Another Big Jolt of Food Science

In high school I lived in the halcyon salad days, when I drank cola because it was cold and sweet and perked me up. Then I went to college and became a desperate caffeine junkie.

I spent four (well, closer to five) years on the cutting edge of sleep science, attempting to cajole my brain into ever more efficient modes of information absorption while operating at during sleep debt. Coffee was my mode of choice, and I developed a pretty slick method of drinking a cup, taking a nap, and then speedballing—legally, I mean—while I studied.

Of course 20 years later, researchers are finally waking up to this development:

Researchers found coffee helps clear your system of adenosine, a chemical which makes you sleepy. So in testing, the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate nap chaser provided the most alertness for the longest period of time. The recommendation was to nap only 15 minutes, no more or less and you must sleep immediately after the coffee.

In other words, I was 20 years ahead of sleep science—and me, a humble humanities undergraduate! (But I digress into smugness, and bitter puzzlement over why scientific accolades evaded me.)

Nowadays it’s all science, and caffeine is our opium, available at every hop joint corner store and café. And if you don’t like coffee, that’s the least of your worries, since there are scores of sodas that can cramp your kidneys.

Back in college, two friends of mine insisted that Mountain Dew was the most caffeine-laden soda, and they’d buy two-liter torpedos of the stuff and cram all night, their arteries coursing with green-tinted stuff that looked like nuclear waste.

But were they right? Two Auburn University researchers took a look, examining the jack-quotient of a whole lot of sodas.

The executive summary:

Pepsi One has 57.1mg/12 oz, almost 10 mg more than its nearest “national brand cola” competitor, something called Diet Cheerwine. Regular Coke has only 33.9. Mountain Dew has a respectable 54.8.

If you buy the supermarket brands, you’ll want Diet Big Fizz Cola, because in addition to its stellar name, it packs 61.9 mg of oomph.

But if you really want to make your heart palpitate, get yourself some Vault Zero. With 74 mg of caffeine, it’s perkier than Diet SunDrop, and more than three times as powerful as Diet Dr. Lynn—and Dr. Perky, who’s a misnomer at a paltry 18.8.

(No, I’m not making those names up. It would take me many bladders full of Vault Zero to come up with names like Laura Lynn Mt. Moon Drops, Publix Citrus Hite, Dr IGAa, Bubba Cola, and Faygo Moon Mist.)

Or, you could just get a cup of coffee, which has 115-175 mg in every brackish cup.

Review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

I actually finished Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins when I was on vacation a while back. It’s an interesting book, but not only for the reasons you might think. The basic story (and I’m cribbing from Powell’s here) is that Perkins worked for an “international consulting firm that worked to convince developing countries to accept enormous loans and to funnel that money to U.S.corporations. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and international aid agencies were able to request their pound of flesh in favors, including access to natural resources, military cooperation, and political support.”

It’s hard to know what to believe here. Either the US got a bunch of countries over the barrel thanks to Bechtel and other huge engineering firms, and engaged in the occasional third-party assassination, or coup (Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia) as he suggests.

Or, the US only invades countries (Panama, Grenada, Iraq), or attempts to overthrow foreign leaders and countries only if, you know, they’re behave really badly and attack freedom or something. Being somewhat cynical about US foreign policy (and its tendency to whack guys), not to mention corporate exemplars like the United Fruit Company, I have to think there’s something to his thesis. So in that sense, it’s good that this book is a bestseller.

But what’s not in doubt is that the “personal” aspect of this book is exasperating. He goes on and on about his conscience, and occasionally his love life, and even his piteous “lowly son of teachers at upper crust prep school” childhood, but the way he writes about himself is ham-handed and irritating. I got really impatient reading those bits, since I didn’t care about his tortured inner life. I just wanted the dirt on the US. It would have been a much better book if he left his confessions out of it.

Chicken Farmer Flip Flop DIY Klingon Death Match

It all started with a headline, one that actually wasn’t on my RSS. But still, with all those little fontsicles battling for my attention on my webscreens, you gotta stand out to stand out. And boy, did this one ever stand out:

Chicken farmers object to propane rules for terror war

The story isn’t all that interesting, but any time you get chicken farmers, propane and the war on terror into one headline, you’re damned close to award-winning haiku.

But once you start lookin’ at headlines, well, it’s hard to stop.

Flip Flop Foot Injuries (Yahoo News)

Chickens Diet for Delaware (Treehugger)

DIY Solar Oven Death Match (Treehugger)

Klingons crossing the Delaware (Boing Boing)

While I’m on the subject, Boing Boing is indeed a directory of wonderful things. Consider two of their headlines today:

Canadian cops admit staging own provocateurs at protest

China Airlines paints over logo on crashed plane

(the airlines link goes directly to the story, which is sort of horrifying, in a corporate image sort of way).

Last but not least, today was Woz day. (Woz is Steve Wozniak … personal site wikipedia). Why was today Woz day:

First this:

The passion of the Woz: energy efficient housing

Then, not two hours later, this:

Woz Caught Doing 104mph in Prius

Corporate Social Responsibility and Furniture

I got a massive Pottery Barn catalog in the mail today. I get enough of them that this is not an event, and even the catalog’s heft (196 pages) wasn’t enough to make me spend for 20 antisocial minutes fantasizing about furniture, even if I am in the market for an armchair.

But I noticed something new, namely a sidebar on page 116. With the title “Our Evolving Commitment to What’s Natural,” it was what I’d been searching for from them (and other furniture companies) for quite some time: namely, some disclosure about what, if any, efforts they’re making toward sustainability.

What efforts are they making?

• “We print our catalogs entirely on Forest Certified Council certified paper.”
• “Our gift wrap, gift boxes, and shipping cartons all contain up to 30% recycled post-consumer waste.”
• This fall, the majority of our in-store informational materials [eg., signage, etc.] will be printed on FSC-certified paper.”
• “We offer a collection of bedding, towels and robes that is made from 100% organic cotton fiber….”
• “All our towels are now approved by Oeko-Tex — the world’s definitive ecological certification process.”

Of course, one could nitpick. FSC paper is good … but why not recycled? Especially when the catalogs are such whoppers. According to one survey from Environmental Defense,

…if the entire catalog industry switched to paper with just 10 percent post-consumer recycled content, the savings in wood use would be enough to stretch a six foot high fence across the United States seven times.

The report continues:

Seventy-four different catalogs were surveyed for the report, including those of retail giants J.C. Penney, Bloomingdale’s by Mail, Spiegel, Eddie Bauer, Lands’ End, L.L. Bean, Victoria’s Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn and J. Crew.

Of the companies surveyed, only Norm Thompson Outfitters, Omaha Steaks and Disney reported using recycled paper throughout the body of their catalogs.

Also interesting are the talking points Pottery Barn has chosen. They’re putting out their recent changes (a start), but they’re a little vague on their goals: “We’re also committed to finding ways to build quality furniture with sustainable manufacturing and business practices.”

So is a commitment to finding something mean you’re working on it, or is it just marketing speak? Hard to tell. This is just a sidebar, after all, an acknowledgment that “environmental initiatives are taking root at all levels” (are taking root being one of the cleverer uses of the environmentally passive voice that I’ve seen).

But there’s so much they’re not talking about, the piece is more notable for its silences. What about materials? manufacturing? labor? shipping?

Now that the seeds are germinating, I suppose it’s tempting to complain that, um, more weren’t planted. However, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to compare them to Crate and Barrel, where I haven’t seen any such mention of sustainability, and say, well, it’s a start.

But for the time being, I’ll be looking at companies like Viesso, who have a big page explaining all the ways their furniture is “green”.

New Books Page!

Hey, instead of scattered posts hither and yon about books I’ve been reading, I decided to concentrate everything into one page. Actually to get more traction, I’ll probably write the latest entries as posts, and then copy-’n'-paste then to the Books I’m Reading page.

Newest entries:

• Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Check it out and let me know what you think!!

Art History for 15-Year-Old Boys

It was just a headline in my GMail screen: “Napoleon’s Sister’s Breast Cast in Plaster.” I stared at it for a moment. Yes, I knew who Napoleon was, and I knew his sister was as dead as he is. But still, I clicked. How could I resist finding out about her immortal breast?

Here’s the lead. And to quote Dave Barry, no, I am not making this up: “Expert male hands applied plaster to the young breast of Napoleon’s sister” … then it gets less interesting … “to create an actual mould, according to a new investigation into the marble portrait of Pauline Bonaparte.”

The gist of the story is that they used plaster casts of her breasts to create the statue of her, called Venus Victrix, or “Venus the Victorious.” This is apparently newsworthy in the world of art history.

What I find newsworthy isn’t the statue, or the plaster casts, but the story itself: “According to the art expert, an examination of the preparatory cast, kept at the Napoleonic museum in Rome, reveals a suspiciously perfect breast.” (Isn’t suspiciously perfect breast a great phrase? I can’t wait to try using it at a bar.)

Also of note are the statements of Bernardelli Curuz, smutty-minded art historian: “This is not the conventional breast of Greek statuary, which evokes a perfect, platonic ideal of woman.”

No, the evidence against perfection “lies in Pauline Bonaparte’s nipple, which shows an ‘illuminating deformity.’ Instead of standing erect and round, the nipple is ’slightly squashed, giving the impression of two slightly parted lips.’”

Applied on Pauline’s breast, the plaster would have caused a compression, the effect of which can still be clearly seen on the preparatory cast.

“Basically, it’s a wet T-shirt effect,” Bernardelli Curuz said.

Oh man, why didn’t Curuz teach at my high school?

How to Reinvent Cities

This video is the single best description of how cities should be planned in the future. It’s an interview with Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, who transformed a once crime-ridden city into “a model of effective transit and urban design” (I’m quoting a blog post from Reading Toronto … a big tip of the hat to them). And RT isn’t just blowing smoke. For more, read the story Grist published about him in 2002.

Mr. Peñalosa makes some amazing statements in the 10-minute video. Among them:

• “A protected bicycle path is a symbol that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as one in a $30,000 car.”
• “We cannot continue to deceive ourselves thinking that to paint a little line on a road is a bike way. a bicycle way which is not safe for an 8-year-old is not a bicycle way.”
• There is a conflict between a city that is friendly to cars, and a city that is “friendly to people.”
• “One of the problems is the suburban highway culture.”
• “We underestimate the power of dreams.”
• “It’s time to take a great risk and to do something new.”

If you live in a city, are interested in cities, travel to cities, walk or ride a bike, watching this video will be time extremely well spent. I wonder if this fellow would consider becoming mayor of my home town?

The Wall Street Journal: Whacked Beyond Belief

With all the brouhaha about Rupert Murdoch’s attempt/plans to buy the Wall Street Journal, it’s worth noting that despite the fact that they do excellent reporting, it seems every time I read it, they blithely omit to mention that the world they’re describing is completely screwed.

A few weeks ago they reported about how couples are turning to professional naming consultants—to name their kids.

Then today there’s a blog post, “I Now Pronounce You Legit at Work,” which notes,

It does feel more legitimate to be discussing dinner plans at work with a spouse instead of a “partner” or a “girlfriend.” The same seems to hold true in other situations: It’s one thing to tell your boss you need a personal day because your boyfriend’s family is coming in from out-of-town. It’s quite another to explain that your in-laws are visiting.

This is all wrong. If you need a personal day, you need a personal day. End of story. Work isn’t a form of freakin’ slavery, where you apologize for having a life. Work is work. You do it because you have to earn a living. And sometimes that comes second. In fact, it should always comes second. Period. Full stop.

Second story is from today’s paper: “Vacation Deflation: Breaks Get Shorter.” It’s not enough that the US has one of the crappiest arrangements for paid vacation time, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average employee works 100 more hours a year than he or she did in the 1970s. (For a good discussion of this, check out Ezra Klein’s story in The American Prospect.) Now even vacations are getting compressed.

But back to the WSJ. To its credit (sort of), the accompanying sidebar does paint a fairly objective picture of what a mess it is to work in the US:

But back to the story. We hear about the people who can’t afford to be away from work for a whole week (“Two years ago … she took a week off to go to London — but her schedule doesn’t allow for such luxuries anymore”), the difficulty in two-income couples scheduling away time, how 35% of people don’t take their vacation time, how the work force has “grown leaner,” and “employers don’t hire temporary help to replace salaried workers while they are gone,” and then — of course — how business are stepping up to the serve the emerging market in long weekend travel.

We even hear about two large companies that are attempting to give its employees extra time off!

But nowhere is anyone quoted on the human toll this is taking. There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There’s just work. Way too much of it.

It’s the elephant in the room, and no one will talk about it — especially in the organ of capitalism known as the Wall Street Journal.

No One Likes a Draft

In his Freakonomics blog, Steven Levitt ponders the Bush misadministration’s idea of reinstituting the draft. Is it a good idea? Well … “First, it puts the ‘wrong’ people in the military — people who are either uninterested in a military life, not well equipped for one, or who put a very high value on doing something else.” True, but there’s also a powerful economic argument against it:

It would be even better if the government was required to pay fair wages to soldiers during war time — i.e., if combat pay was market-determined and soldiers could opt to leave whenever they wanted, like most jobs. If that were the case, the cost to the government would skyrocket and more accurately reflect the true costs of war, leading to a truer assessment of whether the benefits of military action outweigh the costs.

I’m a big fan of transparency, since I (perhaps naively) believe that part of the problem with free-market economics is that people try to use it selectively and to their advantage, not universally. For example, “let the market take care of it” only works when the market accounts for the whole system. In many instances (such calculating all the costs of oil, or the other costs of shopping at Wal-Mart, the other costs don’t show up on a gas sign or a price tag.

But back to the draft. I’m of the notion that a draft might actually help speed an end to the war. How? Well, right now the war is something that is conducted largely by other people, those who sign up to fight, and take the risks (death, physical and psychological maiming, etc.) so we don’t have to. In other words, it’s a hidden cost. But if you instituted a draft, and your sons and daughters (or you!) suddenly faced the prospect of being shot or blown to bits, wouldn’t that make the true costs of war a little more real?

Tidbits du Jour

First bit of tid is from Slate, covering the health front:

It’s been a great week for coffee drinkers: 1) “Data from 10 studies … suggest that people who drink coffee may be reducing their risk of liver cancer.” 2) “Drinking more than three cups of coffee a day helped protect older women against some age-related memory decline.” 3) “Drinking three or more cups of coffee a day may cut the risk of colon cancer in women by half.” 4) “Exercise and moderate caffeine consumption together could help ward off sun-induced skin cancer.” Unauthorized conclusions: 1) Go pour yourself another cup. 2) And don’t forget the chocolate.

Second morsel comes courtesy of Nick Hornby, who writes a column called “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” for The Believer. Herewith, an excerpt:

Here is the best definition of a good novel I have come across yet—indeed, I suspect that it might be the only definition of a good novel worth a damn. A good novel is one that sends you scurrying to the computer to look at pictures of prostitutes on the internet. And as Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter is the only novel I have ever read that has made me do this, I can confidently assert that Coming Through Slaughter is, ipso facto, the best novel I have ever read.

I love Nick for not painstakingly expositing his reasons why this is the best definition. He’s writing appreciation here, so let’s not get all frontal-lobe on him.

It’s far too late to natter on about the joys of coffee and Michael Ondaatje’s books (I’ve read Coming Through Slaughter, and The English Patient), especially since I’d have to invoke a comment by New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, which has haunted me for ages. He once said of The English Patient—though not, exasperatingly, in his review of the movie—that the book was so perfectly written as to be unreadable.

And just like Hornby, he tossed off this comment en passant, while discussing something else. Damnable cryptic critic.

Not sure if I agree with him. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to finish reading a novel so I can test the hooker-effect.