There is a serious side to defecation–you know, “poop.”   This serious story has to do with both safety and disease.   Did you know that diarrhea kills a child every fifteen seconds?  All of a sudden, poop is not such a laughing matter. After you read this well-researched article by Rose George of Slate, you’ll really begin to appreciate your toilet.

2.6 billion people don’t have sanitation. I don’t mean that they have no toilet in their house and must use a public one with queues and fees. Or that they have an outhouse or a rickety shack that empties into a filthy drain or pigsty. All that counts as sanitation, though not a safe variety. The people who have those are the fortunate ones. But four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. Nothing. Instead, they defecate by train tracks and in forests. They do it in plastic bags and fling them through the air in narrow slum alleyways. If they are women, they get up at 4 a.m. to be able to do their business under cover of darkness for reasons of modesty, risking rape and snakebites. Four in ten people live in situations in which they are surrounded by human excrement, because it is in the bushes outside the village or in their city yards, left by children outside the back door. It is tramped back in on their feet, carried on fingers onto clothes and into food and drinking water.

The disease toll of this is stunning. Eighty percent of the world’s illness is caused by fecal matter. A gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs. Bacteria can be beneficial: the human body needs bacteria to function, and only 10 percent of cells in our body are actually human. Plenty are not. Small fecal particles can then contaminate water, food, cutlery, and shoes—and be ingested, drunk, or unwittingly eaten. One sanitation specialist has estimated that people who live in areas with inadequate sanitation ingest 10 grams of fecal matter every day.

You’ll never think about shit the same, after reading George’s article.   I took special interest her description of the wide variety of things one can do with excrement.   Note:  To learn more about poop, especially about the wide variety of synonyms we generate and use for poop, read “Why are there so many synonyms for poop?”

For fun, check out the Scrubs musical number about the diagnostic potential of poop.

At DI, we have an extremely conservative fellow visiting the blog these days.  He’s trying to convert all of us to his reactionary world view.  He clings to his Bible as a book of literal truths and he seems to love everything that Sarah Palin ostensibly stands for. I’d like to issue a challenge to this fellow, who goes by the name “Erik.”  To me, he represents many people out there who seem to believe that if you pretend something isn’t important, it isn’t important, even if it IS important.  This includes such critical topics as as Iraq, the cobbled together all-too-human nature of the Bible, Global Warming and, of course, sex education.

Please tell me which of the following sexual education topics you would rather that our children not know anything about.  Please tell me in what specific ways we should keep children, including teenagers, in the dark.

These topics are actually the chapters of a popular book that I have read.  I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to any parent seeking a sex education book for their children:  It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (2004), by Robie H. Harris (Author), Michael Emberley (Illustrator).  Here are the topics:

Part I – What is Sex
Girl or Boy, Female or Male (sex and gender)
Making Babies (Sexual Reproduction)
Strong Feelings (Sexual Desire)
Making Love (Sexual intercourse)
Straight and Gay (Heterosexuality and homosexuality)

Part II – Our Bodies
The Human Body (All kinds of bodies)
Outside and Inside  (The Female Sex Organs)
Outside and Inside  (The Male Sex Organs)
Words  (Talking about Bodies and Sex)

Part III – Puberty
Changes and Messages (Puberty and Hormones)
The travels of the Egg (Female Puberty)
The Travels of the Sperm (Male Puberty)
Not all at Once! (Growing and Changing Bodies)
More Changes (Taking care of your Body)
Back and Forth: (Up and Down – New and Changing Feelings)
Perfectly Normal:  (Masturbation)

Part IV – Babies and Families
All sorts of Families (Taking care of babies and kids)
Instructions from Mom and Dad (The Cell, genes and chromosomes)
A kind of Sharing:  (Cuddling, kissing, touching and sexual intercourse)
Before Birth: (Pregnancy)
What a Trip! (Birth)
Other Arrivals (More ways to have a baby and family, including adoption)

Part V - Decisions
Planning Ahead (postponement, abstinence and birth control)
Laws and Rulings (abortion)

Part VI – Staying Healthy
Talk about it (sexual abuse)
Checkup (Sexually Transmitted Diseases)
Scientists Working Day and Night (HIV and AIDS)
Staying Healthy (Responsible Choices).

So what is it, Erik?  Should we avoid teaching our children about puberty? Sexual feelings? Masturbation?  Shall we keep our kids from knowing anything about any of these sex-ed topics?  Truly, tell me exactly how ignorant you want to keep America’s children and teenagers.  Should we keep this book out of America’s public libraries?  Should this book even be sold at all?   You are aware, aren’t you, that many parents are so mentally stymied about sex (because their own parents thought it better to keep them ignorant) that they don’t have a clue about how to communicate these sex-ed ideas to their kids.  Shouldn’t those parents have access to a book like this to provide them with clear information about compelling topics?

Here’s a caveat to those people who want to live in ignorance:  you can peek in this book at Amazon–beware that you might learn something.

For a little journey that is pretty amazing, though not unexpected, take a look at the comments regarding this book at Amazon and you’ll be Amazed at the cultural chasm displayed.  This book typically gets either 5 stars (from people who want their kids to be informed about these important topics) or 1 star (by people who want to keep their kids ignorant about sex).  Too bad Bristol Palin didn’t have a book like this a year ago.

Because you might actually learn something important by reading it, It’s Perfectly Normal is one of the top ten challenged books of 2007, according to the Economist.

I am a practicing Roman Catholic, and will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States. Not only will I vote for Senator Obama, I will do so gladly and with a clear conscience.  The reasons are many.  This lengthy post enumerate many of those reasons, providing ample links in support.

I accept the Roman Catholic teachings on the sanctity of human life and, to the degree the views of Senator Obama and the Democratic Party platform depart from Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life, I disagree with Senator Obama and the Democratic Party on their positions. I will work inside the party to change the positions of Senator Obama and the Democratic Party, and I will pray for change. I see my vote for Senator Obama as informed by my conscience to support a candidate not totally acceptable to Catholics but, who nonetheless poses a far lesser evil to the dignity and sanctity of life than a vote for Senator John McCain.

In my own life, I strive always to have compassion for those who disagree with me and seek to make a world where all children are recognized for the contribution they are to their families and the world, even before they are born. I will yet find a world where choice will mean whether one raises their child with the support necessary to allow the entire family to succeed, or a child will be placed for adoption by a family capable of the same love and compassion for that child that the parent or parents who placed the child for adoption showed.

The Republican Party, despite its claims to the contrary, does not promote the sanctity of life and cynically continues to attempt to manipulate voters of faith with false promises for votes, workers and cash while pursuing a radical neoconservative and corporatist agenda wholly inconsistent with a culture of life and Catholic values.

I live in Missouri, the Show Me State, and the GOP has controlled both chambers of the Legislature and has held the Governor’s office for four years. During the past four years, Democratic legislators efforts to pass an outright ban on abortions have been stalled in a GOP run House committee or ruled “not germane” by the current GOP Nominee for Missouri Attorney General, Michael Gibbons.

Regarding Roe v. Wade, John McCain once said: “I’d love to see the point where [Roe v. Wade] is irrelevant, and could be replaced because abortion is no longer necessary. But, certainly in the short term, or even in the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would force X number of women in America to undergo illegal and dangerous operations.”  John McCain has also once said that if his own daughter were to have an unwanted pregnancy that he believed the decision on how to handle it would be made in the family. John McCain has not introduced any proposed constitutional amendments to ban abortions.

When the Republicans controlled the US House of Representatives, there was not a single vote on any constitutional amendment supported by the Republican majority to outlaw abortion.

When the Republicans controlled the US Senate, there was not a single vote on any constitutional amendment supported by the Republican majority to outlaw abortion.

While George W. Bush has been a “pro-life Republican” he has not sent over to the House or Senate for their consideration any proposed constitutional amendment to ban abortions.

While the former GOP majorities in the House and Senate were not the ¾ necessary to send an amendment to the states, we did see GOP support for and a vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages (that amendment failed to get ¾ of the votes for passage, to allow it to go to the states just before an election). If the GOP truly supported a culture of life and a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortions and wanted to capitalize on a vote just before an election, why didn’t they attempt to vote to outlaw abortion?   I’m sure Karl Rove counted the votes and knew he didn’t even have a GOP majority support for any constitutional amendment to outlaw abortions, much less ¾ of either the US House or Senate.

The Catholic Church opposes the use of embryonic stem cells for research. Senator John McCain   twice voted to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, contrary to Church teaching.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says torture is “a grave sin which violates the Fifth Commandment.” Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, called torture “intrinsically evil.”  (See Paragraphs 2269; 2297-8).  The prevention of torture had been an issue of great concern to Senator John McCain in the past. But, early in 2008, Senator McCain voted against legislation which extended to the CIA a ban on torture as defined in the Army Field Manual. Senator McCain’s vote against the bill and his support of a veto by President Bush when it narrowly passed will allow the CIA to use stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain had said about sleep deprivation that it’s not a joke and referred to a fellow POW and supporter Orson G. Swindle as having suffered from it.  The US House failed to override Bush’s veto because the Republicans voted with the President. Because of the GOP and Mr. McCain’s support for torture, it is now a part of US policy.

Pope John Paul II had said that the US going to war against Iraq was “…a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.”

While still a cardinal, Pope Benedict said:

”The Holy Father’s judgment is also convincing from the rational point of view: There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ’just war.’”

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said the invasion of Iraq did not “meet the strict conditions of Catholic teaching for the use of military force.” Roman Catholic teaching is that while a government may have the power to impose the death penalty, it should refrain from doing so on moral grounds and the possibility of salvation for the person who committed the crime. (See Number 56, Paragraph 2). (more…)

I thought the bloggers of DI might be interested in a short video I recently had a hand in creating and during which I got to see behind the scenes at a sensory laboratory.

Chemist Michelle Gallagher, while doing her post-doctoral research at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, became fascinated when she learned of a study that showed that dogs could be trained to sniff out skin cancer. This led her to conduct a series of experiments to determine if chemicals coming off of the skin could identify cancerous areas before they became visible.

I was contacted by ScienCentral.com to shoot the video for a short profile on Ms. Gallagher’s work. We set the date and they emailed me a long and detailed shot list describing the experiment and the many angles I was required to capture. (The complete Call Sheet, as it’s called, can be seen on my new videography forum Fitness Video University.)

Michelle is an affable young woman who, though passionate about her research, was very nervous at first, surrounded by my formidible videocameras and lights. Sunita Reed, the producer and voice of the clip conducted the interview from New York by speaker phone and was quick to put Michelle at ease; a difficult task when you can’t be seen!

We then went from the interview into the depths of the Monell labs. It was a mad scientist’s (and a filmmaker’s!) dream come true with test tubes, beakers and wires, huge humming spectrophotometers and strange smells everywhere! We hastily cleaned up an area to shoot, being careful to remove anything with a brand name on it. Although I had warned the scientists that this would be like shooting a movie and we would have to do several takes of everything, I don’t think they were fully prepared for how tedious and exhusting a shoot like this can be!

We worked for three and a half hours, ended up with one and a half hours of footage and it was boiled down by ScienCentral.com to the one and a half minutes you see here. That’s quite a shooting ratio and will give you some idea of what it takes to put even a short news clip like this together.

Now that the video is posted and my excitement has worn off I begin to wonder…can it ever be too early to detect the possibility of cancer?

I remember reading somewhere that our bodies are constantly producing errant cells that could become cancer, but that most of the time our immune system shuts them down before they do any harm. What if Michelle Gallagher’s new process detects cells that NEVER would have become cancerous and we end up performing needless procedures and possibly scarring otherwise heathly people?

Creating this video has raised a serious question for me. Is it possible to take preventative medicine too far?

Michael Moore didn’t mention this country in Sicko, but it offers health benefits that exceed those of most other countries, even France. It is a “model of sustainable ecology.” And check out the prison. This country has the world’s lowest murder rate, yet the longest prison sentence available is 21 years. Name this country . . .

And check out the final quote on the video.

If you read this Mother Jones article, you can get a disturbing update on the U.S. prison system.

Tonight I watched “It’s Bad For Ya,” George Carlin’s final nationally televised performance. The entire show is available on YouTube (Below is Part I of VII). The show was broadcast live on March 1, 2008, only a few months prior to Carlin’s death (due to a heart attack, on June 22, 2008).

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Carlin opened the show by announcing that he was 70 years old. In Parts I and II, he speaks bluntly about society’s failure to deal frankly with death. It’s impossible to watch this performance without feeling the irony. At one point, he states:

So don’t be afraid to get old. It’s a great time of life. You get to take advantage of people and you’re not responsible for anything! You can even shit in your pants!

He dissects many other topics, including law, religion, children, education and national pride. He shows no patience for the way our culture handles any of these issues. His performance gets especially dark when he asserts that there is essentially no hope for us, ecologically speaking—he predicts that in 40 or 50 more years, the entire planet will be a massive ball of pollution. At many points in the performance, it’s not easy to tell whether Carlin retains any personal optimism. Is his performance intentionally injected with hyperbole or is this really and truly what Carlin thinks. I suspected the latter, but I don’t really know.

I heard many gems during the performance (meaning that I heard many things with which I agree wholeheartedly). Here’s my favorite, this one delivered during the topic of society’s often-stated goal that “we should teach our children to read.”

It’s not important to get children to read. It’s much more important to teach children to question what they read. They should be taught to question everything. Everything they read and everything they hear. They should be taught to question authority . . .

Amen.

Here’s a thoughtful and well-researched article on the safety of bicycling by Alan Durning of Grist.  Here’s his bottom line:

Biking is safer than it used to be. It’s safer than you might think. It does incur the risk of collision, but its other health benefits massively outweigh these risks. And it can be made much safer. What’s more, making streets truly safe for cyclists may be the best way to reverse Bicycle Neglect: it may be among communities’ best options for countering obesity, climate disruption, rising economic inequality, and oil addiction.

He also concludes, based on ample research, that

if you’re a cautious, law-abiding, risk-averse cyclist, biking is far safer than you’d think from the aggregate statistics, which are inflated by the proliferation of two-wheeling daredevils.

Durning thinks we can do a lot better to protect cyclists.  He advocates better cycling facilities, such as bikeways, bike boulevards, traffic calming, blue lanes, and cycle signals (the use of bike lanes is disputed, however, as you can see in the comments).  He also advocates for better educating drivers and cyclists.  For instance, in Germany, fourth graders are required to demonstrate cycling proficiency.

At this site, we’ve often advocated cycling as a mode of transportation (see here, for example).  I’m linking to Durning’s article because it is a good resource.  The comments continue the good discussion well.

As I read the statistics in Durning’s article, I had to agree with the need for cyclist education, as well need to educate motor vehicle drivers of the existence of bicycles. But back to those cyclists.   I cringe at the way half of them ride.  They violate virtually every traffic law.  They weave all over.  They don’t wear helmets.  Many of them ride much fast than is safe in the traffic.   I would think that U.S. bicycle/car collisions could be cut in half were the cyclists made to feel that the traffic laws pertain to them too.   My concern is a source of optimism, too, because it might be possible to dramatically cut the bicycle collisions without any substantial costs.

It is awkward for me to argue that adults have the right to smoke marijuana. Whenever I make this argument, I suspect that people think that my arguments constitute a thin and self-serving façade for my own personal desire to smoke marijuana.

I have never smoked marijuana, though, and have never desired to do so, even though I worked as a rock musician in the 70’s. I don’t know why I have never desired to use marijuana or any other street drug. Maybe it’s because I fear the loss of “control”—life is already a bit out of control, it seems. Perhaps I have been cowed by the existence of criminal laws prohibiting possession of even possession of small amounts. Nor do I smoke or drink. I try to find my personal high through things like talking with friends, exercising and by exploring ideas.

When discussing the potential legalization of drugs, personal prejudice and flimsy anecdotes have a way of driving the conversation. That’s why I wanted to say a few things about my own attitudes toward marijuana before preceding.

This topic of the illegality of marijuana arose at a gathering of acquaintances yesterday. For those opposed to legalizing marijuana I suspect that their main argument was that marijuana use is morally wrong. In “mixed company” (involving people for and against criminalization of marijuana), this moralistic argument is left unarticulated, however, because it is a rare day when a simple claim that something is “immoral” convinces anyone of anything. In such gatherings, then, “health” arguments often serve as proxies for this unspoken bigger battle. For instance, in my experience, conservatives embellish the health risks of marijuana to justify their moral concerns in the same way that they embellish the health risks of abortion (the claim is that “abortion increases the risk of cancer”) to justify their moral concerns in that area.

What’s ironic is that so many people who oppose the legalization of marijuana based on “health” arguments would NEVER refer to the much more serious health concerns pertaining to tobacco and alcohol to argue for criminalization of tobacco or alcohol. So it’s not really about heath issues, right? In fact, many of the people who want to keep marijuana criminalized personally use, if not abuse, tobacco and alcohol (including using alcohol to an excess) as do many of their friends and family members. We wouldn’t want to make criminals out of my good friend Bob or my Aunt Mary, would we?

Conservatives hammer the “health” issues in an attempt to drive a clear wedge between marijuana and those legal mind-altering drugs. They argue that marijuana is dramatically different than legal drugs and that this difference justifies turning marijuana users into criminals. I find it interesting that conservatives use this same tactic to concoct a wedge between human animals and all of the other animals in an effort to find a special place for humans, in an effort to lambaste scientific findings based on biological evolution.

I do want to engage in one more digression . . . . It is astounding to me that conservative churches raise huge alarms regarding the use of illegal drugs but often say nothing about legal mind-altering drugs. Consider this quote by Tim Wu:

Over the last two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has developed a full set of substitutes for just about every illegal narcotic we have.

It would seem, then that obedience to authority is a big factor in why many conservatives oppose drugs. Obedience is one of the well-documented pillars of conservative morality. Haidt’s approach dovetails with George Lakoff’s conclusions that the government metaphorically serves as a “strict father” to conservatives. This invites a chicken and egg issue. Is marijuana “bad” because the government says that it’s bad, or is it just “bad” and the government just recognizes this “truth?” The bottom line is that the government is certainly on board that marijuana is “bad,” and Wu/Haidt/Lakoff have given us reason to suspect that conservatives latch onto that government position to justify their own moral views. I suspect that this is exactly what is happening with regard to marijuana. The anti-marijuana folks are holding themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Now, back to my gathering of acquaintances. During our conversation, I heard from a proud conservative that marijuana should remain illegal because it is a gateway drug. However, tobacco has been well documented as a far superior gateway drug. I didn’t hear any of the anti-marijuana folks say anything about criminalizing that famous gateway drug, tobacco, so I was not convinced that this gateway “reason” to keep marijuana criminalized was genuine.

At the gathering, I also heard an argument that was new to me. I heard that people shouldn’t smoke because smoking marijuana “causes cancer.” (more…)

I’m learning a lot about honeypot ants. They are incredible little creatures.  Also known as repletes or storage ants, certain members of these ant colonies serve as living storage jars for the nectar gathered by the other workers.  Their abdomens extend many times bigger than the ant originally was, such that each of these living vessels looks like an ant with a grape stuck on its butt.

Image by Greg Hume

As I learned from reading an article called “Sweet Dreams,” in the April, 2008 issue of Natural History Magazine, repletes “hang from ceilings of domed chambers in the underground nest.”  The other worker ants fill up the repletes with nutrients.  The repletes get so large that they are forever trapped inside the nest, hanging from the ceiling.  What purpose do repletes serve?  “During time of scarcity, repletes regurgitate nectar to colony members, an especially valuable asset in arid environments.”

My question, then, relates to the dramatic onslaught of obesity in humans. If viewed traditionally, obesity is life-shortening and often deadly.   In fact, it’s senseless.   What if it’s not senseless, though?  What if the many huge people among us are sacrificing themselves for the well-being of those of us who are not huge?   What if the numerous humans who are obese are actually storing up nutrients to aid the rest of us in times of scarcity?

I know that this theory of human evolution might strike some as absurd and, indeed, it is (and I do speak as a former fatty).  Yet this is the image I had while reading about honeypot ants.

A group called Birth Control Watch is suggesting that we ask the following questions to the candidates:

1. Do you support couples having access to safe and effective birth control options, including emergency contraception?

2. Do you agree that for women to achieve equality, they must have access to family planning services, including birth control and contraception?

3. Do you support requiring health insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to cover birth control and contraception?

4. Do you support expanding current federal funding for Title X and Medicaid so that women with low incomes have more access to birth control options?

5. Do you support requiring pharmacies to dispense birth control to patients without discrimination or delay?

6. Do you support comprehensive sex education being taught in schools that includes information about abstinence, contraception and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS?

7. Do you support the Prevention First and Access to Birth Control (ABC) Acts?

John McCain would hate to answer any of these straightforward questions.  His policy toward birth control is incoherent when it doesn’t outright seek to invade the private sex lives of Americans.

This article at Alternet (”The Real Pro-Life Candidate”) makes it clear that Barack Obama is the true pro-life candidate.  Why?

Study after study suggests the right to life approach, which McCain has helped execute for decades, is actually the root of the problem: leading to more abortions and later ones too . . . The data show that the pro-choice approach is more effective at achieving what the American public views as “pro-life” goals — i.e. reducing the number of abortions, preventing late term abortion — than the so-called “pro-life” approach.

By the way, who is likely to support freely available birth control pills?  Almost everyone:

Obama could remind the voter that only 11% of sexually active women don’t use contraception and from this 11% comes 50% of the nation’s abortions. Ninety-one percent of the American public strongly favors contraception because of this very reason.

The only people not favoring birth control are those who seek to encourage unplanned pregnancies.  That’s a great policy in a world of dwindling resources, right?  Who are such nuts?  People like this .

I agree with the writers of the Alternet article.  It’s time to cater to 89% of sexually active women, thereby recognizing the right of women to control their own bodies and simultaneously decreasing the number of abortions.  For much more on the wacky resistance of a highly vocal minority to birth control pills, see here.

A good friend of mine once told me to “lead with the body” when you are struggling with anxiety or depression.  Talking things out has it’s limits, he said, as do drugs.  It was my friend’s belief that exercising the body will often allow the mind to clear itself up.  It appears that my friend’s instincts were correct:

In a Duke University research study, published in the October 25, 1999 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, exercise was found to be almost as effective as medication in reducing symptoms of depression.

Though medication can be a life saver for some and no one wants to suggest otherwise, these studies open the door for other or additional strategies. “One of the conclusions we can draw from this,” according to psychologist and study leader Dr. James Blumenthal, “is that exercise may be just as effective as medication and may be a better alternative for certain patients. While we don’t know why exercise confers such a benefit, this study shows that exercise should be considered as a credible form of treatment for these patients. Almost one-third of depressed patients in general do not respond to medications, and for others, the medications can cause unwanted side effects. Exercise should be considered a viable option.”

This is good news in these days of skyrocketing health care costs.   Walking around the block is a lot cheaper than most drugs, with fewer side-effects (unless you live in a dangerous neighborhood).

Last night, I was flying from St. Louis to Minneapolis to participate in the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform.  I was flying in a small jet (the kind that holds about 60 passengers).

As we approached the Minneapolis airport, we started going through storm clouds.  Undeterred, the pilot started bringing the plane down for a landing.  The runway was in sight.  That’s when some huge storm clouds became apparent.  Not only that, lightning surrounded the airplane-it looked like the lightning was only a couple yards outside the window.  It was right after noticing the lightning that the plane went into a sustained stall.  It was not the kind of controlled stall that planes enter just prior to touching down.  Rather, this was the kind of stall where the nose of the plane goes way up (maybe 50° from horizontal) and the plane starts losing altitude, sliding backwards.

To make things worse, the plane started blowing sideways in the vicious wind.  This condition lasted for about 10 seconds. The feeling of being blown around like a leaf was really disconcerting.  No one on the plane reacted other than being extremely quiet. Nonetheless, I really truly thought that this was going to be the end for me.

Luckily (you knew the story would end well, since I’m writing this post), the pilot regained control of the plane, leveling out and fighting his way through five minutes of wicked winds.  There were lots of bumps and jolts, and many of the passengers were doublechecking and triple checking their seatbelts.

During the excitement, I could’ve sworn that I heard a cat.  As it turned out, the man sitting in front of me had a big black suitcase under his seat that was actually a carrier for a cat.  During the severe turbulence, the cat not only made lots of noise, it apparently shat all over itself, causing a thick stench of cat poop to spread throughout the seating area. The other passengers (including me) had to endure that smell (which was so bad that it was nauseating) while the pilot made a 20-minute detour around the storm in order to try to land the plane a second time.

Worse yet, I am highly allergic to cats.  My exposure triggered asthma, for which I needed to use an inhaler last night.

There’s no real point to this post, other than my need to rant.  I had no idea that passengers could bring cats in the passenger compartment of airplanes.  This especially surprises me, given the fact that numerous people (I’ve heard that it’s 10% of the population) are allergic to cats.

After the plane was safely on the ground (the passengers applauded when the plane safely touched down), I asked the flight attendant whether it was appropriate to have a cat in the passenger compartment of an airplane.  She stated that it is done all the time, and that the passenger needs only to pay an extra $100 in order to bring a pet in the passenger compartment of the plane.

I would suggest one modification to the $100 rule.  The next time a cat shits during a flight, the passenger bringing the cat should pay $100 to each passenger within 10 feet of the cat.

Americans are increasingly complaining that the cost of food is going up. Two recent articles demonstrate that Americans are profligate wasters of food in at least two major ways:

1) Obese people consume 18% more food energy than lean people and more than sixty million Americans are obese. Simply put, it takes more calories to maintain an obese body than a slimmer body, assuming both of them engage in similar amounts of activity.

2) Americans throw away an incredible 27% of their food. According to this article in the NYT:

Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

These two problems suggest two solutions. To save money on one’s food bill: A) Bring your body down to its appropriate and healthy size and B) Stop wasting good food by throwing it away.

The “American Life League” is putting out this silly garbage. They are trying to make it illegal for anyone to purchase birth control pills. This would put us back to the 1965 case of Griswold v Connecticut.

Consider some of the this wacko group’s talking points:

Q: Is it OK to take the pill for my acne or other health reasons?
A: Although the pill may have some minor benefits, the fact that it can kill preborn babies and cause harmful side effects for the woman outweighs its minor benefits. Because the pill weakens the immune system, it can cause bacterial infections and can make a woman more susceptible to the AIDS virus. It can also cause the following side effects: pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, cervical cancer, ectopic pregnancy, shrinking of the womb, breast cancer, blood clots, birth defects in children conceived while their mothers are on the pill, stroke, weight gain and much more. 2,3,4

Q: Isn’t it better to be on the pill when you
are sexually active?
A: Better for whom? The pill does not prevent you from getting a sexually transmitted disease, it is not 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy and you could conceive a child who gets chemically aborted before the baby’s presence is even known to you. Moreover, sexual activity outside of marriage is seriously wrong.

These are not new tactics (these arguments have been used by “pregnancy resource centers” for years), but it’s as stupid as it’s ever been. These “conservatives” want to government to have the power to dictate private sexual behavior between consenting adults (including married consenting adults). Unbelievable.

The media needs to hit McCain in the head with this blunt question: “Do you support the right of American adults to freely choose from all available birth control pills and devices, without any interference from the government?” Make McCain decide if he wants to publicly assume the looney side of this issue too.

I was in a bad mood after I wrote a post summarizing a recent Harpers Magazine article demonstrating that the United States government is working hard to keep its citizens from knowing whether numerous commonly used chemicals are dangerous.

After all, our government is supposed to be there to protect us yet it appears that our government is, instead, kissing up to the chemical manufacturers, allowing them to dump highly questionable substances into the products American consumers purchase and use.

And now, I’m in a worse mood. I just finished reading an extraordinary article called “You Are What You Drink Out Of,” by Nadia Pflaum. This article appeared in a local alternative St. Louis newspaper called the Riverfront Times. Pflaum’s story is available online, and thank goodness, because this is extraordinary piece of writing and it serves as an illustration of just how corrupt the system has become. I’ll give just the basic outline here. You’ll want to go read the entire article, however, if you want to be prepared to pull out Exhibit A the next time you get into an argument with one of the many remaining Bush-loving purported free-marketers.

The story centers around Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri. He is one of the leading experts on bisphenol A, a chemical that is ubiquitous in the United States-more than six billion pounds are produced every year. The trouble is that bisphenol A contains a substance that acts as a synthetic hormone that has been suspected of being dangerous for human beings. Vom Saal’s research found that the synthetic estrogen that leeches out of bisphenol A can pass it right into human cells at doses 25,000 times lower than any toxicologist ever before studied, and it wreaks havoc with developing reproductive organs.”

Vom Saal and his colleague, Susan Nagel (a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health), found that bisphenol A is so potent that exposing a developing fetus to it could permanently alter crucial phases of development. Their experiments showed that tiny doses of bisphenol A could trigger breast cancer. Their experiments also showed that tiny doses enlarged the prostates of laboratory mice.

The problem is that humans are exposed to bisphenol A everyday. We are exposed to it in the form of food packaging, almost every water bottle, eyeglass lenses and the linings of aluminum food cans. Bisphenol A is a synthetic material that is commonly used to make plastic.

But this is where the story only begins to get interesting. Vom Saal and Nagel published their findings regarding the dangers of bisphenol A and they were about to publish a second article (announcing that exposure to bisphenol A lowered sperm counts in mice) when they received a visit from a scientist from Dow Chemical who offered to pay the University a huge amount of money to conduct a new bisphenol A “study” at the University. Here’s the kicker: the Dow Chemical scientist (who told the university scientists that he represented the Chemical Manufacturers Association) asked “Can we arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome where you withhold publishing this paper until authorized to do so by the Chemical Manufacturers Association?”

University scientists knew that they were being offered a bribe. (more…)

This Chris Kelly headline says it all:

America: #1 in Bibles. #37 in Infant Mortality.

Here’s an excerpt from Kelly’s Huffpo article:

Europeans are feeling pretty smug lately, with their sturdy currency, “health care,” and rising rates of life expectancy, but there’s one area where we kick their ass: American Christians read the bible a lot more often than European Christians do.

Here are a few interesting tidbits about the Bible (these are some of my previous Bible-relevant posts from Dangerous Intersection):

Reading violent Bible stories can make you more violent.

If you’re a Bible literalist who’s going to read the Bible, don’t cherry-pick. Make sure you read these parts too.

The Bible is not really inerrant.

Adam might have had a belly button.

You can love going to church, even if you’re an atheist.

The New Testament says some bizarre things about morality (in addition to saying some very good things).

And finally (as Kelly suggests), most Americans who claim to read the Bible are liars.

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I’ll end on a bleak note, because I’ve made the mistake of paying too much attention to the “news” today: The intellectual deterioration of the United States is about to his critical mass (or has it already?).

What? The White House is endangering us by withholding information?

This is getting to be a familiar story, right? Here’s the typical plot: There’s something going on that poses a serious risk to Americans, and the White House decides to protect big corporations rather than protect the people at risk.

This time, the protected industry consists of chemical manufacturers. The victims are American citizens, many of them recalcitrant admirers of the Bush Administration. Here’s an excerpt of the article by the Associated Press:

The Bush administration is undermining the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to determine health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting non-scientists have a bigger - often secret - role, congressional investigators say in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The administration’s decision to give the Defense Department and other agencies an early role in the process adds to years of delay in acting on harmful chemicals and jeopardizes the program’s credibility, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

At issue is the EPA’s screening of chemicals used in everything from household products to rocket fuel to determine if they pose serious risk of cancer or other illnesses.

How many people are dying out there because they have been exposed to common chemicals of which most people don’t know of the dangers? How many of those people are children? Every time I hear of another person getting cancer (especially when I hear of a young child getting cancer), I wonder whether it’s because he or she has been exposed too long to that thick cocktail of chemicals in which we live. And we live our lives in ignorance thanks to a government which should be protecting us.

You might be thinking “Surely, the government is at least letting us know about the most commonly used risky chemicals?” That assumption would be wrong:

After years of stops and starts, the GAO said, the EPA has yet to determine carcinogen risks for a number of major chemicals such as:

-Naphthalene, a chemical used in rocket fuel as well as in manufacturing commercial products such as mothballs, dyes and insecticides.

-Trichloroethylene, or TCE, a widely used industrial degreasing agent.

-Perchloroethylene, or “perc,” a chemical used in dry cleaning, metal degreasing and making chemical products.

-Formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable gas used to making building materials.

Environmentalists say these chemicals have been widely found at military bases and Superfund sites and in soil, lakes, streams and groundwater.

Now . . . if you really want to know how bad things are, read this Harper’s article: “Toxic inaction: Why poisonous, unregulated chemicals end up in our blood.” (more…)

I’m not a big fan of big Pharma. There’s a good reason for my attitude. Many drug companies are selling hype rather than bona fide drugs. And some of those big drug companies have been caught outright lying.

Merck has already been shown to have killed tens of thousands of people as a result of its lies regarding the alleged safety of Vioxx. The well known lies of Merck involved the withholding of important data that suggested that Vioxx was more dangerous than Merck wanted to allow the public to know. “FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market.”

The April 17, 2008 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers) indicates that Merck’s deception was more prevalent than previously suspected. These new accusations have come to light as a result of the extensive litigation regarding Vioxx. The discovery responses produced by Merck made thousands of documents available for analysis. This analysis, paid for by the litigants in a Vioxx case, “seem to show Merck’s extensive involvement in ‘ghost writing’ and ‘guest authorship’ of research and review papers.”

This new evidence seems to show that Merck had its own employees designing the drug trials, analyzing the data, writing the papers and then simply recruiting academic authors to give these papers supposed authenticity. This ruse was discovered by analyzing first drafts of the manuscripts compared to the final articles. The first drafts were written by Merck employees, whereas the final drafts indicated that allegedly independent academics had done the studies and authored those articles. Worse yet, the articles failed “to disclose relevant financial relations” regarding the participants.

The bottom line is that Merck apparently manipulated the authorship of dozens of “independent” articles in order to promote Vioxx.

But that’s not all.  This same article in Nature reports on a second recent article based on documents obtained in a separate court case.   This second article “reports ’striking’ disparities between the mortality results for the drug in published papers and those contained in Merck’s internal analyses.”

It makes you wonder what other drug companies are manufacturing lies along with their drugs. It’s also further evidence that the FDA is largely a rubber stamp for the drug industry rather than a public watchdog.  It’s also evidence that motivated trial lawyers can sometimes do an impressive job of puncturing corporate obstructionism and exposing disturbing wrongdoing that others fail to find.

Tell them what Architecture 2030 says about coal:

Because coal is the only fossil fuel plentiful and supposedly cheap enough to push the planet to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  Because reaching 450 ppm (or possibly less) triggers potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise.

Because 53% of Americans live in and around coastal cities and towns and, beginning with just one meter of sea level rise, many of these cities and towns will be inundated.

Scientists are forewarning that at approx. 450 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, we will trigger potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise “out of humanity’s control.” We are currently at 385 ppm, and are increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at approx. 2 ppm annually.  At this growth rate, we will reach 450 ppm in 2035 . . .

In the US, there are over 600 existing coal plants and 151 new coal plants in various stages of development.

Tell them that there is a smarter and better way.   And a cleaner way.  Tell them that mining coal is not only ugly, it’s dangerous for miners and everyone else.

Tell them to take a close look into a train car full of coal (as I did yesterday) and to ask themselves if coal looks like the fuel of the future. 

I thought about coal as I noticed a train loaded with coal go by (I took these photos).  I thought about how little most people know about coal yet how politicians and their constituents don’t have the dangers of coal on their radar.   Some of these dangers are set forth in my earlier post, The Banality of Burning Coal.   

I’ve been told by a man who works with the biggest electric company in St. Louis that each coal burning plant eats an entire train full of coal each day.  That is confirmed by Wikipedia:

Coal is delivered by highway truck, rail, barge or collier ship. A large coal train called a “unit train” may be two kilometers (over a mile) long, containing 100 cars with 100 tons of coal in each one, for a total load of 10,000 tons. A large plant under full load requires at least one coal delivery this size every day.

Most people I speak with resist serious energy conservation as a matter of principle.  Many conservatives belittle conservation, as though it is a matter of weakness.  They scoff at conservation.  When I bring up global warming, they deny it.  When I bring up peak oil, they have no logical response.  They resist energy conservation as if they were 3 year olds whining that they don’t want to try a new sort of food that their parents put on their plates.   It’s an irrational emotional resistance (not that emotions are always irrational) that is endangering our economy.  Conservation is one-half of the solution out of this big mess. (more…)

Summer of 2004. I have considered myself an atheist at least since the summer of 2004. For the sake of feeling smart and consistent, I believe I’ve considered myself an atheist for much longer. But I only have documented evidence of such a stance dating back to the summer of 2004.

Did I have some great logical awakening that roused me to critical thinking and clear-headedness? No. I know I did not. I know I didn’t become a perfect bastion of scientific thinking because, in the summer of 2004, I believed in handwriting analysis.

A knowledge-thirsty little 10th grader, I still believed then that if someone with a PhD wrote a book, that book had to contain gospel truth. I didn’t know the difference between bad science and good science. I didn’t even realize such a rift existed. So handwriting analysis, with all of its certain language and its sheer lack of cited empirical evidence, seemed as valid as medicine or geology.

Only half a year or so later, as I struggled to tell a friend that the dominating middle region in her script belied a permanently childish outlook, did I begin to realize exactly how idiotic this whole graphology thing sounded.

Ouch. It still stings to admit. Should I also admit that I used to take multivitamins? That I preferred bottled water over tap? Evidence supports none of these beliefs.

I hope I’ve made my point clearly: atheism did not protect me from having moronic faith in things not supported by evidence. The empiricism I had used to destroy God did not extend automatically to all other silly things settled in my head. I had to force out all of the cobwebs. (more…)

Sometimes, my body has a strong opinion with which I disagree.

Here’s a good recent example:  My body doesn’t like getting stuck with hypodermic syringes.  When I refuse to allow my body to leave the doctor’s office and when I allow my body to get jabbed with a hypodermic needle, it retaliates by fainting.  It’s one of those things that I completely forget about until I’m sitting in a doctor’s office overly aware that I’m about to be stuck again.  At such moments, my body reacts in a way that embarrasses and annoys me. 

Here’s a bit of context. For the past few months, I’ve had some nagging back and arm pain.  On a lark, I signed up for some acupuncture administered by a chiropractor.   Getting stuck with