Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
For a person with such small feet, my carbon footprint is probably bigger than it should be.
I drive 40 miles round trip to work every day. I drink an awful lot of bottled water. We use paper plates at home and have for years. Every day I get a Starbucks coffee in a plastic cup. I use those evil plastic grocery sacks. I don’t recycle because I live in the county, and recycling costs extra. And I really can’t afford to pay extra for anything right now, which is why I haven’t yet invested in a Sigg water bottle. Or cloth grocery bags. Or that super-cute new Starbucks cup that looks like their plastic disposable cup but is actually a reusable insulated cup and costs $12.95.
I have a friend with six children who is adamant about using cloth grocery bags. She says that with a family of her size, she would easily use 60 or more plastic bags a week. And another friend of mine even uses cloth feminine products. Which you know what – I don’t even want to know. But that’s some pretty dedicated environmentalism there.
What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?
Here’s something I’ve discovered while off work: Daytime television can suck you in quicker than a Dyson upright. The great thing about soaps is, you can be gone for months – years even – and catch up on the storyline in a matter of minutes. And I’m not sure how I’ll ever be able to go back to work and not see The OC and Gilmore Girls re-runs in the afternoons.
When I tuned in during my recent unemployment stint, Guiding Lightwas beginning a storyline where a young woman, “Ashlee,” was having lap-band surgery. She had come to this decision all on her own. Only her boyfriend (who, of course, loves her just the way she is and doesn’t care how much she weighs) was the only one who knew of her plans. Her mother – the DA – found out just as Ashlee was about to be wheeled into the operating room and so charged in and tried to talk her out of it. But Ashlee is an adult (although just barely) and can make her own decisions. She went through with the surgery.
I wondered right away how this was going to play out. A week or so after Ashlee had the surgery, there was a scene where she held up a pair of her (supposedly) old jeans that were several sizes too large for her. And I thought, “Please tell me they’re not going to dress her in larger clothes and expect us to believe that she’s getting smaller.” Because I’ve seen soaps do that with anorexic storylines before. And it kind of sucked then but it was definitely not going to work for the whole lap-band-surgery storyline. Read the rest of this entry »
On the heels of the story about the British woman who went 40 days without beauty products or bathing comes this story about a new study that says breast cancer could be linked to deodorant usage — particularly those deodorants/antiperspirants that rely heavily on aluminum (the study says the average antiperspirant is 90 percent aluminum).
Antiperspirant is mainly made up from aluminium salts which have long been associated with cancer, as well as other human disease and the daily application of aluminium-based antiperspirants could possibly result in the presence of aluminium in the tissue of the underarm and surrounding areas.
I’m always skeptical of these short, soundbyte-ready studies, but I’m also skeptical that every FDA-approved chemical we routinely apply to our bodies is truly safe in the long run. So, it doesn’t hurt to ask: Am I doing what’s best for my body? Of course, with all these inconclusive studies, it’s hard to tell. But if you’re feeling skittish, there are alternatives.
Here’s a question for your Friday consideration: Should science work toward modifying males so that they can give birth?
It’s actually not as ridiculous as it sounds; PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has a nice post up about some of the particulars of such a concept:
Zygotes are aggressive little parasites that will implant just about anywhere in the coelom — it’s why ectopic pregnancies are a serious problem — so all we need to do there is culture a bit of highly vascularized tissue in the male abdomen that will serve as a secure home for a few months. We’ll have to play some endocrine games, too, which may effect his love life but will also prepare him to lactate post-partum. There’s the minor anatomical problem that the vagina is a unique tissue, and no, the urethra is not homologous or analogous (fortunately; we wouldn’t want to have to push an 8 pound baby through the penis, even if female hyenas can manage it) — but that’s what c-sections are for. Given money, time, and a few weird volunteers, it could be done.
I probably have more radical views on gender and “nature” than the average person (in other words, I think gender is a social construct and “nature” is a vague term thrown around to help reinforce strict gender roles), but I don’t actually see a downside to science giving men the option to get pregnant and have babies. It’s the getting there that will be shaky and ethically iffy (that whole finding human volunteers thing could pose a real obstacle), but it’s possible that such a revolutionary event could happen in the next few decades.
