How to Misuse Science for Fun if not Profit.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140123125838.htm

Step one: read the linked article. It’s about a study where scientist tried to decide how guilt or innocence influenced a condemned prisoner’s last meal request. Basically, ones who may have been innocent, or at least claimed to be so, ate fewer calories or no final meal at all. Those we readily admitted to guilt asked for bigger meals and more name-brand “comfort foods.”

Step two: say someone did you wrong, and you want to punish them. Tell them you know they did wrong, and sentence them to some kind of “death.” Don’t really kill them. Tell them they will be sentenced to the silent treatment, or something.

Step three: tell the “condemned” they get a “last meal” before the sentence is executed.

Step four: if they say “nothing,” give ‘em a big hug instead and tell ‘em the sentence has been commuted. If they say “chicken wings, and lots of ‘em,” arbitrarily double the sentence and take away some other privilege.

Step five: eat the chicken wings yourself.

I Want to Be Diseased

Not really. Or do I? I read brain articles. Came across one on Psychology Today where this blogger talked about why she didn’t engage in social media. Apparently she blogs about the pro-ana world, which is to say, pro-anorexic, people who view anorexia as some kind of romantically tragic condition.

Social media, it seems, reinforced her dangerous obsessions. She wanted to be anorexic, and “was” in the sense that she used not-eating as a control mechanism and it did bad things to her body. She doesn’t immerse herself in social media anymore, even though, to be honest, blogging IS social media, isn’t it.

Sounds like simple narcissism to me, but then I’m a blog reader, not a trained psychologist. Other articles and blogs I’ve come across talk about how social media sights, specifically Tumblr, have niches where people identify with depression and reinforce one another’s so-called symptoms. I’m not saying some of these people aren’t genuinely depressed, I’m just saying, don’t act as if social media is any more of a problem than the existence of tall buildings for people to jump off of. You don’t take hammers away from carpenters just because some asshole killed his wife with one once.

Came across another “affliction” in another read called “Typomania.” Oooh, I want that one. I write all the time, it seems (750words.com every day, three blog posts except on Mondays when I am too weekend-tired, writing for my job all day, novels and poems and short stories, oh my). It would be cool to tell people “I have typomania: I HAVE to write.”

But it’s not true. I don’t have typomania. My desire to have it is just a desire to have an identity, to be different, to be held in unique regard by people. “Look at him, he’s a genuine insane artist!”

Nah. I’m just a tragic fool stabbing fingers at a keyboard because I can, not because I have to. The article above does

Office Coffee

Around here (4th and Pike, Seattle WA, 98101) there are more Starbuckses than you can shake a stick at. That might even be literally true, because I don’t know if you could find them all in a single stick-shaking sessions. A phrase I used the other day, when someone asked me if there was a Starbucks nearby, was “you can’t move your arm without pointing at a Starbucks.” Inelegant but so true.

From the front door of our office building I can turn left or right. If I go left, I walk to the next intersection, and there’s a Starbucks. If I go right, at that intersection I can left one block to a Starbucks, forward one block to a Starbucks, or right one block to a shopping mall with two Starbucks in it—one in the atrium at a kiosk, and one a little bit further inside.

I’ve been to them all. My favorite is the kiosk, because its usually the least busy. Usually. I go because I have a card and its tied to an app and I get nerdjoy from using my phone screen to pay for things. Also, I read that cocoa and caffeine and cinnamon are good for your brain, so I like a mocha. Also, their tea-lemonades are a good afternoon pick-me-up, an if I bring my own cup, not too expensive.

But today I brought in my own container of milk so I could have some free n easy office coffee. The other first-arriver of the day always makes it as part of his daily ritual, and I’ve been meaning to imbibe. I still believe in caffeine, and as much nerdjoy as phone-screen-buying gives me, not-paying-at-all gives me another kind of joy.

The cups were delicious, by the way. I had two. Milk and sugar. 

This is not to say that I’ll never go back to Starbucks. There’s just too many to not be pulled in to their gravity, not to mention the free wifi when I need to kill time and/or write a blog post or twelve. And that nerdjoy is compelling—and the app also awards you “stars” for your purchases and when you get enough you earn a new “level.” Can’t get THAT at work.

Morning Work Conversation

This is what we talked about at work this morning: an idea for a new sit-com.

Kim Jong Un attempts to raise his father from the dead and the result is a zombie Kim Jong Il. On a humanitarian mission to North Korea, Bill Gates is killed by the zombie KJI and also becomes a zombie. A misfit gang of cabinet members do such a good job of covering up the crime, they are assigned to cover up all of KJU’s crimes, as he occasionally murders people as a consequence of following his zombie father’s advice. This crack team of crime scene investigators unravel the threads of KJU’s deeds in order to re-weave them into a plausible scenario, based on what they’ve learned watching old episodes of NCIS. The Crime Cover Up Unit will consist of KC, JJ, Bill Gates, and Larry.

The TV show will be a joint venture by ABC and CBS and will be aired in AMC. It will be called “CBS and ABC Present CSI NCIS NK: CCUU KJU.”

On a very special episode, Richard Belzer from Law and Order: SVU will help the team cover up the murder of JK Rowling who was murdered while reading HP Lovecraft in the Phi Beta Kappa house at NKU. 

Typical scene: 

JJ and KC enter the room where Bill Gates and Larry are looking at the half eaten body of JK Rowling.

JJ: WTF!

Bill Gates: I know, huh?

KC: We’re going to need help on this one.

There’s one of those “dun-dun” sounds from Law & Order, and Richard Belzer enters.
Richard Belzer: Will I do?”
Larry: Richard Belzer!

KC: How are we going to handle this one, Richard Belzer?

Richard Belzer shrugs nonchalantly. “We’ll blame it on OJ.”

JJ: Wait, pulp or calcium enriched?

Bill Gates: You’re an idiiot, JJ

Laughter, fade to black. “CBS & ABC’s CSI NCIS NK: CCUU KJU will be back after these messages”



Go to commercial.

Tripping on Tryptophan

Science points out that there’s as much tryptophan in chicken and ground beef as there is in turkey, but we never blame the cheeseburger for feeling sleepy. Then again, on Thanksgiving, many people tend to pack away way more food, so the comparison is not as accurate. If there’s 350 milligrams of tryptophan in a typical 4-ounce serving of turkey, and sleep aids typical have 500 to 1000 milligrams, science says the turkey’s not enough to induce sleepiness. But then, I’m laughing at the idea that I’m only eating 4 ounces of turkey.

I just wanted to say that. On the one hand, there’s all sort of reasons why we can’t say that turkey actually makes us sleepy. On the other hand, there’s all sorts of avenues for getting away with saying it. I mean, due to the job I have, I know more about the brain than the average person. I don’t know even a hundredth of what an expert knows, nor do I even know enough to educate someone. But I know enough to win arguments against people who know nothing.

And in the “know nothing” group are both: people who think turkey makes you sleepy, and people who only know that it really doesn’t. I can beat them both in an argument, if I want to. Being right, or the truth, or facts have nothing to do with it.

I mean, facts are facts. There’s no arguing over facts. And opinions are personal. There’s no logic to telling someone her opinion is “wring.”

To the “turkey makes you sleepy” people, I can haul out the whole “not enough tryptophan, its actually the overeating, etc” argument. I can point them to Snopes or a dozen other websites.

And to the “no it doesn’t” folks, I can say “why not?” Chances are, they don’t know the by-the-milligram amounts of tryptophan in turkey, or in sleep aids. I can tell them “you can’t get sleepy without serotonin, and you can’t get serotonin without tryptophan, and there is a LOT of tryptophan in this meal we’re eating…”

So what’s the point? Why do we haul out these facts and arguments, what is it about sitting around a table with a bunch of people we’re not allowed to dislike that makes us so petty? And by us, I mean me. What’s the deal?

I dunno. I’m not seeing my therapists this week. I’ll get back to you. Until then, do like me: let them say whatever they want to say. Let them be right. Being right doesn’t feel as good as turkey tastes, in my opinion. And if you let things go, you’ll sleep better, no matter what time of day it is.

Brain Paste

We had a party on Friday night, for my birthday. Due to alcohol and a week of fatigue, I slept hard. Real hard. I snored with my mouth wide open, and my wife was so tired too, she slept right through it. Which means she didn’t wake me up or adjust me like she usually does, so I snored all the harder and longer. It was a hard long snoring.

The result: super dry mouth, which caused a bad case of Uvilitis. That’s a word that’s so weird, that even Google doesn’t like it. “Did you mean uveitis?” No I did not.

Wikipedia is cool with it though. Anyway. Since I have in-laws in town, there’s turmeric everywhere, and I recalled that turmeric is natural anti-inflammatory. So we tried adding some to honey to make a paste. And then I started thinking about all the brain research I’ve been doing, and decided to add cocoa, to make it palatable and for the anti-oxidants. And then oil, as I need something to make it pastier. And then chili powder. So here’s the result:

• 1 tsp cocoa powder (flavanoids!)
• 1 tsp raw honey (anti-everything)
• 2 tsp olive oil (fat fuses flavors)
• 1 tsp turmeric (anti-inflammatory)
• ¼ tsp chili powder (boosts metabolism)

Mix into a paste. Add to your chai tea or milk or whatever. Or spread on toast. Or a bran muffin.

None of this is scientific, of course, strictly speaking. But dang it’s good. It’s like one of those trendy chocolate bars the fancy-dancy shoppes sell ya. It’s like Nutella for cheapskates. It’s like there’s a party in your mouth, and only the hipsters are invited.

Oh, and I should say: measure the turmeric last or use an entirely different teaspoon. Turmeric has a tendency to get into things if you’re not careful. I like turmeric but sometimes I’m not in the mood for it to get into my tea. Sometimes.

 

Messing With Genres

I wish I could remember how I came upon Bitter:Sweet. Maybe I should search older blog archives, because I might have written about this before. “Dear Diary: I have no intention of ever reading any of this again, so you’re not a diary, or even a journal, you’re a blog.” I think that’s how it goes. They call ‘zines about the person who makes them “Perzines.” Does that mean there’s “Perblogs?” Of course. So if this is one, or www.bukkhead.com is one, and if you read this or that and remember reading how I came across Bitter:Sweet, let me know.

Because via Bitter:Sweet I have discovered a whole “genre” of music that I’ve been listening to for a while now. I say “genre” in denigrating quotes like that because I’m not sure what genre it is or even if it’s all one genre. Mostly this is stuff that came in via Pandora, on my Bitter:Sweet station. Now that I think about it, I also have a Wax Tailor station, and a Skeewiff station, and those yield excellent tunes as well, with much overlap. And now that I think about it, I have some guitar-based stations, like flamenco and surf, and there’s overlap there as well, sort of. So maybe that was it.

Anyway, as I was listening to some serious groove last night, or trip hop, or accelerated lounge, or caustic ambient, or spy fusion, or whatever the hell it is, it occurred to me that maybe this is all just drum and bass. So I looked up drum and bass and was told that Pendulum is a drum and bass artist/group/whatever, so I made a station based on that.

And it turns out that what I was listening to before is NOT drum and bass, BUT, there WERE some overlaps, like when the Glitch Mob came on. I am inclined to think that was Pandora’s not adhering to Pendulum’s “genre” but their own taxonomy.

I’m keeping the station, and I may try to find a way to mix some of the stuff from that into the Bitter:Sweet stuff. Like The Yoshida Brothers, who came on this Pendulum station and rocked my socks off (I have a few of their albums already, but not the song that came on last night).

Genres are tricky. I would like to think the same is true with writing. I would like to think that art describes genre, and not the other way around. I would like to think my writing is proof of that.

 I have two other blogs to write on today, so I guess we’ll see.