Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

I finally got a book back that I had lent out. I'm thrilled to have it back, in part because it's signed by the author, in part because, frankly, it's an interesting book. It's called White Man's Burden and its author, William Easterly, probably is getting used to receiving death threats from Peace Corp types. His premise is this: our good intentions to save the poor are often the exact same colonial impulses that messed up these countries in the first place. In fact, instead of doing good, throwing gobs of money at countries probably hurts them far more than it helps them. He divides his book into two sub-topics: Aid and Military Intervention. Both methods do equally miserably. The top-down approach of what he calls "Planners" create these utopian ideals of changing poor, oppressed countries into beacons of democracy and prosperity. In reality, these sudden, major overhauls, be they military or humanitarian, seldom work and often create corruption, famine...

Yesterday, I had a wonderful day: I finished my novel (hurray!), at least a first draft. My sister told me that she thought I was pretty. I hosted a writing party that was surprisingly delightsome. I met up with some old friends and had good chats. TODAY, can you believe it: I beat my personal best 5k time. It's an unofficial 26.07, but even unofficial, that's two minutes off my last time. I got to go to the temple. My reimbursement check finally cleared and I have a little money! (Until I pay first and last months' rent. Boo.) I feel a little bad, though, when I know people who are having lousy weeks. I'm just living a dream

From Mark's and my hike the other day

I just read the neatest article in the New Yorker where Elizabeth Kolbert reviews several new books with new theories about why we, as a nation, have gotten to be such porkers. Kolbert points out that while there had been a gradual weight gain of the average american since the 1960s, the biggest jump took place since the 1980s. In the 1994 Journal of the AMA, Flegal et. al found that whereas 25.4% of Americans had been overweight in the 70s, by the early nineties that percentage was now 33%. Whoa, Nelly! Among some of the familiar explanations (evolutionary "fat genes," dangerous urban centers), it seems like the 80s took their toll in a number of ways: 1. In Eric Finkelstein's "The Fattening of America," the eighties marked a time of cheap fats and sugars. Economically speaking, the real price (adjusting for things like inflation) of fats and oils decreased by 16% between 1983 and 2005. Soda pop alone got 20% cheaper. Since food expenses are income normal (mean...

AAAAAAAAA!

It seems pretty obvious to me that music helps me work out. I'm super-tired, I want to die with foot-pounding tedium, I'm planning on walking the next block and then..."Get up, get up, put the body in motion!" and, shoulders shimmying, I'm good for another 5:52. I feel like music helps me get farther, faster, better. But is that what the studies support? In the Journal of Exercise Physiology, Larry Birnbaum reported that when he made three groups of subjects (fast music, slow music, and no music) run at 5.5 mph for fifteen minutes, the fast music group showed a marked difference: their oxygen consumption (VO2s), cardiac output, number of breaths and other indicators were much higher than those in in slow and no music groups. That means that fast music actual may make you /less/ efficient than slow or no music. On one hand, being less efficient is bad, because then your body can't handle longer or harder workouts, but on the other hand, being less efficient is ...

I don't know what it is, but this trip to DC, I can't stop myself from going to every invertebrate zoo and exhibit--they're loose like a jellyfish! Don't these look like evil geniuses? Or genuses? This is a cuttlefish. It has such good eyesight that it can see you as well as you see it. I went to the butterfly house at the Smithsonian, where they feed butterflies rotten fruit. You do not want to mess their fruit; the butterflies will kill you. I saw some other things (art, monuments, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks) but the invertebrates win this trip! Hurrah for invertebrates! Let's celebrate by not stepping on them today... too often.