Right, then.

[silveradept]

Two down, one to go. Tomorrow at noon, I officially finish another semester’s worth of classwork. One more to go. Will I manage to survive long enough? We’ll see. If my classwork assignments don’t try to trip me up. (Fools. I’ll destroy them all.)

There’s a new tax credit available - if you've been paying long distance federal excise taxes in the last three years, you may be able to claim a tax credit. Apparently, this was instituted a while ago as a luxury tax, before phones became ubiquitous. With the way the money’s being spent out of the coffers, maybe they should keep the tax for a little while longer.

Regarding the war, P! reminds us of the way things were supposed to go, according to the Republican script, and the way things are going to go, according to the Democratic one. Neither of which reads like a stunning example of democracy and good government in action.

jokermage peeks inside the psychology of memes. I’m sure there’s more than can be discovered than what’s there, so give it your best thoughts.

For those who practice the art of magic, Key23 has a few thoughts to share about the nature of the art. Magic, perhaps like any other art, just is? (For those who don’t have any reason to believe or practice magic, perhaps you can find a suitable substitute word that will give the piece meaning to you.)

In terms of the VEWPRF, please be reminded that many Christmas symbols have ancestry that predates the Christians. (Actually, the piece is really about how you should be able to bury war dead with their preferred religious symbol, which a pentacle is still apparently lacking from.) Also, Pinko Feminist Hellcat gives a better send-up of the Falwell gaffe (pagan backpack mail) I mentioned a few days earlier. In something that’s purely about the VEWPRF, however, from what we know of science, the jolly old fat man's skills might be possible. He just has to have some serious tech and advanced knowledge up at the North Pole.

Kofi Annan pulls no punches on what he thinks the U.S. should do in the Middle East in his farewell speech today. After 10 years, Mr. Annan steps down from the post of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Once can only hope that his successor will continue to have faith in the organization, while having the might and foresight to change and update it to reflect the modern world.

As yesterday’s comments proved, there are always at least two sides to any issue, if not more. The Vorlon in me says that it’s unlikely either side has made it to the truth yet, mostly because you can only predict. Thus, you can have the debunker’s guide on one end, and a simulation that says Arctic ice may be gone by 2040, researched by scientists at the University of Washington, McGill University of Canada and the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research. In these cases, I suppose, it’s as much a matter of who(m?) you want to believe. I would hope, though, that all persons involved agree that moving toward a more environmentally conscious policy, replete with less polluting, more efficient, fully renewable technology and resources is a smart idea. If they truly believe so, though, I would expect to see more money being poured into research and a heavier emphasis on developing those kinds of technologies as replacements for the current breed. (Also, quite possibly, a push for mandatory and university programs to train more people in the ways of science (SCIENCE!), but one thing at a time.) If the DOE’s study that says off-peak power generation could recharge nearly every car in the country if it were a plug-in hybrid is true, then there might be a big push toward electric vehicles. Gas tanks and engines might still be needed, in the short term, for longer-distance trips than the daily commute, but even then, if you can recharge your car overnight for cheaper than the gas you use to make the commute... emissions down, savings up, possibly more money to make better power plants faster? These sorts of options should probably be looked into. (And if we had things like fully-electric Smart cars for our commute to complement our gasoline vehicles... we could do a lot for the environment, potentially.)

Another area that probably needs an overhaul in thinking is the War on (Some) Drugs, a war that we're no closer to winning that the War on Terror. But if Mr. Bush takes the same attitude towards this war that he has toward the war in Iraq, which appears to be if it's not going well, I don't want to hear about it, then it still could be a long time before any progress is made.

33 names of things you never knew had names. Proving that once you have a concept, you really have to have a name for it before you can communicate it effectively. Even if it means making a word up out of whole cloth.

IBM develops Deep Thunder, a computer able to weather forecast to a one kilometer radius from your current position . (As an aside, are all IBM projects named “Deep X” or something? You’d think the informer for Watergate was an IBM creation, too.) Hyper-personalized weather for those that really, really need it. Like those of us deciding whether we need an umbrella or not. In other science, moving significantly down the scale size - silicon chips, tiny molecule strands, and nanomagnets may be used to detect cancers and other molecular toxins. So you give up a few drops of blood and have everything tested, yo. Or something like that.

Putting two and three together and coming out with about seven, here’s what appears to be a children’s toy called the Avenging Narwhal. I suspect we’ve found another source of why today’s children all seem to be more violent than before. Next, obviously taking that idea and going somewhere with it, we have the Avenging Unicorn. Probably still meant as a kid’s toy, albeit for a child with a significantly more wicked sense of humor. Or parents with that kind of humor. Or something. Honestly, I can’t make horns or tails out of the whole matter.

The last link for tonight is accurately termed “low-hanging fruit” for those who would like someone to safely ridicule, WTF, or generally have a laugh at someone else’s expense. (Unless you believe it, and then, well, tough noogies.) Namely, a conclusion drawn that soy is responsible for homosexuality. Apparently, babies being fed soy milk are getting so much estrogen that they’ll turn out to be homosexuals. The boys will have small penises and develop late, while the girls will hit puberty really quickly. There will be infertility for the boys, too. And then it’s also apparently going to cause an increase in cancer, So now I expect to see Fred Phelps boycotting soy products, because they obviously produce homosexuals. You may laugh your arses off at any point.

And with that stunning finale, off to bed.

Comments

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

I doubt the ice will all be gone by 2040, not because I doubt their evidence but because the conclusion is a bit too far reaching. I remember when I was a kid and they said that there would be no fish in the great lakes by 2000 because of all the pollution and stuff. What they really meant was a phrase that always gets cut out of the head lines which is "at this rate"

The problem with the "at this rate" statement is people drop it, or they misinterpret the data a little or even worse some reporter gets a hold of it and suddenly a statement like "At this rate it is probable that there may be no ice at the poles by 2040" is turned into "There will be no ice at the poles by 2040 and we have the PROOF!"

Then, when nothing happens because smart people who actually calmly saw the danger change the course and actually do something (in the case of the Great Lakes they did a lot of clean up) then it seems like those statements were wildly inaccurate. In the end, those broad statements really hurt the cause of rational environmentalists.

Also, I knew about half those 33 names. Not that I use them in every day speech, but about half of them rang a bell with me.

I also wonder how soy products affect women. I mean if they cause teh gay, how does the evidence he put forward relate to lesbians?

[silveradept]

If people do get to work on those things to clear them up, then maybe that's at least part of why there are claims of media over-hyping things - they were right, at the time, but then we took necessary steps so that the planned effect doesn't happen. When it doesn't happen, though, people look back and go "See? See! It didn't happen. You're just over-hyping."

Almost half? Neat. Obviously you've got plenty of weird in your life.

I suspect from the undertones in the article, lesbians happen through the same over-estrogenization. Girls get so hooked on having so much estrogen around that they want to be with girls, not boys, who can give them their needed testosterone balancing. Or something. I'm sure he has an argument for it that's about the same quality as what was linked to.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.

Right, well, I was fed soy formula as a baby because of the whole lactose intolerant thing, and pretty much continued to drink soy milk and eat soy products....

i'm pretty sure I'm not a lesbian, though I suppose we could make the argument....

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

I can't help but think that if feminization causes boys to catch teh gay as this guy claims, then masculinization must cause girls to catch teh gey as well. I mean if one is the mirror image of the other. Maybe the girls are getting lots of raw meat or something. Clearly more research needs to be done.

OR! Perhaps, we could just admit this guy is full of shit and go on with our lives.

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

See Also: The Y2K Problem.

Yes, that was partially overblown hype and scaremongering, and it is doubtful that, even if things had been left to themselves, the result would have been as catastrophic as many predictions claimed. However, the reason pretty much nothing happened was because a gigantic effort went into fixing the things that were going to break.

In the end, what people remember is the sensationalisation, not the effort that avoided the problem, and thus most people know of it as a 'farce' rather than a 'success'...

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I think the avenging unicorn toys are aimed at adults. That's who I've seen passing about the link to them, and planning on buying them.

Also, is it good or bad that I knew 7 of the 33 names already?

[silveradept]

Well, since it looks like a parody thing, adults would probably get it more readily for themselves than for their children. I'm still a little lost about the whole avenging narwhal bit.

And I'd say it's good. It means you have sufficient weird in your life that has you knowing some of these names.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Perhaps IBM will develop a computer for managing ocean traffic called, of course, 'Deep Ship'.

Yarha, Gettin' Deeper

[silveradept]

And perhaps follow it up with a computer designed to contemplate the existence or nonexistence of Satan, called Deep 666.

Silver, Way In Over His Head.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I'd like to have seen the actual research he pulled his data from, and despite the fact that he prefaced what he said with "I only eat organics", to me his article sounded like it was a giant stab at Vegetarianism, and more trying to prove that a Vegetarian diet is "BAD" and that you HAVE to eat Meat, or risk becoming a girlie man. As far as reaching menarche at age seven...well, like I said above, if they're looking for solid proof, they won't find it from looking at me, a kid who was raised on soy formula and soy products. Soy does NOT cause cancer, and I highly doubt that the soy content in soy formula is like taking "five birth control pills", because while they DO make hormonal therapy for woman going through menopause out of soy, not all soy products contain estrogen. They engineer it in a lab to create estrogen. Besides which, it's also been said that it's better to feed your baby soy formula, because all that regular cow milk at an early age could cause milk allergies.

A bunch of us on full_moon_swaps have been sending people the avenging unicorn as a stress reliever. They sell it up at Middle Earth, actually.

I'm a weather geek, but I think this "Deep Thunder" thing is a bit silly. I know that our local station CAN pinpoint things down to streets, and they have when reporting tornadoes or lightening strikes, so why does IBM need to make a weather forcaster? And are they going to offer it to NWS, or is IBM now trying to compete with NWS?

The electric car article is interesting, and it's a shame most of the car companies have scratched their electric car ideas. Maybe now they will think about marketing them again.

...and here I thought santa was just magic.

"Christmas is a federally mandated holiday. … Ninety percent of people celebrate Christmas, and we shouldn't offend them by not calling it what it is."

...which in the next paragraph corrects that to 80%, but what about the 20% who doesn't celebrate christmas?

But the presumption at work seems to be that, while Christian America will tolerate a certain degree of religious divergence, there is something about witchcraft that simply crosses the line.

...and when will people realize that witchcraft and paganism ARE different?! Then again, I'd much rather have a Celtic knot or a Treskel on my grave than the pentacle.

When I worked at the bank, I NEVER said Merry Christmas to my customers. It was always "Have a great holiday", because it's just bad to offend someone! If they said Merry Christmas to me first, then it was an appropriate thing to say back, assuming they don't say it unless they celebrate it. I hate businesses that wish me a Merry Christmas almost as much as I hate the damn bell for the Salvation Army.

The magic article seemed to mostly be a combination of song interpretations of the different songs mentioned, so I'm not really sure if it's their thoughts or just misc ramblings based on the songs.

Woo for getting that damn LD tax back. I always thought it was stupid to have to pay on my cell phone.

The no ice by 2040 article uses all the "right words" - like "could", "may", "if", and "current rate". Now, to figure out what to do so that something like this doesn't come to fruition.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

There are 360 PubMed articles relating soy, diet and estrogen. Most of these studies are in all sorts of weird limited cases: ovariectomized rats (models for menopause), quail, breast cancer cells, etc. Most of these were overfed phytoestrogen or infused. A few are in monkeys on laboratory diets adjusted for higher soy content, and I have yet to find one relating to homosexuality. It'll take me a little time to sort through it all, but this is just a head's up that your local friendly biology graduate student is on the case.

As far as I can tell, soy contains something called phytoestrogen (one of the soy isoflavins) which is a plant hormone that is similar to human estrogen. I think that it's shown that phytoestrogens do stimulate the human estrogen receptor, however I haven't found the paper that says that oral normal-dose phytoestrogens are significantly bioavailable and drown out endogenous estrogen production, even in boys. There is major interest in this debate not because of the whole girly-men thing but because HER is a breast cancer proliferation marker so higher than normal estrogen levels or mistimed (i.e. during menopause or before puberty) estrogen levels may influence breast cancer progression. Most biologists are smart enough to realize that it's way too complicated to associate gender or even sexual orientation with a single factor and focus on more direct correlations. Journalists, and especially bigoted, biased and sensationalist journalists, have no such sensibilities.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

*nods* thanks C. I do know that there are organic menopause medicines (well, ok, herbal "remedies") that are based off of soy beans, but again, I thought it was more of having to specifically extract the particular part from the soybean as opposed to a blanket statement of "eat soy for estrogen"

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

The story thus far:

1) I somewhat misspoke in my earlier statement: isoflavins/isoflavones are a subclass of phytoestrogens, not the other way around. Soy is particularly high in them, as is flaxseed.

2) A study of monkeys on lab diet (soy based), a special soy based diet with very carefully controlled isoflavone content and a soy-free diet showed that the soy-based diet and the controlled isoflavone diet led to significantly higher serum concentrations of isoflavones. So, yes, dietary isoflavones are bioavailable.

3) Setchell KD,et al., Exposure of infants to phyto-oestrogens from soy-based infant formula. Lancet. 1997 350:815-6. concludes: Circulating concentrations of isoflavones in the seven infants fed soy-based formula were 13000-22000 times higher than plasma oestradiol concentrations in early life, and may be sufficient to exert biological effects, whereas the contribution of isoflavones from breast-milk and cow-milk is negligible.

4) The following is excerpted from the abstract to Cassidy A. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2003 Mar;73(2):120-6. (I think our journalist tinged on the one sentence highlighted)

Phytoestrogens are strikingly similar in chemical structure to the mammalian oestrogen, oestradiol, and bind to oestrogen receptors (ER) with a preference for the more recently described ER beta. This suggests that these compounds may exert tissue specific effects. Numerous other biological effects independent of the ER (e.g. antioxidant capacity, antiproliferative and antiangiogenic effects) have been ascribed to these compounds. Whether phytoestrogens have any biological activity in humans, either hormonal or non hormonal is a contentious issue and there is currently a paucity of data on human exposure. Much of the available data on the absorption and metabolism of dietary phytoestrogens is of a qualitative nature; it is known that dietary phytoestrogens are metabolised by intestinal bacteria, absorbed, conjugated in the liver, circulated in plasma and excreted in urine. Recent studies have addressed quantitatively what happens to isoflavones following ingestion--with pure compound and stable isotope data to compliment recent pharmacokinetic data for soy foods. The limited studies conducted so far in humans clearly confirm that soya isoflavones can exert hormonal effects. These effects may be of benefit in the prevention of many of the common diseases observed in Western populations (such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, menopausal symptoms, osteoporosis) where the diet is typically devoid of these biologically active naturally occurring compounds. However since biological effects are dependent on many factors including dose, duration of use, protein binding affinity, individual metabolism and intrinsic oestrogenic state, further clinical studies are necessary to determine the potential health effects of these compounds in specific population groups. However we currently know little about age related differences in exposure to these compounds and there are few guidelines on optimal dose for specific health outcomes.

"Hormonal effects" means that the isoflavones are at a serum concentration sufficent for receptor binding, it doesn't mean it's like taking hormone supplements.

5) Most studies seem to indicate that isoflavones have an anti-cancer effect or at least a generic protective effect, but the evidence isn't very strong. There is one paper that concludes that the studies thus far aren't conclusive. No one says that it's imperative that the diet be changed because of very significant health improvements due specifically to isoflavones (there are so many other components to a soy-heavy diet: high fiber, high protein, low carbohydrate, low fat, low meat etc).

6) Estrogen promotes breast cancer, but isoflavones are oncoprotective. The net effect of isoflavones on breast cancer is indeterminate.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

"Hormonal effects" means that the isoflavones are at a serum concentration sufficient for receptor binding, it doesn't mean it's like taking hormone supplements.

So therefor, the line about "it's like feeding your baby five birth control pills" is wrong, and basically the journalist took the line you hilighted and ran with it without looking into anything else?

Thanks for looking that stuff up, C!

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, it's "wrong" as much as a liberal interpretation of the data. I don't actually know the serum concentrations of estrogen after taking birth control pills and I'd have to dig through a lot of data to find the levels in the children, but since no one has fed children any birth control pills ever to test this, I don't think it's a valid conclusion.

After digging through a lot more by way of papers (this time focusing on the link between homosexuality and estrogen levels in male infants), I've come to the following conclusion:

There is nothing that conclusively DISPROVES the guy's claims. He's taking specific papers that show a barely significant or hypothesized correlation and assuming that that is causation. Do this a few times in a row and you've got his conclusion.

1) Soy does increase blood estrogen-homologue levels. (Somewhat, and possibly not biologically significantly, but the levels do increase.)

1b) Plant Estrogen-homologues can activate some human estrogen receptors.

2) Estrogen receptor activation MAY affect brain development and masculinization (experiments in rats show some correlation in male perinatal rats between estrogen/testosterone levels and brain masculine center size)

3) Masculinization MAY correlate with sexual preference (as of yet unproved, definitely not in humans.) The best studies are in androgens and even then, it's a tenuous connection.

Turn all of the above "can" and "may" into "MASSIVELY CONCLUSIVELY AND RADICALLY AFFECTS" and you have the guy's conclusion as written.

Either way, there are a zillion other factors involved in determining homosexuality and gender identity. There's a nurture component to gender identity, there's a genetic component (since people naturally have different expression levels of the relevent genes), there's a hormonal component (not related to diet) and there's a huge prenatal component.

So, the conclusion that feeding your young infant son soy milk will OMG, TURN HIM INTO THE DEVIL CHILD is not exactly even close to being a strong one. There may be a minute effect but that effect is totally drowned out by all the other factors and is probably not statistically extractable. Furthermore, they can't even show that phytoestrogen has a statiscally significant effect on breast cancer cells in post menopausal women when those cells overexpress the receptor and the patient doesn't have ANY endogenous estrogen, so the effect on normal cells in normal males is probably going to be very hard to spot.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

So, the conclusion that feeding your young infant son soy milk will OMG, TURN HIM INTO THE DEVIL CHILD is not exactly even close to being a strong one

yeah, but don't feed your daughter soy or she'll become...well, me. :-P


but seriously, i find it rather silly to try to pinpoint a FOOD item to causing someone to be gay. There are a lot of other factors, like you pointed out, as well as many others that are contributors, but I don't thikn there's one specific "oh yes, this will make you gay" thing.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I'm also a bit amused that if you tie Soy to Homosexuality, it's almost also tieing Vegetarianism to Homosexuality....