Livingston, I Presume

New to the blogroll

I corrected a longstanding omission today by adding Junkfood Science to my blogroll. Sandy Szwarc, the "registered nurse with a biological science degree and over 28 years in neonatal intensive care and emergency triage; medical outreach education; health communications; and research" who writes the blog, is one of those incredible rarities in the blogging world: a good writer who backs up her opinions with the best research and analysis out there.

You know those wire service articles that run every time a new health study is released? The ones that often sound suspiciously like press releases for drug companies or just really convenient in terms of promoting the status quo but seem to have all kinds of alarming-sounding statistics to back up their claims? Sandy Szwarc likes to go to town on those articles. Here's a great example, taken from her smackdown of a Scientific American article claiming that a study shows permanent weight loss to be more common than previously thought:

Overall, we have another study that bears little resemblance to what we’re hearing. In fact, this study not only fails to support the government’s public health messages for diet and exercise to prevent or manage weight gain, it gives us every indication that it may be contributing to harm.

Once again, an epidemiological study looking for correlations among a group of people can appear to support whatever agenda it was designed to find. But such studies never give us the full story.

Spin is everything. No matter how intuitive their conclusions might seem or how popular, epidemiology can never provide credible evidence to support decisions about our diet, lifestyle, or health ... and least of all, form a sound basis for public health policies or clinical guidelines.

Practically every post that Szwarc writes could be a chapter in a book. No, wait, should be a chapter in a book. The book could be entitled How the media and the medical establishment are complicit in damaging all of our health by misinterpreting science and accepting a buyout from Big Pharma and Big Diet.

I'd buy that book.

Go read it. It will probably make you angry. It makes me angry. But I can promise that you won't look at one of those "Study Shows American Ass-fat Causes Child Pornography!!!" articles again without running off to the Interwebs to find out what Sandy has to say about it.

 

Ah, yes...Utopia!

Via Broadsheet comes this money quote in an AP article regarding the Prevention First initiative, a bill aiming to mandate better access to and information about contraceptives, increase funds for family planning and comprehensive sex education funds, and assure that emergency contraception is made available to rape victims at all hospitals:

"There's a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences -- that's the bottom line of all these bills," Janice Crouse, Concerned Women for America.

OK, Janice. You've got me there. I really do believe that women--of legal age and sound mind and willing spirit--ought to be able to have sex when they want, how they want, and with whom they want. Isn't that what men have been doing for centuries? As long as said women are not coming over to my house and commandeering the bed, who am I to decide when sex is appropriate?

I'm not advocating some giant, national orgy--although, as a liberal, I guess I'm supposed to welcome that--but I am saying that mandating "consequences" for having sex is ridiculous. First of all, why is it only women who should have to face these consequences? Is a baby a precious new life or a punishment for an orgasm? And cervical cancer. There's a great consequence we should want to preserve for all women who have sex. Because God knows without the threat of cervical cancer and unintended pregnancy, women everywhere will be doffing their clothes and shagging the first available man they see.

Certainly not every consensual sexual encounter in this world happens for all the right reasons. People get drunk and make bad choices. Hell, a lot of us are fully capable of making bad choices even without alcohol. But it's pretty hard to make laws against bad choices, and it's even harder to make laws that go against fundamental tenets of human nature.

Maybe abstinence before marriage was truly viable in the days when it was expected that people get married when they were 17 or 18 years old. (I don't have trouble with the notion that women AND men can and in most cases should avoid sex until they are old enough to vote and have true control over their bodies. But you can't mandate it by law. You can make it clear in no uncertain terms that to have sex before then would require a trip to the dreaded gynecologist, as my mother did to me. You can put condoms in your teenage child's luggage before camp, ensuring that any sexual experience will have to take place with the thought of Mom and those goddamn condoms uppermost. Have I said too much? Ahem.) Encouraging abstinence before marriage in a time when the average age of marriage is 26 for women and 27 for men seems just a waste of time. Why shouldn't unmarried people in their twenties be having sex if they want to? If they have kids in their thirties, those memories just might get them through.

Oh, and let's not forget the great, heteronormative Catch-22 that the whole "abstinence before marriage" crowd sets up for gays and lesbians: Don't have sex before marriage and--haha!--you can't get married! It's a life of celibacy for you, my friend.

Making the choice to have sex should not mean a life of fear--fear of pregnancy, fear of disease, fear of cancer. And a woman who can't control her body can't control any other aspect of her life. I wish to hell that, just once, Antonin Scalia would have to experience the terror of a late period. Or that Samuel Alito would have an abnormal pap smear. But most of all, I wish that the morality police out there peddling inaccurate information about sex would all be as honest as Janice. Because it's not really about "protecting unborn life" or "helping kids say no to sex", it's about controlling women. To hell with the consequences.

The extent of my Falwell coverage

I sat down three times yesterday to try to write something about the death of Jerry Falwell and just couldn't. Luckily, King Kaufman wrote exactly the piece I would have liked to write:

In the resulting media firestorm, gay-rights activists called for Tinky Winky to come out while Christian groups demanded the BBC fire him so that he couldn't, in Falwell's words, "role-model the gay lifestyle."

"It was traumatizing, really," says Winky, who now owns a holistic healing center and makes occasional appearances on British TV. "I'm a very private Teletubby. I just wanted to get away, go over the hills and far away. But when you're 7 feet tall and purple with an antenna on your head and a TV screen in your belly, where are you going to go?"

It's clever, it made me laugh, and it had a serious point:

Asked about Falwell's death, Winky turns serious and chooses his words carefully.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm sadder than I am," he says. "There were late nights during the dark times when I wished to hear news like this. I'd be lying if I denied that. I don't feel that way anymore. I like to think I've grown over the years, gotten past all that pain.

"But at the end of the day, I'm not terribly sad, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Jerry Falwell was a divisive person, a hateful person, and what I've tried to be all about, in the Teletubbies days and since then, has been love. I've got to keep it that way. I don't want anybody feeling good about it when it's my time for Tubby bye-bye."

Yeah. What Tinky Winky said.

Pawns

I am so ready to jump in my mom-mobile and drive to Helena right now. The latest Republican antics--returning to HB2 as the budget bill but taking the time to give a big Lange-style raspberry to our governor in the form of eliminating one of Schweitzer's highest priorities, all-day kindergarten--are enough to drive me to drink. And it's only 8:30 in the morning!

The low-life-itude that it takes to use five-year-olds as pawns in games of political cat-and-mouse is astounding. A clear majority of Montanans favor all-day kindergarten, and those that don't--as always--are free to keep their children at home. For those who oppose it on fiscal grounds, I can only say that every dollar spent developing a five-year-old has got to be worth at least two dollars down the road. Every kid who gets a better start because of this will be that much closer to being able to contribute to the community later.

As much as the Bozeman cabal and their henchmen would like it to be otherwise, people in Montana still support public education. More than 90 percent of Montana kids attend public schools, and even those without kids in school have a vested interest in what happens there. If schools can't afford to do their jobs, how will future generations ever be able to do theirs? The answer is that they won't.

I'm tired of this BS. All of our lawmakers, from the City Councils to the Montana State Legislature to the U.S. Senate, work for us. In the wise words of someone who knows a little bit about the body, Jon Tester (hat tip to Jay)--gives an eloquent reminder:

"...the fact is, the Constitution is pretty darn clear about where our power comes from - it comes from the people that elect us. And that's it. Our power comes from them. Once you forget that... I can see how it can be a challenge to remain true to who you are."

Republican House members in our state have clearly forgotten that, along with basic rules of civil discourse and acceptable styles of negotiation. I hope that Montana voters will remember come November 2008.

Now what was I scared of?

Jay posted about a new Libertarian blog today, and it is as he describes: kinder and gentler than your average. But I'm in total agreement with Jay about the Montana Liberty Project blogger's link to a Michael Cannon article and explanation of the way to cure the health care crisis in this country: As Jay so succinctly explains and as I've said on a number of occasions, consumers are not the problem. I felt impassioned enough to leave a long comment for the MLP blogger, but it's in queue limbo, so I'm cross-posting it here:

I've lived under national healthcare (as a foreigner working legally in the Czech Republic) and under the U.S. system, and there's just no comparison. In the Czech Republic, I didn't lie awake at night trying to decide whether to buy the drugs that my child needs for asthma or that my husband needs for [a dangerous but treatable medical condition] or that I need to keep from getting pregnant. I just got them. I paid a little for some and none for others, and none of the prices even approached what we pay for a month's supply here.

If I needed to see a doctor, I knew it would be covered. If I wanted to have some kind of special service from that doctor--i.e. I wanted to be sure that he or she spoke English--I sometimes paid extra to see someone in private practice. Private practices were available widely and generally affordable, even for Czechs. When I went to the hospital to give birth, my care and the care of my son was covered. I paid for a private room.

I found nothing odious or overly bureaucratic about the system. Certainly my tax rate was higher than it is here, but it didn't come anywhere close to reaching what we now pay for high-deductible HSA insurance and out-of-pocket costs. I saw the doctors I wanted and found little hassle in being seen quickly and efficiently, and I was a foreigner. Had I been Czech, I would have been able to take full advantage without worrying about potential language issues.

Here in the U.S., we have some of the finest healthcare the world has to offer--IF you can afford it. That's a big if. I would so much rather have decent, affordable care for everyone than rock-star care for the privileged few.

Making consumers responsible for more of their healthcare costs is not the answer. I am the world's most careful shopper--coupons, sales, you name it--and I can't get anywhere trying to "choose" my healthcare providers for cost. Maybe if I lived in New York or San Francisco I would be in a better position, but when my son has an asthma attack in the middle of the night, my choice is Livingston Memorial Hospital or nothing. Where my husband and I are concerned, it more often ends up being nothing, since we put off seeking any medical care for ourselves.

I understand people's fears about "socialized" medicine. I really do. But after having lived in a country with national healthcare, I can't be scared anymore. People in countries with national systems are more free, as far as I can see, because a goodly portion of their mental energy is not being expended in wondering just how they will pay for their necessary medical treatment.

My riding the cause-horse for national healthcare will surprise none of my regular readers, but if just one person scared of the idea reads this and re-thinks his or her stand, it's worth the retread. Oftentimes I fear that anyone who hasn't had a significant healthcare issue or had to deal with a chronic condition cannot understand just how bad it is out in the trenches for the average person, even the insured ones. And the nightmares I have are nothing compared with the ones suffered by those who lack even crappy insurance.

We don't arrange any other necessary public services in this way. Speaking on an NPR program a couple of weeks ago, a doctor-turned-healthcare reform crusader made the comparison of medical care with public safety protection. In no way would we allow a fee-based, for-profit fire department or police station. Medical care is just as important and no less a right for a civilized nation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write to Tester, Baucus, and Rehberg.

This just in!

Presumably from the same genius researchers who brought us the startling news that Fettucine Alfredo may not be as healthy as a nice baked fish comes this latest study: Chinese restaurant food is sure to cause your imminent demise! Shocking, I know, but General Tso's chicken--heavily breaded chunks of deep fried chicken parts, if I'm not mistaken--"is loaded with about 40 percent more sodium and more than half the calories an average adult needs for an entire day." And here I thought that deep fried food was the answer to all our nutritional prayers.

Thank heavens these researchers are around to remind me that the concept of moderation is still completely absent in America. Do you think that French people are hastily putting away their chopsticks after reading this? No way. Because they understand what we seem to be incapable of grasping: It is possible to be healthy while still enjoying quote-unquote unhealthy food, as long as you're not having it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Here in America, we'll deny ourselves all that quote-unquote unhealthy food for just as long as we can "be good"--conflating morality with restriction of "bad" food--and once we crack, well, watch out. We won't just go and have the Kung Pao and eat a sensible portion and take some home for lunch tomorrow, listening to our bodies for satiety signals. Nope, we're gonna eat that whole giant restaurant platter AND we'll have it with egg rolls, soup, and probably sticky buns at the end. We'll most likely feel stressed and guilty while we eat the whole thing--especially if it's a bunch of women eating together--and we won't really savor it at all.

And then, when the plates have been cleared, we'll wonder why we feel vaguely sick.

Here's how I see the psychology on this: The binging comes directly from this ridiculous notion of "good" and "bad" food and "good" eating. When we devour the Kung Pao, it's like there's no choice: We have to eat it all...don't you see? Because tomorrow we will be "good" again, and who knows when the next time is that Kung Pao will be allowed? Better to gulp it all down now before we come to our senses. Today's already shot; tomorrow we will eat only one lettuce leaf and a diet coke to make up for it, right up until the point in the day when our natural hunger cues become so strong as to make us half crazed and we eat the whole pint of Ben and Jerry's in our freezer.

It makes me crazy, even without the lettuce leaf. How much better would it be for all of us to slow down for half a second, listen to our bodies, and react accordingly? Hmmm...my body this morning says that a banana sounds really good. I could ignore that, but maybe there's a reason I'm craving that banana. Maybe I need potassium. I'm not saying that we should all eat Krispy Cremes and Big Macs, but if you do have one of those, it's not the end of the world. But note how you feel afterwards. When we traveled to California last year, we stopped for fast food several times. It tasted OK while we were eating it, but I felt like crap within a half hour. That's not what I want from my food. That doesn't make all fast food BAD, it just means that I don't like how my body reacts to it. Therefore, I don't really eat at McDonald's if I can help it. If I do get some oddball craving for it, I respond accordingly. Usually it only takes once every six months to remind me why I don't like it.

I'm drifting here, but the main point for me is this: If I decided today that I was never going to Burger King again because it was bad and unhealthy and making me fat, by this afternoon I would be driving the Bozeman Pass to get a Whopper. It's human nature. We like to rebel. If I recognize that I can have a Whopper whenever I damn well please, it's not all that attractive.

All these studies do, in my opinion, is make certain foods into the proverbial forbidden fruit. Should we all have knowledge about the nutritional content of what we're eating? Sure. But I'll tell you this, I'm a helluva lot more concerned with all the undeclared chemicals, pesticides, and Frankenfoods going into the stuff we eat every day than I'm ever going to be about a plate of Mongolian Beef. That it takes me an extra half an hour at the grocery store and a price premium of at least 10 percent to avoid high fructose corn syrup--and a far higher premium if I want to buy organic--is a problem. That most of us eat at least one meal a day at our desks in the office is a problem. That few of us have the built-in leisure time to allow for even a nightly walk is a problem. That kids get shorter and shorter recesses is a problem.

Chinese food is not the problem.

A concise definition

I'm not really a sports fan, but I read King Kaufman--Salon.com's sports columnist--as often as I can find something redeemingly interesting in the topic. That is to say, I am unlikely to read a column with a dek that hints at an exploration of the minutiae of rules in rugby, but I may very well click on a column concerning the intersection of sports and something else. Like Britney Spears.

I read his stuff because he writes very well and he has a way of making sports accessible to me. Sounds stupid, I know, since sports are popular because of their wide accessibility, but there it is. When you grow up in a house in which the only sporting event ever likely to grace the television is--maybe--the finals at Wimbledon and the occasional Cat-Griz game, First and 10 sounds like some kind of new branch of Physics. (Do you know how long I had to think to come up with a proper sports term? And I probably used it wrong.)

Anyway, I was enjoying my skim of King's column from earlier in the week when I came across this paragraph in explanation of his feelings about the last dance of the University of Illinois mascot, Chief Illiniwek:

"...there's often some name-calling, branding those who want to get rid of the chief as "politically correct," sort of the last argument of a scoundrel. Politically correct is what some people call you if they don't like it when you ask them to have some respect for other people."

If that doesn't sum up entirely my feelings about the oft-hurled-at-the-left epithet "P.C.", I don't know what will. And to think I found it in a sports column!

Maybe I ought to be paying more attention to ESPN.

What abstinence-only has wrought

I had a visitor to my blog yesterday who arrived via the following search string:

"i was rubbing against him while i was dancing could i be pregnant"

First of all, let me speak directly to this person in case she should she choose to visit again:

Unless you were rubbing your naked naughties directly on top of his naked naughties, you're almost certainly not pregnant. One of the cruel things that you will discover when you are older and actually *want* to get pregnant is that--for a lot of women, anyway--it's really not as easy to get pregnant as you might think. Still, if you think you and the "him" in question might want to do something other than rub-dance at some point in the future, could I just beg you now to talk to your parents or another trusted adult? At least go visit WebMD. Even if you have no intention of going any further than dancing, you owe it to yourself to learn how everything goes together and how you can prevent untoward happenings such as disease and--yes--pregnancy.

Lecture done. Still, it gravels my ass to think of a poor, scared girl frantically Googling to try to answer a question she should already have the answer to. I'm a believer in the absolute terror of an accidental pregnancy as the primary method of birth control in teens--worked like a charm for me, heaven knows--but anyone who is worried that removing the dictionary-sized space* between her and her boyfriend at the school dance is just not getting the information she needs to make informed choices. As a society, we shouldn't be pawning off our responsibility for providing that information to search engines.

Oh, and person looking for "slutty eskimos"? You're on your own.

*See dances, Mormon

Worried about the war

How much NPR/CNN/other news do you parent-readers let your kids access? I ask because we're having an issue in our house with what I think might be TMI for Connery.

We listen to NPR a lot. It's the first thing we turn on after the coffee maker in the morning and one of the last things we turn off before we go to bed. One of the reasons we love NPR is its in-depth news coverage and reporting about all kinds of interesting subjects. However, I think that Connery is really internalizing some of these stories, and I'm not sure it's necessarily healthy for a 3-year-old. He asked me the other day, out of the blue, if there is a war where soldiers are being killed. When I said that there was, he asked more questions. Where is the war? Why are people being hurt? Who's being hurt? I tried to explain things as simply and honestly as I could without detouring into propaganda or really scary shit. He mulled all of this over and then said, "I'd like to go stop the war with my sword."

We talked more about how swords might not be the best way to stop a war, and his next question to me was, "How *do* you stop a war?"

Wow. Good question, my son.

I tried to explain--again as simply as possible--that wars are often started by governments and governments have to stop them. He wanted to know who could stop a war. I told him that presidents can stop wars.

"Could President Bush stop the war?" he asked. When I told him he probably could, he said he wanted to write a letter to President Bush asking him to stop the war. This is what he asked me to write for him:

Dear President Bush:

Can you stop the war? War scares me. You have to stop it. In war, people have swords that can hurt people. It's not good to hurt people.

Thank you for reading my letter.

Then he asked me if Jon Tester could stop the war.

Some of you probably think I'm making this up or using my son as a rhetorical device, but I can assure you that's not the case. We're also making every attempt not to use him as a political instrument. He's been to protest rallies and delivered campaign literature, but I don't want to brainwash him. To Chip and me--secular humanists from way back--going to a women's rights march or attending a political rally is kind of like going to church. It's a way to teach our moral code outside of our home with a community of like-minded individuals. Maybe that will sound like blasphemy to religious readers.

Frankly, overall, I'm not sure how to feel about this nascent political awakening. I'm proud that he can recognize bad in the world, but I'm worried that he is too young to be fretting about war and politics. How young is too young to hear about war and other worldly problems?

Should we turn off the NPR?

One of the best day-after posts

While my first reaction to most of the election results has been to dance around my house shrieking "SQUEE!" at the top of my lungs (I'm not lying when I tell you that my jaw actually hurt yesterday evening from smiling so damn much), I am equally feeling the pressure on my party to be up to this monumental task. That's why I was glad to see this post on Democratic Underground highlighted on Salon's Daou Report.

Written by "The Witch", it is an open letter to "Dismayed Conservatives":

I hereby make these promises to you.

We will protect your lives and livelihoods.

We will listen to and respect your beliefs.

We will never try to force you to change your religion, sexual orientation, or first language.

We will do our best to reduce the number of abortions in our country.

We will have no tolerance for corruption and cronyism, even in our own party.

ESPECIALLY in our own party.

We will never tell you that you are unpatriotic.

We will never tell you that your opinion doesn't count.

We will never waste your lives for power.

We will hold our leaders to a high ethical standard and when they succumb to lust for power, WE WILL HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.

If we forget this, please, please, please, remind us.

We need you to do this. You are America as much as we are.

Let's go.

I can only hope that this is the spirit into which our new leaders go. It must be unbelievably tempting to give as good as the Dems have gotten, but I hope they will collectively resist and try to make the radical swing from a bickering body into a governing one.