Bitch Please....

I was listening to the radio the other day (holla Movin' 92.5) and I couldn't help but notice that they bleeped out the word "manwhore" from the song "The Way You Move" by Outkast. And thus the following rant ensued in my head....WTF? You can say bitch on the radio as much as you like, but you can't say manwhore???? really???? Not only does this contradiction constantly annoy to me, but it is so blatantly sexist that I can barely stand it.

So dear wonderful blog readers, is it really fair that you can demean women left and right on the radio, but say one bad word about men and it gets bleeped????

Thank God for Hotpants and a Vacation!

As many of you may have noticed, Hotpants has been holding up our blog for the past week, and for that I am very very thankful. I would also like to take this opportunity to give a big thanks for vacations. The past week was a much needed break from the insanity of life as a grad student and a great time to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while. So thank you God for both a great blog partner and for vacation! They both rock!

arg, the financial box

the financial box is a term that i started using soon after graduating college to describe the careers of some of my college friends and many of my friend's friends.

i called it this because despite my usual high level curiosity, whenever the people in the financial industry would describe what they did at work i couldn't bring myself to listen. there seemed to be no real stories attached and the fact is i've never found gambling exciting. i did find it incredibly weird that so many of them were going into it as a career, and still i had no real idea what they did. but it seemed like impenetrable box, because i couldn't get over my boredom and listen to what a derivative or a hedge fund really was.

now, with this financial crisis, many of us are learning what these things are. but, it wasn't until i read thomas geoghegan's article "infinite debt" in harper's mag, that i heard an expert flush out my unease about the financial sector sucking up smart, young people.

this article unfortunately is not published online (here's the link for subscribers), but i recommend going out and buying the mag for the article (hell, why not support the printed word and the collages that go with the article by mark wagner are awesome). geoghegan writes about the loss of potentially great industrial minds to the toxic financial sector. he seems to say, or at least i do, this could be considered a huge societal opportunity cost.

this is actually only a small part of his article, but i think i will save the rest for later posts. but with regard to this subject, what if a lot of those smarties went into, i don't know, science instead? or ran successful companies that paid middle class workers for skills? arg, the financial box.

reagan was a socialist... by today's republican standards

ok, i admit it, i often erase moveon.org's emails before reading them. there are just so many! but, an email subject line from last week was "ridiculous." so i had to check... and f' yeah this is ridiculous:



how's that for perspective?

graph on moveon.org
graph source: washington monthly : soaking the rich (redux)

yay yay yay spring!

happy spring, blog readers. hope you get a chance to enjoy some sunshine and growth.

ps we're on twitter

Is this the end of the newspaper as we know it?

A lot of you may know this already, but a major Seattle newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (aka the P-I), closed its print doors and exists only in a virtual sense now. A lot of newspapers are feeling the burn when it comes to maintaining a revenue stream from their print media, but it is really sad to see one of the major Seattle newspapers go down in this manner. Not only does it indicate a shift in the way that news is being accessed by the general public, and taking away the glory that is actually holding a newspaper in your hands, but it also marks the potential decline in the quality of news reporting. While it would be nice to think that the online versions of newspapers that are no longer in print will be able to keep up the kind of reporting quality of their previous print selves, this seems like a pipe dream. Besides for the fact that they are saving money by not having to actually print the paper, the P-I is also planning on drastically cutting down the amount of staff on the paper to around 20 and they are going to make their website more Huffington Post like, with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting. With such a drastic cut down and a reworking of their news model I can't help but think that this means a potential downfall in the prevalence of fact checking and creative reporting, and thus a large issue in terms of getting good quality news from the P-I.

So dear, wonderful blog readers, what do you think about major newspapers going virtual and leaving their print past behind. Are they going to be able to survive in this way on advertising revenue alone? Is reporting really going to become much more like blogging? Are we losing an essential part of our history? I just can't help but feel a little sad seeing it go down like this.

NYT Article on the change

P-I Website

the holy see seems to be blind as a bat

for a virgin, the pope has plenty to say about how we should conduct our sex lives. i don't agree with a lot of what he and his minions say about these matters. but yesterday was a big what the fuck!!!!

during the pope's first visit to africa, he stated that condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic and in fact they may be fueling the epidemic. WRONG WRONG WRONG. condoms can reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus by 80 percent. they are one of very few proven interventions and the most successful. certainly more "answers" are needed, but as of right now, condoms are the best one we have.

in the US (and in the vatican), it may be easy to forget how devastating and widespread HIV/AIDS is in africa. in 2006 within sub-saharan africa 2.1 million adults and children died of AIDS, 2.8 million were newly infected with HIV and in some countries the adult prevalence was higher than 20%.

the ignorance of the pope's statement wouldn't matter if he was just regarded as a crazy old man by the people that he is visiting, but actually catholicism is on the rise in africa.

put it all together:
(up to 20% adult prevalence of AIDS)+(40% rise in catholicism in africa in the last 2 decades) + (recommendation by the pope to stop handing out condoms, which prevent 80% of AIDS transmission)

what does that equal? a whole lot of WTF

nyt article on pope's statement
london times editorial: the pope looks ill educated or ill intentioned
the daily mash: put a bible over your penis, the popes says

An image is worth a 1000 words...

For those of you familiar with the story of Harvey Milk....this poster was being held up in front of the California Supreme Court Building in San Francisco where the Prop 8 hearing was being held on March 5th. Simply, WTF?

Thank God for the return of science being left to scientists!

This is a glorious week in science history! Obama has lifted the ban on human stem cell research and returned the US back to a state where scientists get to decide what is good and important science (and ethical for that matter) and the government doesn't get to stick their greedy hands all up in there. So kudos to you Obama and thank god for the return of science based on scientific facts instead of ideology!

NYT Article on the Stem Cell Ban being lifted

really pharma? really?

a pfizer representative photographed medical students protesting against pharma involvement in their education. really?

does this signal a shift of "big brother" from the gov't to the big corporations? what do you think?

times article
background story

Seriously? We need a birth control pill for a psychological disorder?

Ok, first off I have some seriously issues with the advertisement of drugs in the first place. But then you add in claims about the ability to treat the symptoms of a psychological disorder with a birth control pill. Seriously?

I have just recently done a report on Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (aka PMDD) and have found that there is some evidence that this is it own disorder, but not a lot. Additionally, it is one of the only psychological disorders that is gender specific. Thus, it should really give a person pause when they think about whether it is just pathologizing women's normal mood variations and their normal hormone shifts or if it is really something that is different from depression which can effect both genders. Also, it has been shown that men have the same if not more severe mood variations over the course of a month then women. So don't think that you guys are so perfect either.

I guess my major beef is that there is an advertisement on TV with an attractive woman telling us that we not only need this fancy birth control that will help our acne, but now it will also help us with a disorder that not that many women will ever have in the first place. Because of this add more women are going to think they have PMDD, they will attribute their normal mood variations to this disorder, and women's bodies will continue to be pathologized. Of course there is money to be made by pathologizing women's bodies and making women think that things are wrong with them, and thus there are the advertisements about it. (let alone the implications for the oppression of women by making them seem crazy)

So really fair blog readers, should Yaz be allowed to come onto the TV and tell us that women are crazy and they have just the pill to solve all our potentially non-disordered premenstrual issues? I mean really, WTF?

Stupid YAZ website

international women's day was march 8th. i bet you didn't know that.

women's day is celebrated in full force in some parts of the world, but not in the US... not that i noticed.

for those of you that might think that in the US women shouldn't be recognized as a group any more than men (ie in the US this type of the day is irrelevant), i'd like to point out that the first national woman's day was observed in the US in honor of the 1908 garment workers' strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions. no matter what you think of the state of women's rights in US presently, i hope that you agree that women that fought for change deserve to be commemorated, especially those that lived in times when being recognized as individuals was next to impossible.

here's more history on the day by the UN, for whom the day is a big deal

on an international level, the UN has decided to devote the day to prevention of violence against women. here are their facts about "the situation":

• Today, many women – in some countries as many as one in three – are beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetimes.
• Worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
• Half of the women who die from homicides are killed by their current or former husbands or partners.
• For women aged 15 to 44 years, violence is a major cause of death and disability.
• More than 80 per cent of trafficking victims are women.
• More than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation.
• On the basis of data collected from 24,000 women in 10 countries, between 55 per cent and 95 per cent of women who have been physically abused by their partners have never contacted NGOs, shelters or the police for help.

in honor of the day i encourage you to donate money and/or time to one of these organizations (if you can think of more please write a comment):
now
amnesty international
national domestic violence hotline
planned parenthood

Is it plagarism if you are plagiarizing yourself?

In a recent article in Science authors found that approximately 1 in 200 papers published in PubMed (scientific database to the gods) had some indication of plagiarism and that of those papers, approximately 86.2% of the content was similar to previously published work. While plagiarism is a terribly bad thing and should be avoided at all costs, as a person in the academic world I have found myself wondering, are you plagiarising if you plagiarize your own work?

Example: I have now written multiple papers on different aspects of delayed and late testing for HIV among men who have sex with men (granted there is only one in for actual publication at this point), and given that almost all scientific papers start the same way, with an explanation of the broad background of the issue, why the issue is important, and how you plan to look at said issue, I find myself re-writing the same intro over and over and over again. Sure I will update things if new numbers come up and more information, but generally I am just putting the same material down on the page for each paper. If while writing this introduction or in reviewing the existing literature I use the same sentence that I wrote in the first paper I wrote on the topic, is this considered plagiarism?

What do you think fair blog readers, can you plagiarize yourself? and if you can, how are scientists who all study very specific topics supposed to avoid plagiarizing themselves?

Science Article

thanks sooo much for KEXP

if you don't already know, kexp is an independent radio station broadcast from seattle. you can also listen to it streaming live at kexp.org

i've loved kexp for many years. i saw john richards, the morning host, at the drug store yesterday and had a brief moment of celebrity sighting joy. but it was brief, b/c i think of john as a normal part of my life. he's a great host (and has been a voice crush of mine for years), but i always imagine him broadcasting next door. he's just an incredibly awesome neighbor.

kexp exposes many to music that they wouldn't otherwise hear by band and genre. i encourage you to check out and maybe just maybe become a member.
kexp.org


so long as we are praising independent radio, i'd like to give a shout out to my favorite professa, j-man. listen to his show, science of soul, friday mornings and i promise the morning will be even brighter.
science of soul

WTF, I can't think anymore!?!

OK, I dropped the ball, I didn't post yesterday. Mainly cause my brain is hurting from attempting to shove too much information into it at once. I mean seriously, I get the concept of finals, I get that one is supposed to synthesize the information that they have learned over the quarter or semester. In many ways the process of studying can bring it together, but is pure regurgitation really the way to show off what you have learned? For the past two quarters I have felt that at the end, my test was just about my attempting to throw up all of the things in my head into one of those dreaded blue books (yes, I live in a world of essay tests). Additionally, my classes are invariably always rear loaded, where everything comes at the end. I mean for gods sake, I had a presentation yesterday, a final this morning, and a presentation on Monday. And that is just for two classes. Is this push at the end really conducive to the learning process? Or does it cause a situation where you learn what you can, shove it into short term memory, and then promptly forget it when you are done?

evolve US!

my new favorite bumper sticker of the genre that doesn't make me giggle is:
if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

here's a big example of the ignorance kind:
from nat'l geographic reporting in 2006:

"This chart depicts the public acceptance of evolution theory in 34 countries in 2005. Adults were asked to respond to the statement: "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." The percentage of respondents who believed this to be true is marked in blue; those who believed it to be false, in red; and those who were not sure, in yellow."



originally published by jon miller et al in science

i was tipped this article by this guest column by stephen quake who ends his blog with a great paragraph... i can't say it better so here it is:

"Our genomes represent both a record of our evolutionary history and a guide to our identity as individuals. You can’t accept one without the other, and it is impossible to reap the medical and health benefits of genome knowledge without also accepting the central role of evolution in human history. Before the benefits of the genome revolution can be fully realized, Americans will need to resolve the cognitive dissidence which prevents them from accepting the role of evolution in biology … and their lives."

so US evolve, educate and evolve some more...

Should students be given rewards for learning?

In a recent article in the NYT (does anyone see a pattern here) they were talking about the new influx of programs around the USA that are monetarily rewarding students for their grades, taking tests, and doing well on tests (like the AP tests). They go through some pros and cons to this behavior, and you will have to read the article to get a feel for the pros, because I have to say that I can see nothing but cons to this method of getting students to learn.

First, why are we paying kids to learn when we can barely pay teachers to teach? Wouldn't that money be better spent rewarding teachers for their hard jobs? Second, what happens to kids with learning disabilities? Will their be some sort of special pay scale for them, further stigmatizing them? Third, what about students from financially challenged homes? Will they feel more pressure to perform to bring money home to their families? Will that pressure be too much to place on that child's shoulders? In turn, will students from well off families stop studying all together since they don't need the money?

If we create a system where students expect rewards for everything they do in school, aren't we setting up a system that is really just rewarding students in the short term, but not actually setting them up for a love of lifelong learning? What are those kids going to do when they get to college? or God forbid grad school where we barely get paid anything and in many cases we have to pay them to teach us? Is this really the answer to motivating kids to learn????? WTF?

NYT Article

wtf common cold, why do you have to be so common?

yup that's right. hotpants has a cold. so in the haze of "non-drowsy" cold medicine here is some info about colds that you may already know, but a lot of people don't:

1. it's a virus. please don't take antibiotics for it! over-prescription of antibiotics helps pesky bacteria evolve to resist. (i am now picturing a cartoon bacteria shouting in a french accent "resistance!")

2. there is no evidence that being cold gives you the common cold. there are more colds in the winter than other seasons, but that's probably b/c we are all indoors sharing the same air. (yummy!)

3. lack of sleep (<7 hours) has been associated with catching the common cold (whoops!)

4. there is no cure for the common cold (no anti-virals). everything you've taken for it is supposed to either help with severity and/or duration of symptoms. and that zinc you're taking, there is no proof it helps. so if it hurts your stomach, stop taking it.

5. if you are like me up until a year ago, and have stubbornly not taken cold medicine thinking you are tough... i understand... but let me tell you it's pretty helpful. (and may be making me a little wacky... that's a good thing though right?)

most of this list was derived from public health schooling and
wiki backed me up and filled in the blanks

Thank God for good customer service!

In the past week or so I have had two occasions of pretty exceptional customer service. So let me tell you these two quick stories:

1) I took my lovely Mini Cooper S, Lola, into the shop the other week. She was having a minor leak and I was hoping to get some routine maintenance done before my warranty ran out. I sat working while they fixed her up, cleaned, and vacuumed her and then told me she was all set to go. When I got outside and went to put my stuff in the boot (trunk for those of you who don't know the silly British slang that Mini tries to espouse), low and behold there was a new dent in the hatchback door. Oh my! My first question in my head was, "was that there before" followed quickly by, "Oh boy, even if that wasn't there before, are they going to admit to doing it?" As most of you who have had car repairs before know, it is an amazing day in heaven when the repair person actually admits to doing something wrong if you can't prove that it happened at their shop. This was the case, dent was new as far as I knew, but there was no way for me to prove that it happened there. Thus, I was seriously worried that they were not going to help me out with the dent at all. After much discussion about the recency of the dent and how I was pretty sure that I didn't come in with it, the manager offered to fix the dent and repaint the area on their tab. WOW! They very easily could have held the point that the dent didn't happen in their custody, but instead they opted to go for the good customer service, lent me a new Mini to drive home, and fixed the dent on their tab. When I went back to pick up my lovely Lola, my hatchback looks as good as the day I got her (which is better then even before the dent). So thank you so much awesome customer service at the NW Mini Dealership, you didn't have to take responsibility, but you took the high road and did it anyway!

2) On Monday morning I received an email asking me to rate my recent hotel stay at the Yountville Inn in beautiful Napa Valley. Oh boy! My heart skipped a beat as I realized that I had booked my hotel stay for February instead of March, which is when I was actually going. Since there are only 28 days in Feb, the days of the week and dates for Feb and March line up, thus while clearly a dumb mistake, it is fairly understandable. I immediately booked for the actual dates in March and then called the Yountville Inn to see if maybe I could get a discount or something since clearly it was my mistake, but I was still trying to stay with them. What I got instead of a discount was so much more. The woman at the Yountville Inn called Hotels.com for me and spoke to her supervisor, and then much to my surprise and joy got me a full refund for the visit that I missed in February. Again, she didn't have to do it, it was clearly my mistake, but in the name of good customer service she went above and beyond and I got my money back! WOO HOOO!

While customer service can often be a hard thing to deal with and we all have horror stories of customer service gone wrong, this week has proven to me that sometimes with a little kindness, good customer service still exists in this world!

NW Mini Dealership Site

Yountville Inn