Life Without Cable

Living in the middle of nowhere, I don’t even think we can get cable. And satellite is expensive, so we don’t have that either. Or internet. Or even a landline phone. And we have to make cell phone calls pretty much on the front porch. Or standing on one leg in the kitchen, leaning as far into the windows as possible (what? WHAT?!). Yup, but we’ve got goats, and deer and foxes. And about six channels on our rabbit ears. There’s the two news channels (one for MD and one for PA), neither of them worth watching once they get past the weather report (sorry, I’m not much for listening to people whine about stuff. I spend enough time at work doing that). And then the weather-all-the-time channel (and not the real weather channel either. That would be too exciting). And then the two Christian-let’s-convert-you channels. And then, there’s THIS network. The channel that plays the movies with famous people in them before they were famous. Here’s a little sampling:

1. William Shatner and Patty Duke in the The Babysitter: Shatner was the father of a young, lonely girl. I’m still not sure if it was a horror-movie wannabe, or just creepy. (1980)

2. Charlton Heston in Call of the Wild: Actually, I think I saw this when I was younger (don’t think less of me, I had a Jack London thing).

3. Sean Connery in Cuba: He was so young, I only recognized him because of his voice. Although this one was actually kind of good. (1979)

4. Richard Gere in Breathless: Kind of like Grease meats the Outsiders without the catchy music. (1983)

Some comments on “The Obesity Epidemic”

Okay, so I started my diet again. I went to the doctors last week after a 7-day migraine headache (not fun) and didn’t like the weight on the scale. Keep in mind, I have managed to maintain my weight (after losing 45 pounds) for two years. Apparently, this is no easy feat. However, I never lost the final weight, having tired of dieting. I am active, exercise intensely 3-5 times a week, and eat healthy. But I cannot lose weight, even when limiting my junk food/dessert to only once per week. Which kind of sucks. So now I’m dieting. And I’ve noticed a few things.
1. I did an on-line BMI calculator. I am short. Even though I lost 45 pounds previously and if I had to stay this weight for the rest of my life I think I could live with it, I am still considered “morbidly obese.” So I entered my goal weight. I only managed to get down to “obese.” I took off 10 more pounds. Still “severely overweight.” Another 10 pounds. Now just “slightly overweight.” Another 10 pounds. Now I was “on target.” So I am 50 pounds overweight? I have never in my life been that weight. And I have been this height since 5th grade. Even then I weighed more than my ‘target’ weight. Sheesh. Apparently I’ve been an obese person pretty much my whole life. It’s amazing I’ve made it this far. I wonder what it would have said if I had put in my original weight. “Warning: you are an obese elephant who may keel over at any time. Seek immediate medical attention!”
2. Supermarkets suck. I went to the grocery store to buy supplies for this week’s diet. All the checkout lines are full of candy and chocolate. And now that I’m dieting, I’m hungry ALL the time. So I am tempted the entire half hour that I have to wait to put my groceries on the belt to pay. And it’s only 50 cents. And 150 calories. And 8 grams of fat. And I’m soooo hungry….
3. I have several common medical conditions. Most people don’t have quite as many of them as I have, but still. And almost all of them require medication. I have tried to handle my medical conditions ‘naturally’ and it doesn’t work. Of the eight medications that I take on a regular basis, seven of them have “weight gain” as a side effect. Guess what, my body takes that as a personal reason to keep me chubby. Seriously. I had one medication (that I am no longer on thank goodness) in which I gained 15 pounds in 1 month, while increasing my exercise to over 1 hour (of intense exercise) five times a week. It is the only time I’ve actually been able to convince a doctor that I needed to change medications. Of course, it took me years to get rid of the 15 pounds. How much other weight is from medication (a pound here, a pound there, two pounds for this one, three for another) I don’t know. But I stopped taking one medication last week due to side effects, and lost two pounds in one week. Before I even started dieting. Nothing else changed. What does that tell you?
Well, good luck to me.

The Land of Ice and Snow

So, last Tuesday I got to leave work early to pick up my daughter at daycare due to the impending blizzard (is this number 3? I forget already). We had already received 2 feet of snow the previous weekend, and were due for more. The next morning we woke up and there was already a foot on the ground. We received another foot before it was over, giving us something like 4 feet of snow in our yard, five or so where it was drifting (my father-in-law called to tell us he saw Fawn Grove on the news- they said we were going to be one of the places that got the most snow. I mean, really? There’s not much going on in Fawn grove. We don’t even have a stop light.).

And nobody was even going to try to plow our road until Friday (we discovered) because the winds were so bad they couldn’t keep the main roads open. Or something like that. So we were stuck there for 4 days. With a 5-year-old. Apparently, when a child has nothing to do but play in the snow, they actually get tired of it. Who new? I learned a few things too, about myself. Like, if you watch the Wiggles enough, you start to think to yourself, “You know, I bet this would make a really good exercise program. I bet that’s how they stay in shape.” You also start to think about which Wiggle is the hottest one (I’m going with the blue one, and no, I haven’t watched it enough to keep their names straight yet.) Also, we watched the Doodlebops (it’s Canadian, for those of you uninitiated. But I think they got bought out by Disney.) And when you watch that long enough, you start to wonder what they really look like under all that makeup and stuff.

So, we did actually spend a lot of time in the snow. We made an igloo (how many times do you get to do that in southern PA?) And then, a few days later, the dog discovered he could make his way to the top of the igloo and bark his version of, “I’m king of the world!” Of course, he then had to find a way to get down. Today, we get to try to get my state truck out (king cab, 8-foot bed and no four-wheel drive. In what universe does that make any sense? Oh, wait, one where it doesn’t snow.

Beware: Angsty Rant

Okay, so recently I’ve moved. And now that unpacking is no longer my only form of exercise (try doing it for a weekend – 12 hours at a time – for two and half days – and you will see what I mean), I am back to reading while I ride the exercise bike. My new library has, nicely, labeled all the Christian fiction with these little ‘inspirational’ stickers, so I can avoid reading those. Not that I am opposed to Christians writing (or reading) fiction. I just find that, in general, they are not very good at writing it. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who was only allowed to read people like Jeanette Oke and Laura Snelling growing up. So I know what I’m talking about. George MacDonald is one of my exceptions, but I didn’t come across him until college, and he’s hard to find (in the original), except on Project Gutenberg, and I’ve gone through most of those already.

So, I’ve recently come across this genre, which I think I will call pseudo-scientific fiction. An author decides to write a novel and include lots of science in it. Being a scientist, this appeals to me. What doesn’t appeal to me is that they botch the science and get away with it, and get lots of great reviews. Also, they seem to have a tendency to bash science while they’re at it. Why do I still have high levels of expectation? Maybe I have been reading too much Polkinghorne? Or Krakauer. I don’t know.

So two of my latest reads which made me pedal so hard the bike almost went through the window (good for calories; bad for blood pressure): The Family Tree (Carole Cadwalladr) and The Canopy (Angela Hunt). Let’s start with The Family Tree. Basically you old Nature vs. Nurture argument. Enter 30-something woman (Rebecca) married to brilliant geneticist. Woman has a problematic past, which includes parents that fought, strange siblings, and grandparents that were first cousins. Okay, so who doesn’t have that (well, maybe not the first-cousin grandparents)? Apparently, her husband, who is set up as her foil with the ‘perfect’ nuclear family, nice parents, and scientific background, believes that we are only the sum of our genes. The husband believes only nature, while Rebecca wants only to believe nurture. The author spouts out lots of science, including diagrams and graphs to make it seem more real (although the diagrams are not helpful, but distracting, and are not actually scientific diagrams from any actual text). Furthermore, she gets several points wrong concerning the science, including one which is crucial to the plot. According to her scientific world, blue-eyed parents can produce a brown-eyed child if there is a brown-eyed grandparent. Rebecca, working through her past with her cousined-grandparents, is surprised to learn that her maternal grandmother loved someone else. Someone else with brown eyes. She thinks that her mother is from a different father than her aunt, because of her sister’s brown eyes. In her mind, all her grandparents have blue eyes, although one of them has brown eyes. Both of her parents have blue eyes. Here’s the thing though: in the world we live in, blue-eyed parents only very rarely have a brown-eyed child. But this is never ever discussed in all the genetic verbage of the book. It’s just assumed that we know nothing about this and neither do any of the other people in the book (including the geneticist).

This is the thing about eyes: eye color alleles are additive (for more information, I suggest looking at this websites: The Genetics of Eye Color and Eye Colors) Dominant and recessive are only part of it (AaBb, all that). The more dominant (capital letters) you have, the more brownish your eyes get. The more lowercase letters you get, the more blue your eyes are. Most people have a mix. Which is where we get dark blue, green, light brown, etc. It’s a spectrum. So: aabbccdd is the lightest blue, while AABBCCDD is the darkest brown. But AaBbccdd is also blue, just a little darker. And aAbbCcdd is also blue. Etc. And if two people with blue eyes have children, their children can usually only have blue eyes. They don’t have enough capital letters, no matter how you mix them, to make a brown-eyed child. At most, they could make a child with green eyes. Maybe, if they both had really dark blue eyes (but usually this happens when a brown-eyed and blue-eyed person have kids).

There’s something else that bother’s me about this book. The author/Rebecca defines the Scientific Method as this:

1. Observe. Examine the details. Note the facts. Detail. Scrutinize.
2. Hypothesize. What theory could account for the fact?
3. Experiment. Test your hypothesis.
4. Evaluate the results.

Now, that’s somewhat accurate. But no hypothesis is called a theory until after years and years of evaluation. Futhermore, in the novel, Rebecca insinuates that the scientific method is a bit cyclical, in that scientists use it to test what they already know, so that they can confirm what they already know. But she, Rebecca, does not need this, because she obtains “knowledge from experience alone.” But what she is missing is that the scientific method should also be used for predicting future actions/events, etc. If the hypothesis works, it should not only be able to explain what happened, but predict what future events (for what it’s explaining) will be like. Otherwise it’s not very useful.

Okay, I guess I’m done ranting about it now. But if you’re going to write a good novel and include science, at least get your facts straight. I don’t even have time to go into the other novel here, except to say that it’s a Christian fiction book with an agenda (evolution = evil). If you want a wonderful scientific (and story) to read, let me suggest Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman.

Things I have to Admit (Part I)

So, having listened to 21st Century Breakdown (Greenday), I feel that I am obligated to admit this: when my (younger) cousin first played the first Greenday album for me 'back in the day, I never ever thought they would last. Never mind that they would actually create an album that was worth listening too.

I am happy to be wrong.

My ideas on why children feel the need to be up your butt while you are trying to do things like wash the dishes or talk on the phone

Okay, so basically there are two types of offspring: precocial and altricial. There are gradiations in between that are recognized too, especially in bird species, but we're not going to discuss them here.

Precocial young are relatively advanced when they are born, able to move on their own, can eat solid food, and already have some behavior patterns developed. Mallard ducks are an example. For instance, the mother, while incubating the eggs, emits vocalizations (which are similar to the ones she will use to call the babies into the nest later). So she thereby imprints her young to her voice before they hatch. Soon after hatching, the young are ready to leave the nest, but recognize the mother's voice and return to the nest when they hear it (Drickamer et al. 2002).

Altricial young are very helpless at birth, requiring lots of care and maintenance from the parent(s). They usually cannot move or eat on their own, and usually cannot even eat solid food. Songbirds and parrots fall into this category. Obviously, so do humans.

Now, evolutionarily, parents want to have as many offspring as possible to pass on their genes. However, each offspring requires an investment on the part of the parent (which will be different depending on the gender of the parent, their degree of involvement in incubation, nuturing, etc.) Parental investment includes any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases that offspring's chance of surviving (i.e. reproducing) at the cost of that parent's ability to invest in other offspring (Drickamer et al. 2002). Usually females have a higher reproductive cost. (But we women already knew this; it takes the men to reason it out and write it down to realize it I guess). Parents will invest more time in fewer individual young for several reasons: when their own chances of surviving decrease; when food is hard to obtain; when they are sure that the offspring is their own (and they want to make sure the genes get passed on. However, the parents should not invest too much care in just one offspring, unless that's the only chance they have. From the offspring/child's perspective, they want want lots and lots of care, because this will help their own survival and ability to reproduce later on.

What this means is that, from an evolutionary standpoint, children do not see activities such as washing dishes and talking on the phone as contributing to their overall survival, so they try to force you to pay attention them instead. This also shows up as sibling rilvalry. Of course, at some point, they should realize that it is safer for them in the long run to let Mommy finish doing the dishes before they harass her to play games, because otherwise they will end up helping.

Save a Squirrel????

This morning it was brought to my attention that the British have begun to practice a sort of biological control of their own: eating the overinvasive grey squirrel population.

The American grey squirrel managed to invade England, and was originally believed only to compete with the British red squirrel for habitat and resources. However, it has recently been discovered that the grey squirrel has an immunological advantage as well: the squirrel poxvirus. Grey squirrels are carriers of the virus, and not affected by it. Red squirrels, once exposed, develop sores and ulcers, and eventually die, usually within two weeks. There is no vaccine for this virus, so researchers proposed strategies for heading off the disease at identified 'grey squirrel gateway' points within the country. Large culling of the grey squirrel population would be effective, but time consuming and impractical.

There are those who are willing to do their part, however. Grey squirrel removal has been done in stages, focused in small areas, and studied throughout so that time series data on both grey and red populations can be obtained. Unfortunately, it only takes a few infected greys to spread squirrel poxvirus to the reds and kill them off.

Of course, all that meat should not go to waste. And it is not, apparently. You can now get squirrel and hazelnut pâté, available at patchwork-pate.co.uk.

And now I have a confession to make. This fall I tasted my first squirrel. It was cooked in a pan, and looked like it had just been shot out of the tree, with all its limbs splayed out (no head). There were lots of small bones. There was more meat than I expected, but there were still a lot of bones. And it did not taste like chicken. It just tasted like meat. With carrots and potatoes, it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure how it would be with hazelnuts. But then, I never really was a fan of pâté; it looks too much like cat food. Seems a fitting end for a squirrel though. What would be even better is if the dog could somehow get in on it too...