fiber one, right? Also, I read on a horse blog that horses generate a lot of warmth for themselves in the winter by digesting hay, so you should feed your horse free-choice hay in winter. I don't actually own a horse, but I AM hoping eating a lot more fibrous plants will not only lower my cholesterol but also will keep me feeling warmer in the winter!!! Hah-- I have NO way to test this hypothesis without completely confounding comfirmation bias. But it will inspire me to eat more greens FTW! Yee-ha!!!

More math dreams!

2009-01-06T09:24:00.004-06:00

I love dreams wherein I can actually read printed words or do math. It makes me giggly. Last night's dream was a clear holdover from my woo days, however-- I was performing a numerology calculation on someone's name (ok, fine, it was Spike the vampire from Buffy! NORMAL people have EROTIC dreams about hotties like that, but do I? NooooOOOOOOOooooo!). What amused me was that I remembered the principles of numerology so well that I could actually perform the number-to-letter correspondences in my sleep.

For those unaware, numerology buffs like to line up the letters of the alphabet like so:



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z

Thus, if you're doing a numerological hand-waving over the name PERKY SKEPTIC, you would get 7+5+9+2+7 + 1+2+5+7+2+9+3 = 30 + 29 = 59, which you further would reduce to 5+9 = 14, and even further until you get a single-digit answer, 1+4 = 5. Five! The number of strife! YAY, my skepticism brings strife to numerology!!!

What kills me, looking back on all this, is how utterly arbitrary the whole system is-- yet there have been SELF-HELP BOOKS written on this, most notably Change Your Life With Numerology by Karen David, which I used to own a copy of before I sent it to the recycling bin. Even a quick Google search shows thousands of hits for changing your destiny by re-naming yourself to something more numerologically fortunate! An example of this which gets touted by many woo sources is when obscure people change their names, then go on to become famous under their new name-- like Elda Furry, who languished until her name-change to Hedda Hopper, who reportedly paid a numerologist ten dollars to tell her the name she should use. Well, jeez, it couldn't possibly be because the old name wasn't as catchy or memorable, it HAD to be the numbers, DUHhhhhhh... woo fail!

Even as a practicing Wiccan I never gave numerology much credence.

"So, Perky, if you never gave it much credence, how in the world did you become proficient enough at the system that you were able to remember it accurately and do it in your sleep???"

...

Well, you see...

*COUGH*I used to do numerological calculations on the names of all my roleplaying characters, and I've been playing RPGs for a really, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally long time.

Dear Internet Failtrolls,

2009-01-05T16:23:00.003-06:00

There is this thing called "google" and these things called "search terms." If you cannot be bothered to rub two brain cells together to find out your favorite net adversary's not-at-all-secret real name, I am darn well not going to help you by outing him. Do your own typing, or STFU.

HIV denialist Christine Maggiore, dead at 52

2009-01-05T10:14:00.002-06:00

Being raised as woo-woo as they come, I was familiar with a lot of "alternative health" claims before I even went into the skeptical/rationalist movement. One of the ideas that really took me by surprise, though, was HIV denialism. Simply put, these folks deny that HIV has anything to do with AIDS. Seems at first blush like a movement of wacky cranks whom no one would take seriously, right? Well, this is a crank idea that kills.

This movement originated with, among others, Peter Duesberg, a former top-notch scientist who descended into denialism after first doubting HIV as the cause of AIDS. Doubting does not make one a crank, of course. What makes one a crank is refusal to change one's opinion based on the most logical interpretation of all the evidence-- and all the evidence we have points to HIV being the cause of AIDS. Here's a great page for further reading on the issue. You can even read the thousands of mouth-foaming denialist comments she gets for daring to, I dunno, be an epidemiologist.

Duesberg's banner was taken up and waved frantically by Christine Maggiore. She was an HIV-positive mother of two, founder of the Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives activist group, and she achieved great notoriety by refusing to take antiretrovirals during her pregnancy to prevent transmission of the HIV to her daughter AND insisting on breastfeeding after the birth. Maggiore's daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, died at age 3.

Here and here are obituaries by science bloggers Dr. Steve Novella and Dr. David Gorski. Be sure to read Respectful Insolence's take on it, too-- Orac has tackled these folks for a long time now, and Maggiore even tried to get him to "debate" her.

The whole thing is tragic and sad-- tragic hundreds of thousands needlessly dead in Africa because of Thabo Mbeki's unfortunate listening to Duesberg, tragic that a little girl's mother's fanciful ideas led directly to her death, and tragic that Maggiore's family has now lost her, too. Will any of this change the minds of any of the HIV-denialists? Probably not. Even now, Maggiore's friends are circling the wagons to try to deny that her death was AIDS-related, and they will continue to cause needless deaths. That is the greatest tragedy of all.

Dear Blog,

2009-01-03T22:22:00.002-06:00

Someone is wrong on the internet and I yearn to correct them.

I must be strong, for the sake of the children.

The things we learn about our nearest and dearest...

2009-01-02T22:16:00.003-06:00

So, today I found out something interesting (to me) about my boy: how he likes his pizza.

This would seem to be self-evident. I mean, every time we have ordered pizza, we have given him input into the process. But today, when he wanted pizza, we walked over to our neighborhood pizza joint, and I let him order all by himself.

"What would you like on your pizza?"

He said very clearly, and with emphasis, "Pepperoni. And nothing else." He then wandered off muttering, "No mushrooms, no sausage, no muttermutter..."

Ok, no huge revelation-- he likes it without the extra toppings that Wonderful Husband and I usually crap up the pizza with. But then when we started to eat it... he asked me to pull all the cheese off and just layer the pepperoni over the sauced crust. My boy wants his pizzas with NO CHEESE.

This fills me with burbling, giggly glee.

DESTROY ALL VIRUSES!!!

2009-01-01T15:09:00.004-06:00

...is the name of the Godzilla movie I wish to make. I am SUCH a whiny crybaby when ill, and it's because I've so rarely been sick in my life (thankfully!) that I'm just not used to it. This year, however, I seem to have fallen prey to a record number of 24-hour microorganism-infections. I blame Kindergarten. Or, "K," as Wonderful Son likes to call it when asked what grade he is in.

My heart goes out to all chronic pain sufferers, migraine-susceptibles, and other often-miserable folk. While I like to think of myself as a tough Klingon warrior, my latest upper-respiratory infection has caused me to shrivel up like a wilted violet. Feh!

yIn rInbe'taH neHqu' 'Iv... Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam! By which I mean, I guess it won't kill me to crawl out of my chair and get some coffee. ;)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Have some CARNIVALS!!! :)

2008-12-21T11:03:00.002-06:00

Gah! I have been a slackguard of a blogger of late! My only excuse is that for some freaky logistical reason, December is the busiest month of the year in my chosen profession.

BUT!!! Let this not stop me from link-announcing two of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE BLOG CARNIVALS!!!

The first is, and I hate that I missed submitting to this one, the year-end edition of The Skeptics' Circle, #102, up at one of my favorite blogs (and favoritely-named), Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes! Go give a look-see. A good time is always to be had at Bing McGhandi's place!

The second is the Fabulous Numero TRES of Skeptical Parent Crossing, over at ANOTHER of my favorite blogs by one of my favorite bloggers, Podblack Cat! ...Hey, I think I know that Santa!

Another one

2008-12-17T14:07:00.002-06:00

My latest slice of raw insanity pie is now finished. I will be taking the day off before I start my other work, because I am yammering incessantly on the internet with full-on exclamation-pointedy-smileyface goodness, and that can only mean I am too sleep-deprived to make decisions about anything important, like punctuation.

A linkfest, celebrated in song...

2008-12-17T13:34:00.002-06:00

Cyberlizard's collection of blog and news items today was so great that it moved me to GET RHYMEY!!! Cruise on over there for a link-see, and to lay the blame at his feet where it belongs. ;D

Cake request for toddler Hitler,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Got turned down and now Dad's bitter,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Bibles passed out by our soldiers,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Might mean that we're dumb as boulders,
Fa la la la la la la la la!

Atheists and gays have friction,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Cops bust up some science fiction,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Brits love oral contraceptives,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Now we all are feeling festive!
Fa la la la la la la la la!

Businesses by ghosts protected,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Godless folks can't be elected,
Fa la la la la la la la la!
How's the War On Christmas going?
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Don't ask me, 'cause now it's snowing!!!
Fa la la la la la la la la!

For those who asked for it...

2008-12-17T12:55:00.002-06:00

Here's one. It doesn't have steampunk crossbows or evil-looking biomedical machinery, but it does have a hot bird.

Patties and Links!

2008-12-15T09:46:00.004-06:00

I HAVE to link this-- my conscience compels me!!! EVERYONE ought to watch this short film made by a friend of The Skepbitch-- it's called "Bang Band You Are Bread" and is about a sad loaf of bread that seeks REVENGE on Dr. Atkins!

I am TOTALLY going to eat that lollipop.

Update

2008-12-14T09:22:00.004-06:00

I have been a HORRIBLE BLOG-SLACKER of late, but it's mostly because I have nothing interesting to say! I've been working to meet this deadline and still be a decent mommy, and it's hard for me to think on anything else too deeply.

Savage Love Cast and Astronomy Cast have succored me through the long hard stretches of work, which is solitary and Way Too Quiet if not livened up with human voices. From these podcasts I have learned, respectively, that people need to communicate more, and that there are particles in the universe and they MOVE!!! Yes, this is about all my brain has been able to absorb at this time. I find I can answer specific questions when they are put to me, and my spouse tells me I know way more about the history of physics than I think I do-- I just cannot synopsize anything I have heard at this time. Gah. Brain Fry.

My problem with physics is that I do not understand it on a MATHEMATICAL level, and because I can't do the math, or even set up the problems, the entire discipline is rendered opaque to me. Seriously-- PV=nRT, F=MA, I know these things, yet I haven't internalized their workings to the point that I can even SET UP the proper solution to a word problem! I feel incomplete as a human for my utter failure to absorb the laws that govern our universe. This is important stuff, dammit, and I'm missing out!!! In Harry Potter terms, I am totally a squib! On the other hand, understanding of biochemical pathways come easily to me, as does the rote memorization of hundreds of scientific binomials. Go figure. People are weird. This is all I have been able to absorb at this time.

YET ALL IS NOT LOST!!! In rummaging through the Free Books box at our local used book store, I came across a WORKBOOK OF BASIC PHYSICS PROBLEMS!!!!! WITH SOLUTIONS!!! AND EXPLANATIONS!!! I am TOTALLY going to WORK IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH until I UNDERSTAND IT!!!!!!!!!! Or bash my head against it until I decide I need professional help.

My deadline has been met and I am MOSTLY recovered! Hawt demon-slaying Nephilim chixx0rz with steampunk crossbows have been drawn, cover painting painted, and now on to the next project, without pause for breath. Much to my chagrin, for my next project, I am once again taking money from the Industrial Woo Complex. I do so about once per year. My only excuse is that money is tight and this company pays extremely well and are great to work for. I am living a lie. *hangs head in shame* I feel like I'm professionally in the closet. But I've yet to find a revenue source from the skeptical, scientific or atheist community that can actually PAY me! (I have done a lot of work gratis for scientific reports and other publications.)

Add to this the pressure of my son's teachers having discovered my website and actually LIKE my stuff, and thus their Xmas presents will be framed prints, and I had to mat the prints and assemble the frames last night. I am actually extremely grateful for this, as we cannot afford more present-buying since our CENTRAL HEATING bit the dust the other day and MEGABUCK$ were shelled out to fix it, then we were informed of a code violation that will apparently cost MORE MEGABUCK$$ to fix! We're putting that off until next week. :P On the bright side, the Friday-house-bound son was delighted to giggles by the procession of HVAC dudes through our house. He knows all their names. :) Yes, our county declared a Snow Day last Friday, despite no snow actually having fallen. (lol-- that's life in the South for ya!)

Kindergarten Holiday Party on Thursday. If I can, I will bake; if I can't, I will send a pumpkin pie (store-bought). Family Presents nearly wrapped and nearly shipped. I would have died of stress if not for teh intertubes. Despite all this, this is actually the most relaxed, organized, and prepared I have been before any Yule since I've been an independent adult. I thank the oxcarbazepine!

So, how're the holidays (and seculardays) going for you? :)

Random thoughts on a Tuesday morning

2008-12-09T09:41:00.002-06:00

Can't sleep... deadline will eat me...

The way I felt when I got up this a.m. vs the way I feel now, I am beginning to think paroxetine HCl and coffee with milk may be the cure for colds, flus, and hangovers. Heck, it may be the cure for death!

Speaking of which, the idea of the cessation of my consciousness was really pissing me off last night. I know that as an atheist and a rationalist I'm supposed to be a grownup about death, but the fact of death really annoys me and makes me angry. I don't WANT to cease to be! I don't WANT there to be a forever-end to the precession of my thoughts and self-awareness! Then, there was this morning when I feel like, "Meh, it won't be so bad, and hey, I won't even notice it!... Unlike this deadline and this headache..."

Well, back to work! Have a great day, everyone! :)

Cicada season

2008-12-05T10:15:00.004-06:00

The inimitable Zooillogix has brought this memory to the forefront, with one of their splendid wildlife photos (the cicada one, duh).

Cicada season was a particular childhood delight to my brother and me. We looked forward to it every summer. One of us would find the first shed husk of the year, and then the great hunt would be on!!! My favorite outdoor activity was getting out there to collect the husks-- the thrill of searching, the thrill of sussing out the most likely shed-spots, the thrill of finding them in new and unexpected places, and heck, just the thrill of FINDING! Each tiny, golden exoskeleton was like a treasure. Each more finely articulated than the most painstakingly-crafted artifact, with every minute hair intact, each translucent eye polished to mirror-perfection. They amazed and fascinated us, and we wanted to collect them all! We were mad with CICADA FEVER!!! It was like a season-long EASTER EGG HUNT, only the benefits were, um, less easily communicated to the casual observer.

Back then, I saved every husk I harvested. (Think on that for a moment, won't you. "Why yes, I do come from a family of compulsive hoarders, why do you ask?") I had BOXES and JARS FULL of the things. I called it my collection of "locust shells." Particular treasures were the extra-super-big ones and the extra-super-tiny ones. Special categorical exceptions would be made for any that were exceptionally perfect, or peculiarly wacky in some way. We would each stick our most interesting and anatomically perfect finds of the day on our shirts by their little toe-hooks and wear them as jewelry.

I never liked to wear more than five at a time. Too gaudy.

For decades afterward, despite having reached adulthood and moved at least seven times since those days, I still find the occasional box of locust shells! They make great compost.

And... still great jewelry. I can't resist wearing them whenever I find one!

Skeptics' Circle !)!one!!!!

2008-12-04T19:10:00.002-06:00

EEEE, Skeptics' Circle 101 is up at Ionian Enchantment! Give it a read!

Larry Niven took my wine

2008-12-03T22:18:00.001-06:00

I have to tell this story because a friend just reminded me of it, and because I'm pathologically incapable of going to bed.

It was my very FIRST EVER time showing art at a science fiction convention, and I was tickled pink just to be in the show!!! I had already met many artists I admired who were awesome and encouraging to me, a newbie, and I was floating on a cloud. Imagine my dewy-eyed excitement when I discovered there would be a reception! For the artists!! With food, and wine!!! I found out somewhat late in the game, but as soon as I found out it was happening, I threw on a nice dress and rushed down there, my tender young heart a-twitter, my eyes all aglow like a tiny tot's on Christmas night.

I arrived rather late, as it turned out, and much of the food and wine had been picked over. The hall was practically swimming in white wine, however. At this point in my life I hated white wine. I shared the opinion of a lot of cajun folk who say the only reason to drink white wine is if there's no more red, and apparently rather a lot of my fellow sci-fi geeks felt the same way. But, no matter! Suddenly I had espied my quarry-- there, on the tray, was one last glass of red wine! It beckoned to me like a grail-shaped beacon.

I strode over, reached out to pluck it from the tray. My arm extended...

...And a man stepped right in front of me, his back not six inches from my face, my arm still reaching even as he deflected its trajectory-- and he took it. The last glass of red. The very glass I had been reaching for.

I asked a staffer if more red wine would be brought out, but they said no more would be served. There was nothing for it but to nurse a glass of white, and to take the MATURE route-- perkily POUT about the incident to all my friends! :D

In fact, it was one of my friends who recognized Mr. Cut-In-Line and told me he was Larry Niven. Double-pout!!! Oh SURE, he's one of the leading lights of the sci-fi genre... but he's an AUTHOR, not an artist! He wasn't even supposed to be there! But of course, my wine-thief's identity only served to turn the incident from annoying to hilarious. I have long since forgiven Mr. Niven, as the incident has spawned a string of inside jokes unsurmounted even by sci-fi con standards among my close friends.

And now, every time I see his books on the shelf, mentally I supply the affectionate byline, "Wine-stealin' bastard!"

In other breaking news, parenting is hard

2008-12-02T09:16:00.005-06:00

You know, as parents that have been around the kid-block a bit, i.e., parents of a Kindergartener, we're socially expected to reassure parents of infants that, yes, it does get easier, hang in there, insert soothing comment here.

I think I'm breaking some kind of rule by saying that as it gets easier it also gets harder. 'Cause as they grow up, they accumulate activities after school that you have to be at. Nerve-wracking activities wherein your child is perfectly fine, but YOUR nerves get frayed to bits! Like, say, watching all the other kids play a basketball game while yours decides he wants to crawl down the court instead of running. Or is finally doing a great job of defending the goal, but then has a sudden attack of, "Hey this is interesting, I think I'll climb the back of the goal instead!" Or abruptly falls over, arms outstretched, and says, "I'm Donald Pleasence. I'm dead," because he, too, has been excessively watching The Great Escape. *facepalm*

I'm also beginning to suspect that I, in turn, have been LIED TO by more experienced parents (malicious bastards!), and that I in fact will not get another restful night of sleep for the rest of my life. Or at least another 16 years. I imagine this is the kind of factual omission that is designed to ensure the propagation of the species. Kinda makes me want to say, "F*ck the species and pass me the vodka!"

I end up looking to children's books for comfort. They are sweet and adorable and soothing and make my brain fill up with oxytocin instead of whatever chemical causes one to want to hurl oneself off a moving train into a shark tank on top of an exploding-- well, er, nevermind. I love Alexandra Day's Carl books, for instance. Those are the mostly-wordless picture books about the baby and her kindly Rottweiler babysitter and their fun adventures together whenever Mom goes out. I rather wish for a Carl, myself.

But... am I the only parent who wonders if the baby's mother ought to be reported to Children's Services for leaving her kid in the care of a dog all the time? And then I wonder, based on the complete lack of shock and horror by the neighbors, if maybe Carl's world is some alternate reality wherein superintelligent dogs can be licensed by the state as babysitters. Then I start wondering what the Marvel Universe alternate Earth designation of the superintelligent-dog-nanny Earth would be. Earth 312? Earth 303? But if the dogs are accepted babysitters, why do Carl and the baby hide their adventures from the mother? Then I wonder if it's because superintelligent dogs are feared and hated by an establishment that doesn't understand them. Are there senators trying to pass the Superintelligent Canine Registration Act? Are there giant Sentinel-class robots who hunt the dogs??? Are the Sentinels in the Carl-Earth CAT-SHAPED?????? CAT-SHAPED GIANT ROBOTS SHOOTING LASER-BEAMS AND RAMPAGING ACROSS THE CITYSCAPE, WITH COSTUMED SUPERDOGS FIGHTING TO CONTAIN THE TERROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's about when I remember I'm really sleep-deprived.

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

2008-11-30T12:55:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-11-29T16:01:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-11-24T23:09:00.001-06:00

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!

2008-11-23T07:06:00.003-06:00

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?

2008-11-20T12:12:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-11-20T10:09:00.004-06:00

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!

2008-11-20T09:57:00.002-06:00

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!

2008-11-18T17:51:00.002-06:00

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

2008-11-17T09:45:00.008-06:00

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!

2008-11-16T21:49:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-11-16T17:45:00.005-06:00

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

2008-11-14T09:59:00.003-06:00

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.

2008-11-13T10:33:00.001-06:00

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

2008-11-12T13:47:00.002-06:00

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

OMG Kidsports!!!

2008-11-12T09:49:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-11-11T12:48:00.002-06:00

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

2008-11-10T09:30:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-11-08T16:34:00.002-06:00

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

2008-11-07T10:24:00.004-06:00

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!

2008-11-06T20:16:00.004-06:00

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

All hail the Ferret King!

GOOD MORNING!

2008-11-05T09:00:00.001-06:00

"And what a looooooooooove-ly morning!"

Fireworks

2008-11-04T23:00:00.002-06:00

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!

2008-11-04T08:11:00.003-06:00

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!!!

2008-11-02T13:20:00.002-06:00

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...

2008-11-01T20:07:00.001-05:00

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!!! :)

Happy Halloween, everybody!!!

2008-10-31T11:02:00.004-05:00

Halloween, Halloween, oh my gawd it's HALLOWEEN!!! This is my FAVORITE HOLIDAY of all time!!! The bestest of the best! The spookiest of the spooky and the treatsiest of the, er, treaty!!!

Today I will be celebrating by posting this link to The Mercury Theater On The Air site, where one can download the original production of Orson Welles's WAR OF THE WORLDS, as first broadcast on October 30, 1938! It's a great show, and more interesting yet is the response from the public, many of whom believed it. Here's a Wikipedia article on the phenomenon-- you can see that a skeptical mindset really came in handy when listening to it!

In the spirit of the season, I will leave you with the famous closing words of that broadcast:

This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night. . . so we did the best next thing. We annihiliated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C. B. S. You will be releieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian. . .it's Hallowe'en.

Meme Thursday today! Atheist meme

2008-10-30T10:19:00.002-05:00

I was tagged by musesusan over at Intrinsically Knotted AGES ago, and I even wrote my answers ages ago, but somehow I just never posted it. But today, today, all that changes!!! Yes, today is Thursday, the day of THOR, GOD OF MEMES!!! (Or thunder or something. Whatevs.) And I'm celebrating with... an atheist meme! W00t!

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

Yes. The process was a long and drawn out one, beginning when I was fourteen, but I do remember the very day. My first act as an Officially Self-Recognized, Self-Proclaimed Atheist (I had proclaimed it to the Wonderful Husband moments before!) was to sit down at my computer and read Respectful Insolence, only this time, AS AN ATHEIST! :) I remember being so happy, feeling so FREE as I did that! No more mental contortions to justify this or that belief! It was AWESOME to face the internet as a free woman!

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

I remember things best in pictures, and this one had a strong visual reference-- the bright goldenrod yellow of an official AD&D character sheet, where I had filled in "Qabbalist" in the "Religion" blank for my Halfling Cleric/Theif. (LOL, now there's an interesting multiclass pairing!)

One might wonder why I wrote my actual, real-world religion onto this fictional, made-up character in a fictional, made-up world. Well-- my extremely forthright, skeptical History teacher had taught us so thoroughly to question all things that I was having a huge crisis of faith. It bothered me! I was happy following the religion of my family. So, I did what many people do in that situation-- I threw myself into my religious studies in an attempt to convince myself that YES! This was RIGHT! Be a HAPPY BELIEVER again! Er. No. Didn't work out that way. But I do remember the bending-over-backward-to-believe was so strong an impulse that I couldn't even bear to write down anything but my own (fictional, made-up) real-world religion, even for pretend.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

As a Wiccan, I believed God was the ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE, and the Universe listened and cared. In our minds we conceptualized the creative principles of the Universe as the God and the Goddess. So I remember the last time I prayed and thought the Universe and its Creative Principles were "listening."

I thought WH and I should raise our son with a strong wiccan culture so that he could better resist fundamentalist dogma from the three dogmatic Biblical religions. So I had instituted a nightly family prayer. My son was maybe 18 months old at the time. Well, I did the Ritual Voice and spoke the Ritual Words, and he looked at me as though I were a complete moron. "What the heck are you playing at, Mommy? Let me in on the joke, will you, 'cause right now I'm kinda bored and want to play with my sticks," his little eyes seemed to say. It was at that very moment, in a flash, though it took me a day to fully process it, that I realized humans do not need religion to be happy or fulfilled.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

Nope. Never factored into it. I can't very well be angry at something imaginary, can I? (Hold on-- lemme try. DAMN UNICORNS, ALWAYS POOPING INVISIBLY ON MY LAWN!!!... Er, nope! No, I can't.)

I would like to draw a distinction here, though-- God is imaginary. Religion is not. Religion is all too disturbingly real. Religions are ideas which motivate people to act, sometimes in charity, sometimes in perpetrating unbelievable horrors. So, though it didn't motivate my atheist emergence, I am pretty angry at religion for enabling people to make parts of this world into Hells on Earth.

So, er... I guess I can be angry at stuff that other people imagine!

Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

When I realized I didn't need a God-concept, I realized I didn't need ANY of the supernatural trappings which had shrouded my life for all that time. I happily, nay, JOYOUSLY, let them all slip into the realm of fancy, where the evidence suggests they belong. :)

Do you want to be wrong?

I'm not really attached to the right or wrong of my choice to be an atheist. I'm using evidence to build my worldview, and evidence-based viewpoints are always subject to the possibility of being rendered invalid and rebuilt based on better evidence. In my opinion, that is awesome! :)

But... if I were wrong, then what? If a god or some kind of creator gets proven to exist, how does that change anything about what we do here and now, and why? Why does anyone suppose a creator would want to be worshipped, or even that it would have any volition at all? I dunno, the whole idea just seems kinda wacky to me now. Plus, there are loads and LOADS of prayers that go unanswered (Holocaust, anyone?), so even if there were a god out there, doesn't seem like it's a prayer-answering kind of deity.

Even when I was a theist I didn't believe in worship per se-- I considered religious rituals to be acts of celebration. And you know what? Being an atheist has not changed that! :) I LOVE to celebrate the natural world! IT IS AWESOME!!! What is not to find awe-inspiring about this MARVEL of a universe we live in? It is cool and wonderful and AMAZING that, equipped with our brains and our tools, we are able to suss out properties of our universe which are consistent enough to be called LAWS! HOW GREAT IS THAT??? That makes me want to get up and DANCE!!! And then do some ALGEBRA!!! And then wallpaper the internet with SMILEYS!!!!-- But I don't. Because I respect the anti-emoticon beliefs of others.

Mostly. :D

Tagged!!!

2008-10-30T09:14:00.003-05:00

Here's a blog meme (...bleme?...) I got tagged for by PalMD over at denialism blog!

Because I have had no coffee yet I will quote PalMD's pithy explanation of blog meme-itude:

For the uninitiated a blog meme is sort of a meme but not really. A meme is a unit of information passed though learning or behavior, rather than genetics. A blog meme is a set of questions passed from blogger to blogger until it finally peters out. It gives bloggers a chance to connect to each other and to connect their readers to other blogs.

And for today's meme, the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about yourself.

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

1. My name means "honeybee happy" and my blood type is B Positive. (Perkiness-- Environmental or Genetic???) :D

2. I spend absolutely unreal amounts of time staring at clouds, trying to understand how to paint them in a manner which satisfies me.

3. In grad school, I had to invent an interpretive dance to help me remember the steps of glycolysis.

4. I speak far too much Ewok for my own good. (Yee-chok no-wah, baby!!!) I didn't try. The knowledge just stays in my head like a parasitic prokaryote. Soon it will make itself indispensable to my metabolism, and then the transformation will be complete.

5. I have been playing the same Vampire: the Masquerade character since 1997. She is an insane conspiracy theorist! :D

6. Hand-blown glass is like KRYPTONITE to my Superman-grip on my wallet! ("I'm buying them as GIFTS, yeah, that's the ticket!")

(Bonus number 7, because I like prime numbers: I collect lullabies, and certain chord voicings make me cry. :))

Now to SPREAD the meme, like unto a parasitic prokaryote who seeks to turn the ENTIRE BLOGOVERSE into little furry hunter-gatherers....

Vaklam at Homologous Trend (yes I AM calling in my marker!!!).

Friendly Atheist.

Musesusan at Intrinsicallyknotted.

Arensb at Epsilon Clue.

Cyberlizard, because I suspect him of piratical tendencies.

Zoo Knudsen at Skeptic Shock.

I'm always nervous about tagging folks, so please, do feel welcome to do the meme or not. And to tag others. And to spread the agenda of our Ewok Overlords!!!!

*ahem* Time for that coffee now.

Wednesday Whine-fest! (Yes, yes, I WOULD like some cheese with that whine!!! ...No, seriously. Give me the damn cheese, and nobody gets hurt.)

2008-10-29T11:05:00.002-05:00

When I was a young slip of a girl, I was a powerlifter.

I weighed 125 lbs, could bench-press 155 lbs and squat with 240. It was insane how much time I used to spend in the gym! Three hours a day was not unusual for me. This was at age twenty-two.

It was great. I was HIGH ON ENDORPHINS and LOVING IT! (I only stopped because I realized, eventually, that working out was taking up every minute of my free time.)

Now I am age 40. I weigh 144 lbs. I am working out on exercise machines instead of freeweights, doing fast, light, swimmers' workouts instead of pushing my max on everything. I am spending fifteen minutes in the gym and then walking/running a mile on the track.

And I HURT.

Ow.

(I am also a huge flaming wussbag and do not hurt nearly as much as I would had I overdone the weights yesterday, so hush up and count your non-achy muscles, Perky!)

As you may have gathered, I started my LIFESTYLE CHANGES. Low cholesterol! Lots of exercise! Eat right! Limit those calories!

Well... that SUCKS! I'm hungry all the time, and sore! And, and, and... yeah... really, it's not so bad. Honestly, I'll probably be used to this within a couple of weeks to a month, and life will be normal again, only I'll be in a very healthy routine instead of a mildly lazy, eat-like-my-five-year-old routine. I can do this!!!

May I just take the opportunity to give a round of applause and my personal STANDING OVATION to anyone reading this who is actively trying to lose weight! I have a relatively fast metabolism and a background of lifetime exercise to fall back on, and STILL my efforts to cut calories drove me INSANE for-- well, they still kind of are. I'm eating a lot of oatmeal so I'll feel full. So those of you, including my close friends and family, who have been doing the hardcore weight loss thing, my hat is OFF to you! It is HARD to change eating habits.

One thing I have discovered-- a bag of salad can be munched on like potato chips ALL DAY LONG. This is helpful to me. I can TRICK my body!!! I can EMULATE unhealthy habits, but STILL be eating HEALTHILY!!! I AM SO STEALTHY!!! I'm like a HEALTH NINJA!!!!!!!

Seen on a church sign in my neighborhood...

2008-10-28T09:18:00.001-05:00

"IF GOD SAYS YES NO ONES NO SHALL STAND"

God is a rapist! Have a nice day.
;)

GAHHHHH, cholesterol! :P

2008-10-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

So, I got my lab results back, and YAY, I'm not diabetic! But booooo, my dumb ol' LDL cholesterol (which I just mis-typed as LOL cholesterol) is too high.

According to this great post from Dr. Harriet Hall on Science-Based Medicine, there are cholesterol denialists out there! (Hee, there's a denialist for everything!) Much as I would like to be in denial myself, however, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of my needing to make a few lifestyle changes.

I haven't had my follow-up appointment yet, so I went online and researched the ramifications of my test results. My weight is fine, though I wouldn't mind losing a few pounds, and I already walk a mile a day... so probably the first thing my Wonderful Internist will have me try is to get the LDL down by changing my diet.

There's this thing called Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) touted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH. I am resistant, yet strangely compelled. So I downloaded this 80-page informational pamphlet on TLC, which seems to concentrate on... EATING PROPERLY (dunh-dunh-duuuuuuuuuuhn!). You know-- 6+ servings per day of whole grains, 3-5 servings per day of vegetables/dry beans/peas, 2-4 servings per day of fruits, 2-3 servings per day of low-fat dairy products. Keep meat/poultry/fish on the lean side (lean cuts, remove excess fat, remove skin) and down to no more than 5 ounces per day. Eat two fish meals per week. Eat nuts in moderation. Use unsaturated vegetable oils (love my olive oil!). Cut out the butter, and instead use a liquid or spreadable-when-cold margarine high in sterols or stanols. Get lots of soluble fiber, meaning eat fruit instead of drinking juice, eat oatmeal for breakfast, and hey, there's always ground psyllium (which I actually find to be a taste treat, texture-freak that I am-- I used to add a spoonful to my morning cereal every day!). Mind the calories and don't overeat.

In other words, eat like my mom always told me to. *SIGH*

Also, now that I think about it, I could probably stand to walk more than one mile per day, seeing as how I don't actually get much other physical activity. At all.

And most of all-- learn to love my coffee without half-and-half.

Saturday (ok, so it's Sunday) Perky Recipe: ZOMBIE FINGERS!!!!!!!

2008-10-26T21:12:00.003-05:00

I! Love!! Halloween!!!

It is the greatest holiday ever devised by humankind!!! You get to (1) dress up, (2) go merrily out at night past all reasonable bedtime, and (3) ACCOST STRANGERS FOR CANDY!!!!!!! How awesome is that???

So I really wish I had invented Zombie Fingers as an homage to Halloween. (I didn't; I invented them because I am a mutant freak who plays with her food.) NONETHELESS, here they are! In time to celebrate the greatest holiday ever devised by humankind in a ghoulish and zombie-riffic fashion!

1 bag baby carrots OR carrot sticks of finger-slenderness
1 can of Large, Extra-Large, or Jumbo black olives
1 tub hummus

Dip one end of each carrot in hummus. Shove dipped ends into black olives. Voila-- the fingers of zombies, complete with delicious, putrescent ooze! After you have made at least four of these, insert them between your real fingers and chase your friends around the room with them, making "UUUUUUUUHHHR" noises. Don't forget to shamble! Eat immediately... before they eat you!

Coping

2008-10-26T12:38:00.004-05:00

I Have Calmed Down.

The last couple of weeks have been very challenging for my family. Essentially, our Beloved Boy exhibited a behavior that, though normal for autistic kids, and indeed young kids in general, caused him to be suspended from school twice. The second suspension, IMO, was in large part a failure of the assistants to watch him properly, because the new safety protocols discussed in the IEP meeting were not implemented!

After the first suspension, yes there was an IEP meeting. Many, many things were suggested. After the second suspension I called our state's Autism Society. Many, many, many things were suggested. I felt overwhelmed and buried in information. My reflex when overwhelmed is to withdraw, and for the past few days I've done just that. My emotions and my worries have been so raw, so omnipresent, that I haven't dared write about them lest I, I dunno, blow up the internet or something. Or just collapse into tears at the keyboard, more likely.

What I did instead was to read a lot-- for pleasure, first of all. I discovered a blog I really love, and I went back to reading Trick Or Treatment, just to get my mind off our troubles and onto other things. Then I dipped my toes into the material from the Autism Society, and bit by bit, I've been absorbing it. I can handle this. There are specific, non-infinite things I can do to help B, and us.

In addition, the kindness and compassion of passing acquaintances of mine and B's have proven a deep well of resource. Chief among the things the county autism specialist said we need to do for him was to get him involved in sports. Me, I do not enjoy sports, except for solitary things like track and karate. But I needed to stretch beyond that comfort zone for my kid, and it made my skin hurt. Well, we walk a mile at a local metro parks recreation center every day, and one of the older employees there is always pushing the kids to sign up for the teams. He asked how old B was, and I said five, but-- he's special ed-- and I was going to elaborate on how B has difficulty absorbing rules, and how he loves to kick against authority and do his own thing, and, and, and... But the gentleman just smiled and shook his head and said, "I deal with 'em all the time, we've got lots of 'em in the program, and at that age, you can't never even tell one from another." I nearly collapsed in relief. THIS is the attitude I wanted to see in the school counselor! At age five, they're ALL uncoordinated and can't tell their feet from their hands half the time, and only hear half of what grownups tell 'em and can't follow instructions!!!! THEY'RE FIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(*pant, gasp, heave*)

So, just that little bit of acceptance after the week of "OMG SAFETY PRECAUTIONS" made me feel life was good, and not just a constant fight. It helped So. Much. I just want to give a huge hug to everybody, everywhere who treats differences as normal, not as diseases.

Another thing that happened was that B noticed one of the ballet instructors leaving the center, and he, little INCREDIBLY GIFTED FACE-RECOGNIZER that he is (he didn't get it from me, that's for certain!) gave her a grin and said, "How come you're not in your room?" meaning the dance room. She caught on even before I did, and grinned back, "Because class is over and I'm going home." It took me a beat to realize she was the Age 5-6 instructor, and I ran after her. "Do you know anyone who teaches dance who will take a high-functioning autistic boy in class?" Again, she grinned, and informed me she works in a day care and knows lots and lots about autistic kids, and at age five none of them really know how to do the steps anyway, and that we should feel welcome to sign up for her next class in January, and that she'll bring us a registration form on Monday! Again, the burden lifted. Again, the knowledge that people out there will help us make things better.

I guess I had thought school would ease the parental overwhelmedness I've felt for the past five years in raising my wonderful but like-unto-having-five-kids boy. It hasn't worked out that way. School has led to even more crushing issues and EVEN MORE having to advocate for B and stay on top of things. And you know what? I think I can deal with that. Step by step, little by little, and OMG REMEMBERING we're not alone in this, I can deal.

To cap off this week, some wonderful, awesome, close friends of ours offered to babysit last night, overnight. I love these friends. They are so wonderful. And awesome. And I feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. Just from having a night of rest. A single night.

I need to remember this. :)

Also, I am told my son ate their son's entire stack of cough drops, because B is MAD FOR COUGH DROPS! :)

Also also, that he was given a frosted Pop-Tart for breakfast. He took it and examined it and asked, "Why am I getting a frosted Pop-Tart?" My friend replied, "Because that's all we have." B ate it, THEN announced, "Mommy says I can only have the non-frosted ones." ROFLOL!!! The kid is honest, yet pragmatic!

Last but not least, I want to thank hugely all the commenters who shared helpful personal stories and perspective. It really, really meant a lot to us. *HUGS* Yet another reminder (I seem to need them way too often-- what, do I think it's Night Of the Comet out here?) that we are not alone, and parents can be there for each other.

Ups and Downs of Autistic Parenting

2008-10-22T16:47:00.004-05:00

He did it again.

The behavior that got him suspended. Different situation, yet the same.

He just does not understand!!! We are trying to teach him the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable, and with an autistic child, it is a LONG, drawn-out process, requiring patience, fortitude, and the ability to think fast. I do not possess all these traits to a great degree. But I am trying my best. Our whole assembled TEAM is trying its best. If we could only make him understand FASTER!

I am so afraid. I'm afraid for his future. I'm afraid for the future of our whole family. It's the uncertainty of child development that is killing me. HOW do I do it??? HOW do I make him understand, RIGHT NOW, to stop certain behaviors before he gets expelled from this school????

HELP!!!

GP visit

2008-10-22T14:34:00.004-05:00

Ok! I have quit being a flu shot dumbass and gotten one. Also got a comprehensive physical with blood work and tetanus-diptheria-pertussis booster shot. I love my new GP! He is great. I feel virtuous, but TIRED, 'cause I had to go in fasting. And fasting and fasting. :) Now I want a virtuous nap. Alas, must go run around with my boy as if nothing unusual had happened today! Maybe I'll have a cuppa coffee instead of that nap.

Wonderful French press coffee, hot, with a sinful excess of half-and-half!!!

However, as a nod to my health, I shall walk to the shop.

Stop Enabling Jenny McCarthy!

2008-10-21T09:53:00.003-05:00

Me: "I'm a mystery! Cloaked in an enigma!"
WH, without missing a beat: "Preceded by a marching band."

As Wonderful Husband so wittily observed, I'm not what you'd call subtle. So there may be shouty on this post. I apologize to your eyeball-eardrums in advance.

Antivaccinationists and "Green Our Vaccines" apologists make me livid.

They make me livid because they treat autistic people as broken things who have to be fixed in order to be human. And they publicize this viewpoint in popular media outlets and in political rallies around the country. Gee, thanks, THAT really helps me raise an autistic kid to have high self-esteem! And the fact that a PEDIATRICIAN, namely Dr. Jay Gordon, is one of them-- well, that really makes me seethe. It makes me despair, because he is so blindly focused on what he feels is a great cause... only his cause is ACTIVELY HARMING MY CHILD. Actively harming me. Actively harming autistics everywhere, by demonizing them in the public eye!

But more than that, he is helping Jenny McCarthy to promote her pet cause. Dr. Jay says he is not antivaccine, that he administers vaccines himself. Nonetheless, it is his support, as a doctor of children that is helping her in her campaign to bring about a resurgence of DEADLY INFECTIOUS DISEASES. How can he rationalize that??? How, how how? I cannot fathom the mindset, and the disconnect between the evidence and his opinion just leaves me wanting to scream!!!!

So, here's a website called Stop Jenny McCarthy. Please, please stop Jenny McCarthy. (Please please stop, Jenny McCarthy!) There are also extremely lively discussions on this issue featuring doctors and parents who know stuff about epidemiology over at Science-Based Medicine (here and here) and at Respectful Insolence-- the latter featuring comments from Dr. Jay Gordon himself. Even after reading them, I STILL. DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND. how he can support what Jenny is doing, and still consider himself an ethical doctor. I just don't.

Skeptical Parent Crossing, FABULOUS FIRST!!!

2008-10-21T08:44:00.004-05:00

HOORAY!!! It's the Fabulous FIRST EDITION of Skeptical Parent Crossing, a new blog carnival from Domestic Father, featuring skeptical parents and skeptical parenting issues! This is a really nice addition to the blogsphere, and a really great opportunity for skeptical parents to get to know each other and battle credulity in parenting-- an endeavor oft' beset by woomeisters, quacks and the just-plain-superstitious.

There is a lot of great blogging linked over there, so please come check it out, even if you're not a parent! Every skeptic can be a valuable ally to parents who try to navigate reality when raising brand new humans.

Sunday Child Anecdote

2008-10-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

I would like to take a moment to salute those unsung heroes, those rebels without causes, namely, kids who were born punk. Born to question authority! Born to be wild! Born to fight for their right to party! While a child with this inborn skepticism is difficult to raise, it makes me feel good about his potential as a critical thinker.

I was in the living room cleaning, with my child B happily listening to iTunes on the computer. He started singing loudly, then started to make noises of distress. Finally, he screamed out, "I CANNOT GET A CHOICE!!!"

I ran in, saying, "What???? What's the matter???? What happened????"

B turned to me in placid regard and said, "Well, I'm just singing loud."

I went back into the other room and continued my cleaning. B continued to belt out his song, yelling, "I CAN-NOT GET A CHOICE!!!" intermittently.

I submit to the blogosphere that the sentiment "I cannot get a choice!" may be the most clear-cut example of child punk-rock I have ever heard.

Saturday recipe: Perkily postponed until next Saturday!

2008-10-18T17:14:00.000-05:00

I am at my brother's for dinner, no cooking for me! But I will be back with a Full! Culinary!! Report!!! (There may be SCOTCH EGGS in it for ya!) :) Have a great evening, and bon apetit!

Choosing Battles

2008-10-18T10:11:00.001-05:00

My high school was about a thirty to forty minute drive from my house. Rather than make this expensive and time-consuming trip completely out of their way every day, my parents set me up with a succession of car pools, people who lived in my town but worked in the Big City, and who graciously agreed to drop me off at school and pick me up at the end of their workday. Since my school was half day students and half boarders, not to mention academically rigorous, I always had plenty of assignments and friends around to occupy and entertain me while I waited. (Let's get real-- I almost never did homework during the afternoons with my friends!)

One such carpooling driver was "Delia," a twenty-six-year-old office worker who was consistently late getting ready and typically used the rear-view mirror to apply her mascara while hurtling us down the highway at 90 miles per hour. I enjoyed Delia's company for the most part, though we had little in common. Indeed, one might infer from my brief description of her habits that her judgment might be somewhat lacking. This was never more true than when I was forcibly introduced to one of her friends.

She was dropping me off at school that day but couldn't pick me up, as she had to go to a friend's house immediately after work to help him move. Thus she had kindly arranged to have another friend of hers pick me up from school and take me home. At that tender age I didn't enjoy interacting with strange adults, but no big deal, I figured. Then came the disclaimer, "He's loud and kinda full of himself, but he's just a good ol' boy at heart. Don't let him worry you." ...Um...!

Then he showed up.

I don't even remember his name, so I'll just call him Mark. He drove a black Honda with an Auburn personalized license plate. He was loud and aggressive of demeanor. And there I was, a timid yet trying-to-appear-confident sixteen-year-old, trying to hold my own in a conversation with a guy who started off by criticizing my choice of schools. "What's the matter, too smart for Chilton County High?" It was meant to be funny, but every word that came out of his mouth was in that same obnoxious, shoving-contest vein. I feigned a light tone and prayed to say nothing to piss him off, 'cause I was terrified of him.

Then the question came, inevitable in the South, "Where do you go to church?"

I froze.

"I'm a Qabbalist-- Most of my family goes to the First Methodist Church-- The First Baptist Church is right behind my house--" all true statements, though each weasellier than than the one before it. They flashed through my brain, none quite making it out through my mouth, until I felt I'd better spit something out or risk further questions. "F-First Methodist Church," I stammered, naming the church at which I had done some summer volunteer work.

All my beliefs in standing up for myself, all my principles about being who I am in the face of all obstacles, all my knowledge of my Constitutional rights crumbled-- CRUMBLED-- when faced with this big, strange bully who was driving me down the Interstate and asked me this question.

"Well, that's ok, Methodists 're saved, too." I was appalled at the condescension, though not surprised, and in fact I was mainly just relieved that I hadn’t picked his church, which would have exposed me to a cross-examination. In that split-second before answering, I had guessed correctly that he was a Southern Baptist.

That ended the religious discussion, and clearly I survived the trip home. But I was angry with myself for years afterward.

Two questions stick in my mind about that incident. First, why did I lie? I think the reason is obvious-- me, stuck in a car with a loud, bigoted bully, at whose mercy I was until he dropped me at home, and even then, all I could think of was, "this guy knows where I LIVE!"

The second question, borne more of maturity, is-- why was I angry? Seriously, why sould I have been kicking myself all those years for not standing up for my beliefs under those specific circumstances? At the time I thought I should have done or said more-- tried to educate the guy about different ways of thinking. Looking back on it, however, it seems a clear case of common sense. Did I really have CAUSE to fear for my physical safety? Probably not, though I've since learned to better trust my instincts in these matters. The guy scared me, and I suspect I felt that fear with good reason. I was sixteen, in a car at 85 mph with a strange, aggressive man who knew my home address and was outspoken enough to raise hell if he chose. As it stands, he probably wouldn't remember me to this day. But if I had defended myself, he could have made things very difficult for my whole family in that little town, and I bet he’d sure as hell remember.

This brings up the question of, WHEN do we stand up for ourselves? Well, I think the key for anyone is to choose battles wisely. Pick the ones that matter, and choose to fight them from a position of strength. In that tiny little community, the ONLY practitioners of the Qabbalah (and very likely the only non-Christians!) were my nuclear family, and my mom would have just as soon thrown me and my dad to the wolves to protect the position of her extended family in that town which was her ancestral home. Back then, this was a town where the tiny Catholic church was treated by the majority of the locals as a quaint curiosity rather on the level of a circus sideshow-- one wondered what went on inside, but no well-bred individual would *ever* be seen going into it. Debating one loudmouth over whether my soul was going to Hell would most probably have done nothing except give me fits of worry about possible repercussions. (As it was, I had nightmares about the guy!) Now, as I write this book, skeptics and atheists everywhere are united in online communities. With more strength to back me up against the nutjobs, I choose to battle ignorance in a larger forum.

Love Letter To The Skeptical Blogosphere

2008-10-17T10:56:00.003-05:00

I am feeling warm and fuzzy toward the skeptical, medical, and science blogosphere today! ...So warm and fuzzy that once again I left a loser-length comment on someone else's blog, which is, once again, one of the reasons I have my own blog in the first place, so I'll quit long-windedly hijacking other people's comment threads! :) So today's post is going to be my warm, fuzzy love letter to the warm, fuzzy skeptical, medical, and science blogosphere. (Or Blogosystem, Bloggyway Galaxy, Blogal Group, Blogellanic Clouds, Blogo Supercluster, Blogoverse, Blogsmos.)

Medical and sciencebloggers have been talking a lot lately about how Complementary and Alternative Medicine practitioners (or sCAM practitioners, as I like to call them) have a great frame for peddling their dubious cures and even out-and-out quackery, because unlike ethical medical practitioners, they can project unshakable certainty about their treatments. They can also comfort their clients with lots and lots of face-time and attention. I used to be really put off by what I perceived as a cold impersonalness of the medical profession. Well, these past few years that I've been reading doctor blogs have done SO MUCH to increase my confidence that my doctors really do care and want to help, and wouldn't be in the profession otherwise! I no longer fret about those 15 minute appointments, now knowing what I do about how hard it is for docs to make a living under current reimbursement rules. Plus, doctor-written blogs have effectively increased the amount of "face time" I feel I get with doctors. It turns them into real people, with lives, pets, humor, good days and bad days, hobbies, introspection, and ethical sense, far more than just being white coats with no time. It has given me a better appreciation of the ups and downs of medical practice. It has also made me a more compliant patient, hearing all these stories of how non-compliance ruins health!

As contradictory as this might sound, even hearing about mistakes and missteps from the doctor’s perspective has led me to a greater level of trust in medical professionals and the diagnostic system. It has brought the entire process more down to earth for me, humanized it, and made it seem less impersonal and far more "holistic" than any alternative nostrum. Seeing how mistakes get made and then corrected gives me confidence that my health is being looked after by people who care.

That is the crux of the matter-- CARE.

This goes not just for doctors, but for physicists, mathematicians, evolutionary biologists, researchers of all stripes, and all skeptical inquiring minds taking a hard look at their corner of the universe. No matter whether they go by their real name or a pseudonym, the bloggers whose writing I find most compelling are those who write with the passion they feel for their work. That passion and love for what they do shines through in their rants about pseudoscience, in their anger at people who take advantage of the sick or the lost, in their humor in presenting tough topics, and in the well-constructed educational posts about the fundamentals of their work. These bloggers are doing important work making science and science-based research accessible to the general public-- and making it FUN. Because they care. Because they are passionate about what they do.

Thank you, bloggers who blog from the heart. I love reading your work, because you inspire me to love your work. And that is AWESOME.

More trouble at school

2008-10-16T08:02:00.003-05:00

More trouble on the Wonderful Son's school front. He is suspended until Monday. I cannot bear to get into it. I'm just going to link to this post by Wonderful Husband at Homologous Trend, entitled, And the Rollercoaster Continues. Another IEP meeting is scheduled for Monday, and I'm going to insist the autism specialist for our county be there to help us sort out the mess.

I may lose one of my freelance contracts because of my inability to work this week, due to all the kidwatching. But that is last on my list of worries. I just want my boy to be in an educational environment suited to his needs and not where the teachers are constrained by idiotic policies that aren't allowed to take into account that he is FIVE YEARS OLD!!!

I need to quit ranting and make some phone calls to assemble our advocates for that meeting.

Science-based books!

2008-10-15T10:02:00.002-05:00

I recently got a stack of sciencey books. Yummy, crunchy science to read about, in book form! Huzzah!!

The first one was sent to me by the beneficence of the Seed Scienceblogs Book Club. I was lucky enough to receive one of the 50 free copies of Dr. Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets, which I blogged about here. (Encapsulated review: It is a GREAT book, and everyone should run out and buy two copies right now, one to read, and one to send to Jenny McCarthy!)

Next in the stack is Trick Or Treatment by Simon Singh and Dr. Edzard Ernst. This book is FILLED with interesting biographical and historical tales and tidbits that makes the statistics and the medicine just come ALIVE-- and I haven't even gotten to the juicy homeopathy-debunking yet!!! There are a lot of great books about science-based medicine, so-called alternative medicine, and quackery; I'm sure most of them are very good, but personally, I'm daunted by the thought of which ones to choose to spend my precious life-hours reading. For anyone else so daunted, I enthusiastically recommend Trick Or Treatment as a great way to get fired up about science-based medicine! For me, it was literally like falling in love all over again! :) YAY, SCIENCE!!!

This got me reminiscing, because the fired-up feeling so reminded me of how I felt when I was introduced to my first love among science-based medicine books. For me, that book was Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif. I picked it out of a list to read for a book report when I was 13, and from the very first page, I was smitten with science!!! It presents Mysteries, Excitement, LIFE-OR-DEATH MATTERS, and best of all, it's all part of the actual history of science-based medicine! How great is that??? [Edit: I notice that many of the reviews of it on Amazon.com say that the book uses some racist language. How unfortunate! Apparently I blipped over all that as a child and just excused it as a product of the time in which it was written.] I read this account of the rise of science-based medicine at a crucial time in life, when my opinions and view of the world were being smelted in the crucible of puberty, and I'm convinced this helped my love of evidence and the scientific method become chemically fused into my character.

Thinking back even earlier, there were also some great children's books that nurtured a love of science as well. One illustrated chapter book called Reptiles Do the Strangest Things started with THE BIG BANG!!!!! I found the book at my mom's house last month, and I was pleasantly surprised that the explanation it gave holds up even today. Especially today, now that the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND has been discovered! (I will pause for a moment in order to do the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND Happy-Dance.)

Where was I? RIGHT! So-- I'm curious to know what other people's first book that got them really fired up about science was! Please leave a comment telling me! :)

Stuff I Find Thrilling

2008-10-14T15:05:00.003-05:00

Ok, this is a lame thing for me to be excited about, but I have a history of being excited about lame things, so there you are.

I had a tire going flat. And-- I took my car to a tire shop... and they patched it!!!! JUST LIKE THAT!!!! It's as if MONEY can be exchanged for goods and services or something!!!!! OH BRAVE NEW WORLD THAT HAS SUCH PEOPLE IN IT!!!!!!

There. Have I properly conveyed my excitement? Are you excited yet? Aw, go on-- have a cuppa coffee! Methinks I prob'ly should have given you the one I just drank.