The Last Word

By: | November 19, 2016

137305676_1516a08c1e_z-1This week started with a guest post from Jenny Cutraro who on election day took her father and two young daughters to Walden Pond where Thoreau still offers lessons of civil disobedience.

I chimed in on the election by finding similarities between the catastrophic end of the Ice Age and Donald Trump’s electoral victory.

In a respite from election mania, Christie tells the story of how she as a vegetarian suddenly became a ravenous gobbler of buffalo meat.

Cassandra put a cringe in the day with her recounting of the bizarre agony of calcified pebbles forming in your salivary glands.

On her path to becoming a better human being, Rose created a new personality chart where you’ll find yourself in the nuances between optimism and pessimism. She answers the question of where journalists fall on the chart, but leaves us all wondering how Disney villains must score.

 

Image credits:  Eddie on Flickr.

The POOS Personality Matrix

By: | November 18, 2016

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I’ve got a confession to make. Despite living in the age of the BuzzFeed quiz, I’m not one for personality tests. I don’t know what Harry Potter house I would be in, what Myers-Briggs type I am, what “Big 5” personality type I have, or what Disney Princess I would be.

But recently I have been thinking about my personality, my shortcomings, and how I might try to think about changing things about myself that I don’t like. I don’t mean things like “remember to take off your makeup even if you’re really tired you garbage monster.” I’m talking about bigger things like “be less quick to dismiss things out of hand.”

In order to really change something like that, I need to understand my baseline personality, and figure out where that quick judgement comes from. So I’ve developed my own little personality matrix, which I am very maturely calling POOS. As in, many poops.  Continue reading →

Redux: This Too Shall Pass

By: | November 17, 2016

This post originally ran on June 11, 2014. But the tale of one woman’s battle against the dreaded sialolith is so horrifying you’ll no doubt want to read it again.

mouthpainMaría Juan’s pain began eight years ago, at lunchtime. She was dining with her parents when suddenly she felt a sharp jab under her tongue. “Like an aguja,” she says — a needle. Each time she tried to swallow, she felt another poke. After the meal ended, the pain subsided. At dinner, however, it returned. And now the right side of her neck was a swollen. A couple of days later, María decided to see a doctor.

The doctor stuck one finger in her mouth and placed another finger on her neck, probing. He could feel something in her salivary gland. Something hard and strange. Something that wasn’t supposed to be there. He tried to pinch it out with his fingers, but it wouldn’t budge. There was nothing to do but wait. María left with some pills to make her salivate, and orders to drink lemon juice — a surefire way to produce spit. Amazingly, the regimen worked. The pain disappeared.  Continue reading →

Redux: The story I won’t tell

By: | November 16, 2016

This post first ran on Mar 12, 2014. BurgersWikiMedia

I was having lunch with a vegetarian friend recently, when I caught myself wanting to tell her the story. When you’re a vegetarian, a lot of people — friends, distant relatives, complete strangers — barrage you with the story. It starts like this: “Yeah, I tried going vegetarian once.” 

During my 13 years as a vegetarian, I heard every variation of the story, and they all followed the same arc. Due to some earnest concern like animal rights, the environmental consequences of meat production or the artery clogging properties of lard, the storytellers decided to give up meat. Things are fine for a while, until we reach the story’s conflict. The protagonists notice their muscles shriveling or curly, dark hair hair growing on the backs of their hands, or new bald spots appearing on the top of their heads. They can’t sleep or they sleep all the time, they find themselves deficient in vitamin woo, or they’re plagued by strange bowel movements (which they describe in graphic detail). Now the story’s hero must decide whether to stick to good intentions or resume the meat-eating. 

It’s never even close. The slab of beef that breaks the streak is the most mind-blowing thing that any human being has ever tasted, and the storyteller’s life is returned to balance once again. In closing, the protagonist will usually indulge in a bit of self-depreciation for being so naive as to attempt a life without bacon.

I’d heard more than a decade’s worth of these stories, and I’d always dismissed them as the desperate justifications of people who felt secretly guilty about eating slaughtered animals. I’d done the research and knew that vegetarian diets are perfectly healthy, so I’d always considered these tales a pile of bull honkey. Continue reading →

Why Trump’s Victory is like the End of the Ice Age

By: | November 15, 2016

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In light of who became president elect last week, I find myself searching for patterns to understand what might be happening, and what’s next. I don’t presume unrelated processes mirror each other, but there are uncanny resemblances. In this case, I believe Trump is the end of the Ice Age. He is — I believe, I hope — bad news wrapped inside of much better news.

Metaphors are going to start mixing. Go with me on this, it might just make some sense.

Ice ages generally end with a bang. The last one is no exception. The Wisconsin Ice Age, a 100,000-year-long cold spell that covered half of North America in giant glaciers, started falling off the rails about 18,000 years ago. Gradual warming began to melt away the majority of the ice. Paradise was coming, fresh water abundant, permafrost retreating, the continent greening. By 13,000 years ago, paradise was out of control, freshwater coming in the form of enormous glacial outburst floods, which were dumping into the oceans, messing with thermohaline balances, teetering climates toward the edge of radical change.

Twelve-thousand nine hundred years ago, the belts and gears of oceanic and atmospheric circulation flew apart. What had been a warming northern hemisphere in perhaps as short a time as ten years jumped back to full glacial conditions. It appears that the Gulf Stream reversed. Where it had been shuttling warm water into the North Atlantic, now it was bringing cold water south. In an event known as the Younger Dryas (YD on the chart), the Ice Age engine turned back on. Permafrost began expanding, grasslands became tundra, and formerly retreating ice caps started growing.

What could this possibly have to do with Trump? Everything.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: On Walden Pond, On Election Day

By: | November 14, 2016

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After casting my ballot on Election Day, I took my two young daughters and my father, who was visiting from Wisconsin, to Walden Pond. It was a sunny fall day, unseasonably warm for November in Massachusetts. We splashed and played and collected stones, and as I watched my girls run free on the sand, I felt an overwhelming sense of optimism and peace, knowing that they were going to grow up in a world where finally, finally, the bullies and the bigots don’t win.

Only, the bigoted bully did win. And that day at the pond is now etched into my mind as the last time I truly felt hopeful for the world my kids would inherit.

Which brings me to the person who introduced many of us to Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau.

Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | November 12, 2016

1822554653_6018f7340b_zNovember 7-11, 2016

This week, Jenny challenges you to define the distinctively universal smell of a school cafeteria — an entrancing mixture of pinto bean juice, gym-shoe tongue and scorched Teflon.

On American election day, bipartisan stress could only be put into trivializing perspective by referring to the wider lens of deep time, says Emma.

Blue-footed boobies lead lives of debauchery and murder, says Erik, and any human judgment of their behaviour only reveals the power of our own ids.

Michelle then applies to the results of said election the ecological concept of “scale mismatches” between human responsibilities and managed resources.

Erik Vance’s highly anticipated first book hit the shelves this week. Suggestible You is a daring examination of all the ways in which the power of our minds can help or hurt us. I reach him in Mexico — listen to our conversation here.

Image: Photos of the Steve via Flickr

Suggestible You

By: | November 11, 2016

suggestible-you-coverOur very own Erik Vance has a brand new book out through National Geographic, and it’s called Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. Listen to my conversation with him about such varying topics as the placebo effect, that curse a brujo put on him in Mexico, how growing up in a Christian Scientist community informed his view of faith healing and why he chose to endure electric shocks for the sake of the book.