Sleepy

I have a schedule that normally keeps me getting to bed at the right time.  It goes something like this:  I sit at my computer playing games until Wendy gets up to go to bed.  Once she does this I play out a couple more turns and then go to have my shower and sleep.  No problem!

The issue comes when Wendy gets addicted to a new game.  This happens a couple times a year or so and every time it does it throws me off because she starts staying up later in "Just one more turn!" mode and I never get my signal to go to bed at a reasonable hour.  I know I have a clock right in front of me, and beside me, and on my wrist, but that simply doesn't get me out of my "Just one more turn!" haze like her wandering away does so I end up staying up way too late.  This past week Wendy has been wrapped up in Mass Effect 1 and we have not been getting enough sleep.

I end up feeling sick and gross, grainy eyed and stupid.  What's more it turns out that acne (in me at least) is linked to sleep very tightly and I break out when I stop sleeping enough.  I can even tell the difference in my face after having a long nap during the day like I did today; afterwards I *look* better.  Doing this sure isn't about lack of knowledge because I know that I feel better and even get more done in the day if I have 9 hours of sleep instead of 8; the additional rest makes me far more productive than the extra hour of awakeness would.

Somehow I need to develop a signal that makes me go to sleep without waiting for Wendy to go to bed first.  I know that clocks and alarms won't do it as I have tried that; when I am home alone I mostly end up staying up far, far too late regardless of my intentions.  Everybody has their weak points, things they cannot resist.  For some it is doughnuts, for some it is shopping, for me it is taking just one more turn.  Seriously, I will go to bed after this turn, for real this time!

Moral Dilemmas and Student Life

I often think of interesting moral dilemmas that might come up.  For example, what would I do if Sthenno called me up and asked me to help him secretly bury a human body somewhere?  I wonder how often people end up going down the wrong path in life because they want to help out a friend or relative and end up way over their heads.  I made small bets with myself over the question "If anybody I know ended up getting me in deep trouble with the law because I tried to help them, who would it be?"  Today I found out who would take me on that first step towards lawlessness:  Wendy.  This morning she got me to steal from a random person we don't know who lives on her path to work and carry the hot goods home.  Here they are:

You might be thinking "Wow, Sky stole a case of wine and drank all eleven bottles this morning? What a beast!"  You might be thinking instead "Sky stole a case of empty wine bottles?  WTF?" in which case you would be right; I stole a case of empty wine bottles from some random person's front lawn.  It reminds me of my time as a student in Waterloo when I was coming home at six in the morning one day and saw a neighbour putting a cruddy but functional chair out for the garbage.  I walked up to him and asked if I could take it and he quite happily gave it to me.  I suspect that living right next to a university with poor students on all sides he didn't find this behaviour strange.  Free garbage chair, yes!

There is, of course, a solid environmental rationale for stealing people's garbage.  It is far better to reuse than to recycle so we can count ourselves as being good citizens for stealing these wine bottles for wine making.  It wasn't so much out of some environmentalist agenda that we stole these bottles though but rather because it let us save money on buying them from the 'make your own wine' outfit for $1 apiece.  Ah, the student life; getting drunk on the cheap.

Santorum and true belief

Rick Santorum continues to amaze me.  The US Republican race has been mind blowing so far but Santorum really takes the cake as being the one who is the most crazy because he really does seem to believe what he says.  I get the abortion thing.  I am pro choice but I completely understand where the pro lifers (the ones who don't murder doctors) are coming from.  The people who are against contraception, on the other hand, totally boggle my mind.  Most people don't get abortions and it is fairly easy to see an awful lot of the population fooling themselves about it because it has never affected them directly; contraception is *everywhere* being used by *everybody*.

Santorum wants to ban contraception.  Unlike his desire to ban pornography, which is crazy but at least probably not dangerous, a ban on contraception would absolutely devastate the US.  Teenage pregnancy rates would skyrocket, legal and illegal abortions would go through the roof and STDs would suddenly become a plague.  Maybe in Santorum's world people who aren't married and wanting children shouldn't have sex but looking at history there is no denying that people who aren't married and wanting children DO have sex, lots of it, and banning contraception would have hilarious and sad consequences like syphilis becoming a household word again.  Even if you don't think that world population is an issue you can't deny the enormous problems that condoms help prevent.

Of course this doesn't matter because nobody thinks that a president can get elected on a ticket of banning contraception.  Santorum is a homophobic religious nut who has managed through the arcane and disastrous politics of an entrenched two party system to get himself a worldwide platform to espouse his madness.  He hasn't, however, got much of an aim to actually win the presidency.  He is following the directives of his invisible angry man in the sky even if they lead him to utterly alienate everyone but the far religious right.  You aren't going to get swing voters (who are, for the most part, using contraception currently!) to vote for banning contraception even if you can get them to sign on for criminalizing pornography.

The argument always comes down to the government controlling sex.  Santorum thinks his contraception policies are fine because people just shouldn't have sex aside from the married heterosexual baby making kind.  And we all know that people won't do things that have potential bad consequences later on, especially when the payoff is an orgasm right now...  right?  Banning contraception is tantamount to banning sex and that just ain't gonna work.  You can tell people you are banning a lot of things for their own good and they will buy it but they are *never* going to vote for a ban on sex.

Which is why I hope desperately that Santorum wins the Republican nomination.  I want to see an election where the Obama's entire campaign is

"My opponent wants to ban sex... Guess I win?"

Advertising works

Watch this ad.  Seriously.



Most ads make me sad or bored.  Some ads make me want to hit people in marketing or venerate them as towers of glorious evil.  Then there are ads that are so awesome I immediately go to the company's website to buy the product.  I don't care if it isn't that great, people who make ads like this deserve my money once and if their product sucks they won't get it a second time.  Unfortunately these folks can't get my money because they only ship to the US.  Learn to ship to Canada fools!  I will buy your stuff.

Also, razors seem like one of the craziest scams ever.  I can't fathom how they can cost as much as they do so the fact that somebody is selling (hopefully?) decent razors for a fraction of the price of drug store ones is encouraging; it means that hopefully the razor companies will be forced to offer products at prices that make sense instead of running a crazy money factory.

Rob Ford getting his due

Two years ago I talked about how Toronto had elected a homophobic, racist jackass as mayor on a campaign of "I will slash spending while lowering taxes without any loss in services!"  Unfortunately what we got when we elected Rob Ford is someone who slashed revenue and then tried to close libraries, subsidizied day care spots and pretty much everything else in his bid to cut the budget.  No great surprise but when you slash budgets from libraries there is going to be a loss in services!  Crazy talk, I know.  At the time I was really concerned that Ford was going to make a royal mess of the city because the city councillors were all lining up to back him figuring he was the new darling of the masses.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Ford has managed to turn the city council against him in spectacular fashion.  Since the mayor's office largely holds symbolic power and only one vote he actually can't do much when the rest of council decides to stick together.  He used his power to appoint people to the Toronto Transit Commission board and fire the head of the TTC so council removed his power to appoint people, put new people in place and trashed Ford's idiotic and financially impossible transit plan.  Now they are working together to restart the transit plan Ford unilaterally killed when he came into office and pretty much preventing him from doing anything at all.

This is good news from the perspective that Ford is no longer in charge of Toronto in anything but name but it is bad news in that it makes the voters of Toronto look like a bunch of fools.  We elected a guy on a platform of magic and free ponies and now we get to deal with the aftermath of a split council and a city leader who can't get anything done because no one respects him.  I wonder how many people who voted for him are upset because he promised massive tax cuts with no loss in services to go with it.  If there are any they need to face up to the fact that they fell for a scam hook, line and sinker.  Hopefully when the next election rolls around people will remember how awful things go when you elect someone on impossible promises and disgust and look for somebody with actual leadership qualities.

Dentistry throughout the ages

I recall stories from my parents about how going to the dentist was a really awful experience when they were young.  Their impressions of the dentist were not positive, to say the least.  I never particularly liked going to the dentist when I was young but it wasn't a big deal - I am lucky to never have had an fillings necessary but I find it boring rather than frightening.  Yesterday I had to go to the dentist and Elli's reaction was a bit strange.

"When are we going to the dentist Daddy?"

"I am going to the dentist Elli, you are going to school."

"But that isn't fair!  I want to go to the dentist too!"

Then she threw a fit because she wanted to go to the dentist.  She sees going to the dentist as a fun adventure with treasure at the end (the dentist has a treasure chest for kids).  Quite the change in just three generations from fear to indifference to joy.  I never thought I would get the opportunity to threaten

"Be good or you won't get to go to the dentist!" 

and have it actually work.

Wheat and bad science

Awhile ago I talked about a new trend in popular diets:  What elimination.  The idea is that wheat consumption causes all kinds of issues like metabolic syndrome and celiac disease as well as general malaise and lack of energy.  The most notable book in this movement is Wheat Belly, which blames much or most of Western society's health problems on wheat and the negative effects it has on human biology.  So should we all go about eliminating wheat from our diets?  Based on the 'evidence' Wheat Belly has to offer we certainly shouldn't.  The trouble with this book is that it isn't completely fictitious; it blends a lot of truth with some exaggeration and wishful thinking to create a narrative where people are the heroes and wheat is the villain.  Clever, simple narratives are great for stories but no so great for science.

The first sign I had that this was more a scam than real medicine is the use of testimonials.  You can generally be sure that if an argument relies on 'this guy did this thing and then something happened' without any identifying details or error bars that the argument is full of it.  Many pages of the book are devoted to descriptions of individuals who were supposedly very diet conscious and exercised constantly but were obese and who lost weight like magic when they stopped eating wheat.  Even if these are true (and we have no way of knowing) they leave out very important facts.  When these obese people cut out wheat were they only cutting out multigrain bread or were they cutting out starbucks treats, 6 donuts a day at the office, McDonalds burgers, etc.?  Whether or not you think that wheat is a supervillain you have to agree that much of the crap we eat is wheat based and if you just cut out the crap you will get thinner, wheat or no wheat.  Total wheat elimination is generally going to mean eating home cooked meals way more often and losing out on much or most junk food which is itself going to do good things.

The other big issue with Wheat Belly is oversimplification of complex issues.  Throughout the book the author tells us that the government has been telling us all to eat complex carbohydrates to remain healthy and get thin.  If you believe the narrative of the book then you must assume that everything that came out of government sources since the eighties has had only one message:  Eat more wheat.  Of course this is baloney because official Food Guides certainly talked a lot about eating vegetables (yes!), milk (unnecessary), and avoiding excess sugar, salt, and other additives (yes!) in addition to complex carbohydrates.  That message is a little bit too complicated though and doesn't support the story of wheat as supervillain and government as mindless minion so it isn't told.  Keep the message simple and the language emotional and you will convince more people than properly footnoted facts ever will.

The fact of the matter is that wheat is a major ingredient in all kinds of really crappy food substitutes.  Many of us eat way too much wheat as a result and are also unhealthy.  You don't need to cut out wheat entirely to improve your health, just stop eating garbage and substitute spinach instead.  Cutting out wheat will tend to correlate to improved health but correlation =/= causation.  Wheat Belly fails to understand this basic principle in spectacular fashion.