Kirk Cameron: You can shut up, too
If you're saying that Jesus wants us to carry out his instructions, don't you think the discussion should at least include the instructions such as loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, turning the other cheek, etc. instead of just the part about spreading the faith ie converting people?

In completely unrelated news, tonight I saw the Simpsons episode in which Homer is sent to an outsourced nuclear power plant in India and it made me think: I hope the relevant parties in India are being highly scrupulous about health and safety issues and paying attention to what is going down with China right now. If that happens to India, then they will look like a bunch of asses and probably also be added to my list of people who should shut up already. The good news is so far it seems we have no reason to worry about that kind of thing. Customer service and tech support quality don't vary as much by where they're done as by how important the faceless multinational conglomerate really thinks the customers are.
- posted by k @ 9:15 PM

 
News from the real world

• Was woken up by my biggest earthquake to date last night at 4:40am: 4.2 on the richter scale, 2 miles from Oakland, lasted about 10 seconds. No damage, cats were not impressed.

• Why do I feel like I'm trudging through Chamber of Secrets? Started this morning and am 2/3 through. The dueling scene seemed contrived, and the mandrake-repotting unnecessary. What's wrong with me? OTOH I do have a pet reverse-Star Trek theory ie that the even ones are weaker than the odd ones (though 5&6 are outstanding exceptions, so maybe that blows the theory). And it seems so...thin! I mean, plot and theme-wise. OTOH, the last two books I read were Persuasion (good) and White Teeth (very good) and I thought those were just barely meaty enough to be satisfying. Just. Perhaps it is time to read Infinite Jest now, after all. Or maybe Gravity's Rainbow. Hmm, actually that sounds good. Oh dear. At least I know Half-Blood Prince has convoluted flashbacks and thingies.

• For some reason my last post doesn't show up even when I hit refresh. Hmm.

Labels: getting old ?

- posted by k @ 1:42 PM

 
Bits of things/Current events

• Apparently K.T. Tunstall has a new album out, because they played a song from it on KFOG this morning. That's good; I like her voice and look forward to hearing more of her on the radio. The new song was pretty good, too--an interesting minor key bass line.

• So the new Harry Potter, the last one is coming out this weekend? Oops, I'm behind on my reading. I was debating with myself whether to just re-read the penultimate one (Half-Blood Prince) or whether to re-read the entire series, but I didn't think I had time for all that, and I thought about just reading the last two but I don't think I can stand to read Order of the Phoenix(5) a third time. So I have decided to just re-read Chamber of Secrets(2) (because I think it may have hidden clues) and Half-Blood Prince(6) and to watch the movies of Azkaban(3), Goblet(4), and OotP(5).

• Key to a long life -- less insulin in the brain?WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Good, old-fashioned diet and exercise might keep you young by reducing the action of insulin in the brain, researchers reported on Thursday. [...]"Diet, exercise and lower weight keep your peripheral tissues sensitive to insulin," White said. That means the body needs to make less insulin.
  
  One obvious question is whether drugs can mimic the effects of having less Irs2, perhaps by interfering with its action. The researchers note that people who live to be 100 or more often have reduced insulin levels and their cells show better insulin sensitivity.
  
  New diabetes drugs that increase insulin sensitivity may help, too, White said. But, he added: "The easiest way to keep insulin levels low in the brain is old-fashioned diet and exercise."
  
  
  
  

- posted by k @ 12:06 PM

 
Did you ever wonder if your diet is making you produce too much mucus?
Note: I'm not sure if I believe all of this, but it certainly seems plausible. Highly entertaining, at any rate! And if you lean towards naturopathy, I think this article, does too.

This is the funniest part:

Let’s look at an antibody soap opera. Antibody X must seek and demolish Microbe Z, a bacterial bad guy, responsible for an irritating cold. The body is tracking his position, Agent X has been assigned to a search-and-destroy mission to intercept Microbe Z before he does greater damage to the host. On his way through the lymph, he finds himself in a traffic jam, an underpass full of mucus. In this vulnerable position, Agent X is a sitting duck. From above, he is ambushed by two million bacterial bad guys who have been feasting on the mucus for days. The last thought in Agent X’s mind before he dies is, in spite of his perfect conditioning and training, nothing had prepared him to deal with the obstruction of thick, sticky mucus. Finally, after the host had suffered for days with a raw throat, coughing, sneezing, reinforcements were able to destroy the bacterial bad guys.


I was surprised to see beans and rice on the list of mucus-producing foods, but not surprised to see cheese and other dairy. Beans and rice would explain it, since I've had a lot of them this week

I'm sure if there are any of you left out there, that you must find this fascinating.
- posted by k @ 5:14 PM

 
Life in Oakland

This really happened. To me. This morning.

Me: [getting on a bus I've never taken before, speaking to driver] Do you go to BART? Fruitvale BART?

Bus driver lady: Uh-uh, no.

Me: You don't go to BART?

Bus driver lady: [exasperated] Yes I go to BART!

Me: Sorry, I didn't hear you the first time.

Bus driver lady: [no trace of humor, joshing, etc] I said no the first time, but I go to BART.

Me: Ok thanks! [running meekly to the back of the bus]

Anyway, aside from sassy humorless bus drivers, there was encouragement for me this morning as I rode down Fruitvale Ave. I passed a Centro de Juventud which I think was a Youth Center, and a Clinica de Jovenes, which I think was a teen clinic (across the street from a larger clinic, but run by the same organization, La Clinica) and a school called Urban Promise Academy with a wicked graffiti/mural of empowered young people on the front. Seeing these things gives me hope, and reporting them here fits with the mission of Ode magazine (see below)--to point out that there IS good news in the world every day, as well as bad news. I don't know much about these groups, programs or organizations, but seeing that there are safe and accessible recreation, health and education resources in the Fruitvale district is encouraging. I'm sure they're not enough to meet the need in the area, and I don't mean that this should give us a sense of complacency, because there's plenty still to be done. But for everyone who's out there doing things, maybe this can make us/them feel a little less lonely and hopeless to see that other people are also out there doing things and having what looks like success.

- posted by k @ 9:02 AM

 
Breaking news!

Saw these at the grocery store yesterday. Good thing I was already in the checkout line, or else I might have been tempted to buy them. I like Raisinets, but I find I don't enjoy milk chocolate much anymore and often find it cloying, so I was happy to see these! I know that mainstream cheap candy versions of dark candy (e.g. dark m&ms, dark kit kat, dark kisses) are going to be lower cocoa content (40-50% instead of 60+%) than high-end dark chocolate, but I do still enjoy them more than the milk chocolate versions. However, while they might save you a bit of risk, I think anyone considering them "healthy" is deluding themselves.

The only other thing I can say is that I wanted to link to an official product page at Nestle or especially a press release about this new product if they had one, but I can't seem to find such a page. Odd! I could understand if they're just test-marketing it in certain regions, but it seems to be already launched.

- posted by k @ 3:38 PM

 
Stop the presses!
Ok, so late last night we were driving by the Oakland airport, and as we made a left turn to get back on Hegenberger out the right side window I SAW IT. In the moonlight and fog, resting gently on the ground. Or did it touch the ground? I swear we were as close as 50 yards from it. I didn't have a camera and we didn't have time to go, but maybe that's for the best. The magic, mystery and majesty of an encounter like this is not the kind of thing you can bottle and sell.


- posted by k @ 8:57 AM

 
What's happenin' in Oakland?

• The bookstore that closed down in the Dimond district is now a Peet's coffee.

• There appears to be a new(!) AC Transit bus line, the 1R which is a rapid bus. But I don't know where and where it goes between--I will have to find out. On that note, all the AC Transit busses I've been seeing look new and in good condition. Yay!

• Ongoing something or other between the SEIU (union) and Farmer Joe's. I don't really understand what the issue is or how concerned to be, but it's a shame since I love Farmer Joe's. I hope they're not really union-busting. This must be how people who care about sports feel when an athlete they admire is accused of using performance-enhancing drugs. (FTR The NLRB investigated the charges against Farmer Joe's and dropped them, but the union is still encouraging a boycott or something).

• There's a Flexcar next to the City Car Share cars at MacArthur BART.
  

- posted by k @ 9:58 PM

 
Dear Pope Ratzinger:
Shut up already. You know, yesterday with the Latin mass thing I stuck up for you because I thought maybe you were trying to heal a rift within the church and that your main goal wasn't to introduce the part about praying for the conversion of Jewish people (though even Rabbi Michael Lerner wasn't happy about that), but today after this whole "non-Catholic churches aren't real churches" thing I can't really give you the benefit of the doubt thing like I have been doing. So unfortunately you are going on my list of people I wish would shut up already, right next to Richard Dawkins and those Hindutvas who are upset about celebrity goings-on.
- posted by k @ 12:25 PM

 
Rhythms Del Mundo: Rocking my world?

Right, so last week I was in a restaurant in central London and a song came on. I said to myself "Hang on a minute, is that a...latin jazz cover of....Coldplay's 'Clocks'?" Which it appeared to be from every way I could tell. What really amazed me about it was how well it worked--if you said to me someone did a latin jazz cover of a Coldplay song I would probably shrug it off as some kind of gimmicky thing, but when I hear this I really loved the way it sounded. The new elements were fitted inside the existing song, not painted over the top, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I was at Pacific Coast Pub/Restaurant (possibly the best pub in California) last night and I heard it again so I dashed over to the jukebox to see who the album/artist were. Turns out it was this album called Rhythms Del Mundo in which the Cuban musicians from Buena Vista Social Club give this same treatment to a bunch of rock/pop songs. Also, sales of the album go toward some kind of global warming awareness thingy. Knowing all that, my feeling is that it could be really awful and gimmicky and cynical, but having heard the cover of 'Clocks' not knowing anything about it, I am truly intrigued to hear the other tracks. Maybe I'm just the target demographic for this kind of gimmickery, I don't know. That would make me a sucker.

I'm resisting saying that I think I should rush out to buy this album because I'm trying to resist the idea that enjoying music automatically equals buying albums. Albums are a commodity, plus they take up space. But music is not necessarily a commodity. Y'know? Of course if you download the album instead of buying a CD the argument could get more complicated. Intellectual property and all that.
- posted by k @ 3:07 PM