I think a few years back they found one, but it also screwed with the brain's "reward response" system, and pretty bad depression (anhedonia) was a side effect.
I'm actually surprised people still didn't push for its legalization and promotion....
There were rewards for BMI reduction in the wellness plan my campus offered. Apparently they (or whoever pushed the plan) hasn't learned biology yet.
(In all seriousness? I suspect gut biota has far more of a role in what a person's "stable" weight is.)
And the two things tend to be targeted by workplace "wellness" initiatives, because they are easy.
Well, easy for the people running the initiative. It costs money to clean up roof leaks that cause mold which causes respiratory issues; it takes effort to reduce workplace stress. Easier to harass the fatties (I am one) or the smokers.
We had one start up here. They did all kinds of cutesy disgusting stuff like declaring buildings on campus "donut free zones" (demonizing a particular food) and sending out video e-mails that essentially said "Oh, just push back from the table already!" and they put scales in many of the buildings and encouraged people to weigh themselves.
I am a fatty, as I said, but I'm a fatty who exercises and tries to watch her diet so I resisted joining it because I knew I'd just make myself miserable and do stupid stuff like skipping meals to try to make the waypoints.
I will note all of this happened during a serious budget shortfall where we were asked to take furlough days and non-tenured people were let go. It was surreal to me to think they were spending money on these canned videos they would send out while people were losing their jobs.
I wound up losing weight anyway because I caught some kind of weird GI virus and then stress gave me something like IBS and I spent a couple months mostly not-eating. I don't recommend it as a diet plan. (I have since regained most of the weight)
I am wondering if they will mention the student from my department who passed away over Thanksgiving. I am still kind of in shock over that and it was painful to enter grades and see his name still there...
These kinds of arguments (about the "semiotics" of yogurt) tells me we don't have enough real problems to deal with - or that we're focusing on the same thing.
I take Fage plain Greek yogurt every day for my lunch because it's easy, it's something I can eat okay even when my gut is bothering me, and I can inhale it at my desk while grading. So it annoys me that someone hints my buying it smacks of wrongthink.
Yeah, this stuff was "wink wink it's local" until I found out it wasn't. I felt taken, so I never went back there. It was stuff like squash and tomatoes that COULD have been local except they were ever-so-slightly out of season and a little too perfect for a home grower.
My main annoyance was the prices were slightly higher than the local grocery - if I'm not "supporting" "local" "farmers" then I might as well save my pennies and go to the grocery.
I don't care as long as I know. (Same way with GMO content, though I generally assume that unless it says "No GMO," there's gonna be GMO)
True. I suspect the non-traditional students (people retooling for new careers) may well be our salvation. Also the fact that we've striven to limit tuition increases.
Of course, we are a small state regional school, so if the Regents or the Legislature decides we need to no longer exist....well, I guess I learn to deal blackjack and go work at the casino. (I own my house outright so moving away is very unappealing)
This is exactly why I quit going to one of the local so-called "Farmer's Markets" - I realized they had produce that wouldn't be easily grown in my climate, and had things ever-so-slightly out of season for us. And then I saw the shipping crates one day.... I live in a hot, dry climate that seems to be more suited to pasturing cattle (but it's very hard to find decent beef in the stores, ironically), so farmer's markets seem to be largely a disappointment.
I have really mixed feelings on UBIs. (And I am a tenured professor, but I don't call myself an "academic," because I am a teaching prof in STEM).
On the one hand, is it any less corrosive to the soul than welfare is? And I DO think there is something about "money for nothing," or, perhaps, more, feeling like you don't have a productive purpose. Maybe it's different if you are raising a child (I am not) but if I were just handed a monthly check while doing NO work for it other than feeding myself and doing my laundry, it would have a bad effect on my psyche. I know the Protestant Work Ethic is out of fashion, but I do think maybe there is something to it. And if a UBI cuts down on welfare bureaucracy and maybe fraud/waste, that would be a good thing....but where will the money come from?
On the other hand...it does seem there are some people who just aren't employable.
I worry about my own job - our enrollment is dropping and I've seen demographic studies suggesting there's going to be a "shortage" of 18-year-olds in a few years (I question those studies, but whatever, I still worry). I don't want to have to retool and do....I don't know what, teaching is all I know....but I wouldn't want to wind up in a dead career because of "lack of 18 year olds" or because "online classes" or whatever. But it seems to happen to a lot of people - when I was growing up a lot of our neighbors worked at the nearby Ford plant. It was a good job, or so it seemed - but then at some point in the 90s it went away. There does seem to be a lack of a certain type of job in our country right now....we've become very service-heavy and very manufacturing-weak. And service jobs generally pay badly and also you have to love people in a way I don't. (I couldn't deal with that demanding idiot who always claimed I made his coffee drink "wrong" so he could get it free, or with the person who made smarmy sexual-harassy remarks to me that I'd just have to TAKE because I'm the "help")
F1: When I was newly diagnosed with hypertension, my doctor suggested I cut sodium intake to 1500 mg per day. Because I am an all-or-nothing type person, I went whole hog on that. It was miserable, it made me miserable, it made me miserable to be around. I've since scaled back a little bit finding that strict 1500 mg adherence caused no greater reduction than keeping it hovering around 2000 mg. (Which is far, far easier to do, surprisingly).
I have to plan carefully if I am eating a restaurant meal, and I can't use a lot of convenience foods (no frozen dinners, which were a staple when I was busy and just needed nutrition).
I also took on the DASH diet and followed it until food intolerances and some kind of weird GI problem caught up with me and basically told me: don't eat raw vegetables and don't eat eight servings of vegetables in a day.
I think the reason, honestly, that salt is so emphasized is it puts the onus on the patient - "You have to change." I KNOW a part of my hypertension is just dumb bad luck (everyone on my dad's side of the family develops it somewhere between age 40 and age 50) and also not dealing well with stress, but it seems our culture doesn't have a big investment in reducing stress on people (unless you're a college student at an elite college, where they give you exam-week stress-relief treatments).
I take a beta blocker which mostly fixes it but which sucks to take because my doctor basically told me I will die if I go into anaphylaxis over anything, because the standard treatment doesn't work when on a beta blocker. It also saps me of some of the energy I used to have unless I am just getting old....
If that's the only thing keeping us from each others' throats at this point, we're done as a species. Better we be wiped out and God/evolution/whatever you believe start over with the octopi or the fieldmice or something as the sentient being on this Earth.
(Then again, some days I wonder if it isn't "sentience" that's the problem, rather than "human")
I like the "Don't be a dick" rule; if people applied it it would solve a lot of problems.
The thing is, this kind of discussion tends to be the thing some take to ridiculous extremes. (Going to ridiculous extremes on things seems to be a trait of the 2010s). For example, someone telling me I am only "allowed" to cook Irish, British, German, and French-Canadian foods, because that's my heritage. (Never mind that my ancestors left Germany before it was actually Germany....and never mind that food habits have changed since the 1800s or whenever)
I dunno. Maybe "Don't be a dick" should be coupled with a non-medical version of "First, do no harm" (e.g., all the whitewashing of records by black singers probably did harm if the originators of the songs didn't benefit monetarily from that practice....)
I will also go on record as being slightly bothered by the appropriation of crosses by the likes of late-1980s Madonna Louise Ciccone and others. But because that's a "majority" culture and also generally seen as OK to mock, no one cares.
And anyway, I have bigger problems to deal with in my life than some singer wearing a cross for non-religious reasons.
I shop fairly rarely (I try to only go out once a week for fresh groceries) so I guess I haven't noticed the Christmas creep in the stores that much. (Craft stores, yes, because if you're gluing 10,000 sequins to a stocking for your grandkid, you probably need to start doing that as soon as the kid is conceived....).
That said, I always enjoy seeing what new toys are out there when the variety stores beef up their toy sections for the holidays. (We have ZERO dedicated toy stores within driving distance of me - our Toys R Us closed 10 years ago and is now an Aldi and a farm and home store)
I do remember the Walgreen's a few years back when those tabletop-sized singing Christmas trees were a thing. They had one set up within eyesight/earshot of the checkout counter. I asked the person behind the counter (she had been a student of mine): "I bet you get sick of that. I've been in here fifteen minutes and I'm sick of it" She laughed and said, "You have NO idea."
My own decorations are up, but I travel to visit family before Christmas, so if I'm gonna decorate, I might as well do it around Thanksgiving.
I like some of the music but not the pop-styled secular songs that most stores play. (I have a tiny game where I try to avoid hearing the full rendition of 'All I want for Christmas is You" every year. So far this year I am winning).
I do like the older stuff (Bing Crosby, etc.) or the "church music" Christmas music and I start playing those at home a couple days into December.
It's gonna be cold and cruddy here this weekend so I did my grocery shopping for the week this afternoon and will spend tomorrow grading. (At home, where I can make tea and control the house temperature).
I also know some extremely devout Protestant Christians who won't do Santa, because they fear it will later undermine their children's belief in God ("Well, if Santa isn't real....") or the idea that it's some kind of thinly-veiled popery to celebrate what is fundamentally a character based on a saint.
Some of the non-Santa parents, it may also be a way to give their kids fewer gifts, I dunno. I think my parents did it (and still do it) as a way to get away with giving more presents...."Oh, but THAT one is from 'Santa'"
And R5: I've long thought that for all the ridiculousness he is portrayed with sometimes (all the diddley-doos), Flanders is really a pretty sympathetic portrayal of a Christian. Yes, he can be ridiculous and rigid about some things (the fact that they have something like 200 cable channels, all blocked), but he actually does, in many episodes, show an understanding of "love your neighbor" that few other characters do.
The "spoiler alert" is unintentionally funny. (How many children read the "Grauniad," and anyway, SHOULD a small child be that exposed to news? I know I wasn't when I was a kid but I grew up in the Dark Ages before 24/7 news channels).
Also, I know the singular of "data" is not "anecdote" but: I enjoyed the whole Santa thing. I didn't feel lied to, it didn't undermine my trust in my parents. When the inevitable figuring-out came (I wasn't told, I just figured it out on my own, at an embarrassingly-late age) I was SAD, but I didn't feel betrayed.
Then again: I am 47 and my parents are in their early 80s and we STILL do stockings and there are still "from Santa" gifts under the tree, so....
I dunno. It feels killjoyish to me. It's like, "Let's take away everything that differentiates childhood from adulthood. Teach the kids that existence is grey and bleak from the get-go." If I didn't have the fantasy world I had as a kid, I probably wouldn't have survived public school.
I was hopeful, before the 2008 crash, that maybe we were beginning to progress a bit more towards a culture where people went, "You know? Working until 9 pm every night and working every Saturday is for the birds, I'm going to scale back and do fun things in free time" but frankly lots of people are scared for their jobs now and there's that added push.
I am in a relatively privileged position (unlikely I would lose my job unless I did something spectacularly boneheaded and wrong, like having an affair with a student) and even I feel that quiet murmur of "there must be more achievement" (a la "The Rocking Horse Winner")
Part of the problem is that most of the stuff I am good at and value doing are things that aren't accorded high status by our culture.
Even without kids, there are a lot of people who don't want the 80-100 hour a week career, and as I close in on age 50, I find I cannot work as long and as hard (mentally or physically) as I did in my 30s.
True. Though the lie seemed to be told bigger to women in the Wave 2 (or whatever it was) feminist era, the implication being if you DIDN'T have it all you were somehow a failure. Maybe men were better at hiding the fact that they couldn't have it all?
I still often feel like a failure because my house is a mess and yet I have fewer published articles than some women scientists. And I don't have a kid. On bad days, I feel like "having even some" isn't quite achievable for me.
IOW, "Having it all" (a claim I remember from the 1980s and 90s that some women made) is a lie.
Shoot, I don't have a husband or kids and **I** struggle with work/life balance. Or even just "work/getting my laundry done and keeping the house at some minimal standard of hygiene" balance.
On “Linky Friday #196: Natural Law”
I think a few years back they found one, but it also screwed with the brain's "reward response" system, and pretty bad depression (anhedonia) was a side effect.
I'm actually surprised people still didn't push for its legalization and promotion....
There were rewards for BMI reduction in the wellness plan my campus offered. Apparently they (or whoever pushed the plan) hasn't learned biology yet.
(In all seriousness? I suspect gut biota has far more of a role in what a person's "stable" weight is.)
"
Supervillain origin story if I ever heard one.
"
And the two things tend to be targeted by workplace "wellness" initiatives, because they are easy.
Well, easy for the people running the initiative. It costs money to clean up roof leaks that cause mold which causes respiratory issues; it takes effort to reduce workplace stress. Easier to harass the fatties (I am one) or the smokers.
We had one start up here. They did all kinds of cutesy disgusting stuff like declaring buildings on campus "donut free zones" (demonizing a particular food) and sending out video e-mails that essentially said "Oh, just push back from the table already!" and they put scales in many of the buildings and encouraged people to weigh themselves.
I am a fatty, as I said, but I'm a fatty who exercises and tries to watch her diet so I resisted joining it because I knew I'd just make myself miserable and do stupid stuff like skipping meals to try to make the waypoints.
I will note all of this happened during a serious budget shortfall where we were asked to take furlough days and non-tenured people were let go. It was surreal to me to think they were spending money on these canned videos they would send out while people were losing their jobs.
I wound up losing weight anyway because I caught some kind of weird GI virus and then stress gave me something like IBS and I spent a couple months mostly not-eating. I don't recommend it as a diet plan. (I have since regained most of the weight)
On “Weekend!”
Graduation is tomorrow. I'm expected to go.
I am wondering if they will mention the student from my department who passed away over Thanksgiving. I am still kind of in shock over that and it was painful to enter grades and see his name still there...
On “Linky Friday #196: Natural Law”
These kinds of arguments (about the "semiotics" of yogurt) tells me we don't have enough real problems to deal with - or that we're focusing on the same thing.
I take Fage plain Greek yogurt every day for my lunch because it's easy, it's something I can eat okay even when my gut is bothering me, and I can inhale it at my desk while grading. So it annoys me that someone hints my buying it smacks of wrongthink.
"
Yeah, this stuff was "wink wink it's local" until I found out it wasn't. I felt taken, so I never went back there. It was stuff like squash and tomatoes that COULD have been local except they were ever-so-slightly out of season and a little too perfect for a home grower.
My main annoyance was the prices were slightly higher than the local grocery - if I'm not "supporting" "local" "farmers" then I might as well save my pennies and go to the grocery.
I don't care as long as I know. (Same way with GMO content, though I generally assume that unless it says "No GMO," there's gonna be GMO)
"
True. I suspect the non-traditional students (people retooling for new careers) may well be our salvation. Also the fact that we've striven to limit tuition increases.
Of course, we are a small state regional school, so if the Regents or the Legislature decides we need to no longer exist....well, I guess I learn to deal blackjack and go work at the casino. (I own my house outright so moving away is very unappealing)
"
This is exactly why I quit going to one of the local so-called "Farmer's Markets" - I realized they had produce that wouldn't be easily grown in my climate, and had things ever-so-slightly out of season for us. And then I saw the shipping crates one day.... I live in a hot, dry climate that seems to be more suited to pasturing cattle (but it's very hard to find decent beef in the stores, ironically), so farmer's markets seem to be largely a disappointment.
"
I have really mixed feelings on UBIs. (And I am a tenured professor, but I don't call myself an "academic," because I am a teaching prof in STEM).
On the one hand, is it any less corrosive to the soul than welfare is? And I DO think there is something about "money for nothing," or, perhaps, more, feeling like you don't have a productive purpose. Maybe it's different if you are raising a child (I am not) but if I were just handed a monthly check while doing NO work for it other than feeding myself and doing my laundry, it would have a bad effect on my psyche. I know the Protestant Work Ethic is out of fashion, but I do think maybe there is something to it. And if a UBI cuts down on welfare bureaucracy and maybe fraud/waste, that would be a good thing....but where will the money come from?
On the other hand...it does seem there are some people who just aren't employable.
I worry about my own job - our enrollment is dropping and I've seen demographic studies suggesting there's going to be a "shortage" of 18-year-olds in a few years (I question those studies, but whatever, I still worry). I don't want to have to retool and do....I don't know what, teaching is all I know....but I wouldn't want to wind up in a dead career because of "lack of 18 year olds" or because "online classes" or whatever. But it seems to happen to a lot of people - when I was growing up a lot of our neighbors worked at the nearby Ford plant. It was a good job, or so it seemed - but then at some point in the 90s it went away. There does seem to be a lack of a certain type of job in our country right now....we've become very service-heavy and very manufacturing-weak. And service jobs generally pay badly and also you have to love people in a way I don't. (I couldn't deal with that demanding idiot who always claimed I made his coffee drink "wrong" so he could get it free, or with the person who made smarmy sexual-harassy remarks to me that I'd just have to TAKE because I'm the "help")
"
And C4: is it any wonder people fall for fake news if that's a real story? I think we've slipped in to an alternate universe run by The Onion.
"
F1: When I was newly diagnosed with hypertension, my doctor suggested I cut sodium intake to 1500 mg per day. Because I am an all-or-nothing type person, I went whole hog on that. It was miserable, it made me miserable, it made me miserable to be around. I've since scaled back a little bit finding that strict 1500 mg adherence caused no greater reduction than keeping it hovering around 2000 mg. (Which is far, far easier to do, surprisingly).
I have to plan carefully if I am eating a restaurant meal, and I can't use a lot of convenience foods (no frozen dinners, which were a staple when I was busy and just needed nutrition).
I also took on the DASH diet and followed it until food intolerances and some kind of weird GI problem caught up with me and basically told me: don't eat raw vegetables and don't eat eight servings of vegetables in a day.
I think the reason, honestly, that salt is so emphasized is it puts the onus on the patient - "You have to change." I KNOW a part of my hypertension is just dumb bad luck (everyone on my dad's side of the family develops it somewhere between age 40 and age 50) and also not dealing well with stress, but it seems our culture doesn't have a big investment in reducing stress on people (unless you're a college student at an elite college, where they give you exam-week stress-relief treatments).
I take a beta blocker which mostly fixes it but which sucks to take because my doctor basically told me I will die if I go into anaphylaxis over anything, because the standard treatment doesn't work when on a beta blocker. It also saps me of some of the energy I used to have unless I am just getting old....
On “Morning Ed: Crime & Justice {2016.12.08.Th}”
If that's the only thing keeping us from each others' throats at this point, we're done as a species. Better we be wiped out and God/evolution/whatever you believe start over with the octopi or the fieldmice or something as the sentient being on this Earth.
(Then again, some days I wonder if it isn't "sentience" that's the problem, rather than "human")
"
At this point, 2016 is just spiking the football. Aren't there supposedly rules against that?
On “Freddie: no one has the slightest idea what is and isn’t cultural appropriation”
I like the "Don't be a dick" rule; if people applied it it would solve a lot of problems.
The thing is, this kind of discussion tends to be the thing some take to ridiculous extremes. (Going to ridiculous extremes on things seems to be a trait of the 2010s). For example, someone telling me I am only "allowed" to cook Irish, British, German, and French-Canadian foods, because that's my heritage. (Never mind that my ancestors left Germany before it was actually Germany....and never mind that food habits have changed since the 1800s or whenever)
I dunno. Maybe "Don't be a dick" should be coupled with a non-medical version of "First, do no harm" (e.g., all the whitewashing of records by black singers probably did harm if the originators of the songs didn't benefit monetarily from that practice....)
I will also go on record as being slightly bothered by the appropriation of crosses by the likes of late-1980s Madonna Louise Ciccone and others. But because that's a "majority" culture and also generally seen as OK to mock, no one cares.
And anyway, I have bigger problems to deal with in my life than some singer wearing a cross for non-religious reasons.
On “Weekend!”
I shop fairly rarely (I try to only go out once a week for fresh groceries) so I guess I haven't noticed the Christmas creep in the stores that much. (Craft stores, yes, because if you're gluing 10,000 sequins to a stocking for your grandkid, you probably need to start doing that as soon as the kid is conceived....).
That said, I always enjoy seeing what new toys are out there when the variety stores beef up their toy sections for the holidays. (We have ZERO dedicated toy stores within driving distance of me - our Toys R Us closed 10 years ago and is now an Aldi and a farm and home store)
I do remember the Walgreen's a few years back when those tabletop-sized singing Christmas trees were a thing. They had one set up within eyesight/earshot of the checkout counter. I asked the person behind the counter (she had been a student of mine): "I bet you get sick of that. I've been in here fifteen minutes and I'm sick of it" She laughed and said, "You have NO idea."
My own decorations are up, but I travel to visit family before Christmas, so if I'm gonna decorate, I might as well do it around Thanksgiving.
I like some of the music but not the pop-styled secular songs that most stores play. (I have a tiny game where I try to avoid hearing the full rendition of 'All I want for Christmas is You" every year. So far this year I am winning).
I do like the older stuff (Bing Crosby, etc.) or the "church music" Christmas music and I start playing those at home a couple days into December.
It's gonna be cold and cruddy here this weekend so I did my grocery shopping for the week this afternoon and will spend tomorrow grading. (At home, where I can make tea and control the house temperature).
On “Linky Friday #195: Pillars of Sand”
I have been told that when you tell your parents you no longer believe in Santa, you only get socks and underwear for Christmas.
As I said before: I am 47 and I am distinctly unwilling to test that hypothesis with my own parents.
"
I also know some extremely devout Protestant Christians who won't do Santa, because they fear it will later undermine their children's belief in God ("Well, if Santa isn't real....") or the idea that it's some kind of thinly-veiled popery to celebrate what is fundamentally a character based on a saint.
Some of the non-Santa parents, it may also be a way to give their kids fewer gifts, I dunno. I think my parents did it (and still do it) as a way to get away with giving more presents...."Oh, but THAT one is from 'Santa'"
"
And R5: I've long thought that for all the ridiculousness he is portrayed with sometimes (all the diddley-doos), Flanders is really a pretty sympathetic portrayal of a Christian. Yes, he can be ridiculous and rigid about some things (the fact that they have something like 200 cable channels, all blocked), but he actually does, in many episodes, show an understanding of "love your neighbor" that few other characters do.
Also, apropos of nothing, there is a Ned Flanders themed metal band called Okilly Dokilly
"
F2:
The "spoiler alert" is unintentionally funny. (How many children read the "Grauniad," and anyway, SHOULD a small child be that exposed to news? I know I wasn't when I was a kid but I grew up in the Dark Ages before 24/7 news channels).
Also, I know the singular of "data" is not "anecdote" but: I enjoyed the whole Santa thing. I didn't feel lied to, it didn't undermine my trust in my parents. When the inevitable figuring-out came (I wasn't told, I just figured it out on my own, at an embarrassingly-late age) I was SAD, but I didn't feel betrayed.
Then again: I am 47 and my parents are in their early 80s and we STILL do stockings and there are still "from Santa" gifts under the tree, so....
I dunno. It feels killjoyish to me. It's like, "Let's take away everything that differentiates childhood from adulthood. Teach the kids that existence is grey and bleak from the get-go." If I didn't have the fantasy world I had as a kid, I probably wouldn't have survived public school.
On “Morning Ed: World {2016.12.01.Th}”
I was hopeful, before the 2008 crash, that maybe we were beginning to progress a bit more towards a culture where people went, "You know? Working until 9 pm every night and working every Saturday is for the birds, I'm going to scale back and do fun things in free time" but frankly lots of people are scared for their jobs now and there's that added push.
I am in a relatively privileged position (unlikely I would lose my job unless I did something spectacularly boneheaded and wrong, like having an affair with a student) and even I feel that quiet murmur of "there must be more achievement" (a la "The Rocking Horse Winner")
Part of the problem is that most of the stuff I am good at and value doing are things that aren't accorded high status by our culture.
"
Even without kids, there are a lot of people who don't want the 80-100 hour a week career, and as I close in on age 50, I find I cannot work as long and as hard (mentally or physically) as I did in my 30s.
"
True. Though the lie seemed to be told bigger to women in the Wave 2 (or whatever it was) feminist era, the implication being if you DIDN'T have it all you were somehow a failure. Maybe men were better at hiding the fact that they couldn't have it all?
I still often feel like a failure because my house is a mess and yet I have fewer published articles than some women scientists. And I don't have a kid. On bad days, I feel like "having even some" isn't quite achievable for me.
"
IOW, "Having it all" (a claim I remember from the 1980s and 90s that some women made) is a lie.
Shoot, I don't have a husband or kids and **I** struggle with work/life balance. Or even just "work/getting my laundry done and keeping the house at some minimal standard of hygiene" balance.
On “Morning Ed: Planet Earth {2016.11.30.W}”
I guess that makes me less woke than in the past, because of some medical issues I decided to stop getting up at 4:30 am and now sleep 'til 6.
(Mostly related to: I should not exercise on an empty stomach)
"
Oh, of course. The people who actually have to work for a living are too busy doing that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.