Posted 7:18 PM by hx

i saw this posted on the occam's toothbrush site.

Apparently, Sesame Street is going to introduce an HIV Positive Muppet on their show :)
And she's going to be female :) Wowzah :)
Talk about movin' with the times :)

Posted 7:04 PM by hx

Oof. I'm finally here :) I was beginning to think the gods were trying to tell me something, after all the problems I had trying to join up and sign on and post and...! :)

Thanks for the invitation to contribute, Raymond, and hi to everyone :) <--- me big smiley user, you noticed??

Well... now that I'm online and can post at last, I have no clue what to say. Which is par for the course, so I'll cheat by riffing on Raymond's dreamy mood :) see Raymond, i'm giving you one of my first-borns after all. aren't i brave? :)

***

i like shadows.

i like long dark alleyways at night, winding streets that lead to old houses with dim lights in their kitchens. i like the places where people go to disappear, where the broken fall through the cracks and find comfort in being lost together.

i like the sleazy bars filled with people whose eyes have seen what i have, who know what it's like to be on the wrong end of fate and fortune.

i like tempting fate. i walk where you would walk, if you didn't have a home, and children, and a dog. i walk your walk for you, i tell you what i see, i share my visions of heaven and of hell.

come walk my walk with me ;)

Posted 6:17 PM by Blah blah

Surfing through Peg's links (*hi Peg and Ashlyn!*), I found this handsome guy All2Swift. He can write. He's done with medical school and starting his internship in New Haven, Connecticut. Too late for the Asian moms---he just got married over a month ago. Here's his new wife Carson's journal. They look too cute!

Actually, it looks like LiveJournal has an abnormally high percentage of cute girls and guys using it. I wonder why. Maybe they work at the same mall in southern California. (It's a joke! Their malls could be in Alaska.) Have a delightful weekend, everybody!

Posted 4:35 PM by Blah blah

China Could Hit Taiwan Rapidly, Pentagon Says (Reuters):
____________
China is honing "credible options" to attack Taiwan and could move with scant warning against what it views as a U.S.-backed rogue province, the Pentagon said on Friday....

"China's doctrine is moving toward the goal of surprise, deception and shock effect in the opening phase of a campaign," said the Pentagon report. "China is exploring coercive strategies designed to bring Taipei to terms quickly."

Such options include possible air and missile campaigns or a naval blockade.

"With little warning, Beijing may choose to seize quickly a limited number of key facilities on Taiwan using amphibious or airborne forces as means to compel political capitulation," the Pentagon said.

Thanks largely to Russian arms supplies, Beijing was gaining "an increasing number of credible options to intimidate or actually attack Taiwan," it said.

China's growing clout also presented challenges to "other potential adversaries, such as the Philippines and Japan," the report said. China is at odds with the Philippines and others over boundaries in the South China Sea, and Beijing opposes any expansion of Japanese power in the region.

Posted 2:00 AM by Blah blah

Mood: dreamy. Need to set up my microphone on this computer and sing more songs for you. Would you like that? Hehe... Sweet dreams!

Posted 6:27 PM by Blah blah

Arrgh. Cynical, Vulgar Girls

Is it just me or do you also find this type of girl totally annoying, vulgar, and cheap? A big turnoff. When I first stumbled upon the Asian American e-zine II Stix, I found it refreshing for the earnest articles. I used to like it. Now I find most of the columnists very cynical, jaded, and crass. I like the many guest writers better than the columnists. Hello Jerry Springer. This girl, for example. She complains about her dating life while "making out" with "just friends" every other day and treating guys like disposable studmuffins. Her attitude is a lot like the folks who were on BlindDateBlog, which also disintegrated into backbiting and trash talk.

She says "we're both swishy urban folk for which casual sex (much less, casual making out) is simply another city sport, like rollerblading down Broadway."

I think a girl like this doesn't have the right to complain about guys treating her like dirt if she spits on the whole process of developing a relationship. She writes in a breezy, cynical way, trying to be funny but not making it because I am making a sour face with my mouth. No wonder she has a lousy dating life. It's as obvious as the smirk on her face.

Is this a common girl you find around LA? I hope not. Fact about me: I've only dated foreign-born girls my whole life. Never dated an American-born one. (Not that I haven't met some really nice Caucasian, black, or Latina girls, for example.) The foreign girls (and I am foreign-born too) tend to be more lady-like, sweet, romantic, and caring---which is my type. They tend to like me more and I them. And it's not just me---Americans I know tend to find them more attractive too.

I dislike it when girls act like this and defend it in the name of "feminism" or "equality." What kind of equality do they want? To be as callous and crass as guys can be sometimes?

blogChalking

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, San Jose, California, Raymond, Male!

Posted 4:36 PM by Blah blah

I talked to Ellen for the first time last night! I thought I was listening to the radio because this girl has such a sweet, sparkling voice! Seriously. If she said "Would you like fries with that?" to me I'd listen and be nodding yes, yes unconsciously. Hahaha... (Here's a recording of Ellen's voice.)

I can picture her being a deejay for a station that plays "love songs after dark." On 96.5 FM here, this nationally syndicated radio host Delilah has just that kind of voice. I wish the right people get to hear your radio demo tape, lady.

I've been writing this journal for 21 months now and probably have enough pages to fill one or two books. Here's something I wrote last August:

Searching for Meaning

Saw an inspiring interview with Kim Polese today on the Silicon Valley TV show Malone. Polese is the founder of Marimba, a systems management software company for e-business. She recently stepped down as CEO and president and now is chairman and chief strategy officer. Before founding Marimba, she had been at Sun Microsystems and been the first product manager for Java (originally called Oak), when Sun was creating the language in 1995. She is one of the key people who helped introduce Java to the world and make it famous. Here's an interview with her in JavaWorld in which she tells in detail what it was like to be the main marketer for Java and make all of those initial marketing decisions.

She laughed at the hype that surrounded her when Java and Marimba were both new and hot. She shrugged off the media frenzy that descended on her when she started being a Java spokeswoman, when they called her a "sex symbol of Silicon Valley." What she stressed most---which impressed me the most---was her dedication to building a company with long-term value, her commitment to stick with Java, Marimba or any other of her babies for the long haul. She criticized what she called the "disease" that infects the Valley nowadays, the inclination of inexperienced people to start a company with the intention (from the start) of selling it, of the quick cash out. She criticized the twenty-something entrepreneurs she has met who are worth millions but are still depressed because they got less VC funding than their classmate from B-school. She talked about her passion and drive for creating something and her desire, from youth, to be some type of entrepreneur. Polese said she "didn't force" her plan to run her own business and didn't worry about being too late. It would just become clear when the time was right. Finally, she stressed how the best thing in life, for her, was working with people, all committed, to create something of lasting value. Of testing herself and pushing her limits.

I admire people who can do that, since I DEFINITELY don't always do it myself. I feel that commitment to creating or developing something, whether a company, a delicious meal, a relationship, or oneself, is what gives life meaning. After reading the existentialist Camus in high school, I became one of those who feels we create our own meaning. That everything inherently could be meaningless by itself. That everything that is neglected loses meaning gradually. That the meaning of anything is proportionate to what at least one being cares about it. So the lesson from Polese is to care, to be engaged, to focus on enjoying and facing whatever it is we are handed by life. That banishes boredom and self-centeredness and makes us feel most fully alive.

To a piano tuner who lovingly caresses those metal strings as he listens to a change in decibels, or to a gardener who rescues tulips from caterpillars, theirs is the most important job in the universe. To a mother who faces a crying baby son, he is the most important person in the world. And so our attention shifts throughout the day, but depending on how alert and intense we are at that instant, time stops and we become entranced, king of the world for a scene in a classic film, a Jack Dawkins at the bow of a ship with the wind through our hair.

I think we spend much of our mature life searching for meaning. Our quests for love, sex, a house, a child, or a foot in middle management are all quests for significance, for carving out a lasting monument to who we are and what we stand for. We seek the transcendence and escape we feel while immersed in those things after which we love and lust. As we get older and wiser we become more defined. Our thoughts become more stark and opinions more sharp, our faces grow more lined and etched, our personalities more petulant and cantankerous, and our uncertainties and fuzziness more faded. When we die, it is like the painter has finally finished toying with his sketch.

So it is good we are always feeling slightly incomplete.

Posted 12:35 AM by Blah blah

Dr. Scott replied to my excited post below about the Atkins diet:

"Dr. Atkins is a disgrace and a crook.

I have known several NURSES who have been admitted to the ER because of his diet. Ketosis is no way to diet.

That is my official opinion on him. You always have to be suspicious of any doctor who writes a book with a "new plan" who refuses to allow his research to be examined by the medical community at large. Atkins should be in jail, not Kevorkian.

As for diet, high carbs is bad. High fat is bad for cholesterol and weight as well.

The key as always is moderation. Eat more protein, since it won't make you tired (unless its fatty or turkey) and it can curb your appetite. But eat smaller portions of carbs than the typical Westerner eats. And some fat, but not a lot.

Really, protein is 'brain food.' It will curb your appetite (but not like the carb rush you get), and can keep your mind sharp (unlike a carb rush, again). When I was in college, at night I would eat tuna fish when I got tired. It helped me stay up and lose weight. (Carbs will make you tired and gain weight.) Of course, it has to be lean protein, not a steak or burger which has lots of fat. (Clean as in low-fat like fish or egg whites.)"

Richard, who's in med school, gave his view:

"In any case, I probably side with Scott in that I think that eating everything in moderation is the key. I'm definitely not convinced that eating a tub of lard is more healthy than wheat bread Anything in excess will mess the body up. I think the deal with carbs is to try to avoid eating empty carbs - ie: white bread which contains practically no dietary fiber, dinner rolls which has no dietary fiber, white rice (my mom does a 1/2 brown 1/2 white rice mix.. brown rice supposedly carries fiber)

And I don't particularly agree with that caveman argument. We're not cavemen, and we have better nutrition than they do. We are living longer and taller than our cavemen counterparts. And like Scott says, throwing the body into extended periods of starvation is definitely not a good thing no matter how you look at it.

'None of these studies have been financed by the N.I.H., and none have yet been published.' <-- that always makes me cast a suspcious eye. That is the same deal with that Zone Diet that was discussed in another thread. If the evidence is so compelling and done in a double blind randomized controlled trial with minimal biases, then why not release it? It just makes it sound a bit gimicky to me - like many of the quick fix schemes out there."

Thank you, Scott and Richard! Appreciate it.

Posted 11:33 PM by Blah blah

Doing Work You Love

I very much liked this article on Ellen's blog, on what kind of work we should do:

I remember several years ago when I was intent upon building my reputation as a sculptor. I took a job driving a cab, because, as I told people, "I want some job that I will never confuse with a rofession." Yet within six months, I was talking like a cab driver, thinking like a cab driver, looking at the world through the eyes of a cab driver. My anecdotes came from my job, as did my observations about life. I became embroiled in the personalities and politics of the company for which I worked and developed the habits and rhythms of life that went along with my all- night driving shift. On the days when I did not drive and instead worked on my sculpture, I still carried the consciousness of a cab driver with me.

Whether I liked it or not, I was a cab driver. This happens to anyone who takes a job. Even if you hate a job and keep a distance from it, you are defining yourself in opposition to the job by resisting it. By giving the job your time, you are giving it your consciousness. And it will, in turn, fill your life with the reality that it presents. Many eople ignore this fact. They choose a profession because it seems exciting, or because they can make a lot of money, or because it has some prestige in their minds. They commit themselves to their work, but slowly find themselves feeling restless and empty. The time they have to spend on their work begins to hang heavy on their hands, and soon they feel constricted and trapped. They join the legions of humanity who Thoreau said lead lives of quiet desperation - unfulfilled, unhappy and uncertain of what to do.

Very profound Ellen! And inspiring. If you have the time and chance, I'd say give what you love a shot. Now is a great time to do so. I feel like I've made some dumb mistakes with my job choices. I know exactly what the author means by feeling chained to a job.

The last year and a half I've felt numb and dead with respect to my job. I was feeling depressed and listless. I wish you can avoid that. I hope now I can aim more carefully and take bold steps towards activities that I REALLY care about. Cross your fingers for me and you.

What job are you interviewing for? I think ideally, you want to be an announcer or journalist and work in broadcasting, right? Good luck, lady!

Take a look at this post I wrote last year, about Viewing Work as a Craft. Thought-provoking as well.

Posted 11:30 PM by Anonymous

Excerpt from my personal journal:

I still wake up in the mornings and unfortunately, awfully you are my first thought. What a way to start the day. It's a wonder I'm not haunted by nightmares of you, while my conscious thoughts are constantly occupied by you. This morning, it was a sad ache - an emptiness in me that had no hope of being filled because, see, YOU were the one who created this hollow, you were the only one who could fill it. In that dim, hazy moment, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, before my logical brain had quite caught up with my insides, thinking of you and the way you betrayed me, made me the saddest girl alive.

Posted 5:34 PM by Blah blah

International Blog Meetup Day. This is a great idea!

WHAT: MEETUP with other local Webloggers and talk about whatever

WHEN: Thursday, July 18 @ 7:00PM (Every 3rd Thursday of the month.)

WHO: Bloggers everywhere are invited.

Description of MEETUP.

Posted 5:12 PM by Blah blah

Spider-Man Will Make You Gay. I'm feeling all lightheaded now!

Hormone Replacement Study a Shock to the Medical System (NY Times):

"The announcement yesterday that a hormone replacement regimen taken by six million American women did more harm than good was met with puzzlement and disbelief by women and their doctors across the country.

A rigorous study found that the drugs, a combination of estrogen and progestin, caused small increases in breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Those risks outweighed the drugs' benefits a small decrease in hip fractures and a decrease in colorectal cancer. Many of the 16,000 women in the study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, opened letters yesterday telling them to stop the drugs. In light of the findings, the study had come to a halt....

Until recently, medical authorities were telling doctors to encourage almost every woman who had not had a hysterectomy to start taking the drugs when she reached menopause and to take them for years, even for life. Now the growing consensus seems to be that women should carefully consider whether they want to start the drugs at all. Those who take them for more than a few years should be aware of the risks, which, if slight, are real....

'This is the biggest bombshell that ever hit in my 30-something years in the menopause area,' Dr. Utian said.

It was a powerful scientific counterattack to years of strong promotion of hormone replacement. There were reams of scientific papers. Many fell short of absolute rigor, but in sum they pointed mostly in one direction, that of benefit. There were compelling marketing campaigns by drug companies. There was also the eager adoption of the drug combination by doctors and women who wanted to believe it worked.

The new study was different from the rest because it involved thousands of healthy women and had a control group, with half the women taking dummy pills. In addition, it looked for evidence of disease like heart attacks and cancer rather than indirect indicators like cholesterol levels, which can be misleading....

In the end, Wyeth began a randomized controlled study that most doctors and researchers assumed would prove estrogen's beneficial effects on the heart. The study, known as HERS, involved women who had already had heart disease, a group in whom effects should be easiest to find....

The emerging data from both that study, the Women's Health Initiative and HERS are sobering. HERS found that far from protecting women against heart attacks, the combination therapy actually increased their risk in the first few years of taking the drugs.

The Women's Health Initiative includes a group of women who have had hysterectomies and who are taking estrogen alone. That part of the study is continuing because the data have not shown significant risk or significant benefit from the hormone.

The other part of the study, of women taking the hormone combination, was the part that was halted. It found that if 10,000 women take the hormones for one year, eight more will develop invasive breast cancer than a similar group not taking the hormones, seven more will have heart attacks, eight more will have strokes and eight more will have blood clots in their lungs. The benefits are six fewer instances of colorectal cancers and five fewer hip fractures."

Posted 12:39 PM by Blah blah

Lack of Passion

I thought this was hilarious but true. Cary has a point. From Salon.com's advice columnist:

Dear Cary,

Here's one that I fear will apply to a lot of your readers, so why not kill many birds with a single stone: What do you do when the person you've been with for 10 years, and love like your own blood, inspires absolutely no sexual desire in you? Is it shallow to want that passion, and should one therefore tough it out? Or is denying the physical self a sure path to ruin at some point -- meaning, of course, that a breakup is the only solution? I know there's no answer to this question, really, but a perspective would be much appreciated. There's a lot of love, but no passion; it's almost like being siblings, and I don't know if that's enough.

Brother Man

Read the letter:

"It's not like there's something wrong with you because you've allowed certain competing entertainments to tap some of your resources. You might even say that as a relationship grows it becomes more sophisticated, and while sex is still a great thing to do, our appetites become variegated and rarefied: We suddenly find it necessary to have a nice briefcase! What is that about?...

[T]he wonderful civilizing and stabilizing effect of a long-term relationship is that once the basic needs are met, all kinds of more refined appetites can afford to assert themselves. You create emotional security for yourself and next thing you know you're learning French! Why? Because we have infinite capacities as humans, and sex is just one of the magic buttons you can push....

The fact is, when you get right down to it, in our culture, good sex between men and women in committed relationships is not that important, is it? If it were, wouldn't we have more traditional institutional support for good sex? Wouldn't the president be urging us to have more sex? Wouldn't we have sex church on Sunday? Wouldn't we have sex synagogue and sex mosque and sex temple? We're not a sexy society. We're a theocracy. On one hand, we've got church. On the other hand, all we've got is Esalen and Good Vibrations.

Couldn't we elect a president who could go out on a limb and just say, 'America, we're not screwing enough! More screwing!' Maybe that's what President Clinton was trying to tell us! Screw more big-haired bimbos! That's what we need! Under the desk, you! What is wrong with us? I'll tell you what's wrong with us, we're still a Protestant, Calvinist, workaholic, techno-warrior culture and sex is fine for making babies but pleasure doesn't feed the bulldog. And every week the letters pour in: I'm in a great relationship all except the sex.

I get so many letters about the sex not being good in long-term relationships that I'm sort of fed up. Why don't we just all stay in bed this Sunday and screw!"

Posted 11:39 AM by Blah blah

Guilt-tripping Parents

On RBJ, Delishomatic, a girl in Manhattan, started this topic: Do you ever feel like your parents are insane? Food for thought. What's your reaction? I feel this story holds a lesson for US who will eventually have kids and become parents. What can we take from her experience? She writes:

"i didn't have a close relationship with my parents while i was growing up because i didn't feel like they understood me. they were really strict about school stuff and nothing was ever good enough for them. my sisters and i all went to really top-notch colleges because we thought that's what our parents wanted, but now they just seem disappointed in us because they spent all that money and we didn't choose to pursue what they wanted us to pursue. plus my family is not wealthy so my mom is now complaining that we should have gone to state schools (since we didn't become lawyers, doctors, or future presidents therefore wasting our ivy degrees) and saved money. mostly it's my dad that seems to make the financial decisions around the house and a lot of times they are very well meaning, but not very well thought out. i mean, they don't have tons of money, yet they insisted on loaning me the down payment on a manhattan apartment so that i wouldn't "waste" my money on rents. while i appreciate it a LOT, i never asked for it, and now i feel like they think they wasted their money by loaning it to me. they don't have tons of money, yet they insisted on buying my younger sister a brand new car for grad school, when she was perfectly happy getting a used one with her own money.

my mom, in particular, seems really unhappy with her life--and i don't know what to do about it. she feels like she has sacrificed everything so that we can have what we have (she helped put my dad through school, never got to pursue a career she enjoyed because she had to work to make ends meet, etc...). she never took the time to cultivate her own interests so she expects the three of us daughters to make her happy. since we haven't (despite our accomplishments and knack for never ever getting in trouble) she feels depressed. if i try to talk to her about it and to explain that we are all pursuing our own lives but we still need and appreciate her, she goes into autopilot and thinks i am attacking her and belittling her. when i argue with someone i am very careful to not let emotions take over--i hate conflict so i try to be as objective about things as possible. on the other hand, my parents resort to guilt tripping tactics (my dad actually said to my sister that he won't be around much longer so she she should go to the grad school he wanted her to go to!) and then they think i am lecturing them and that i should be more humble. it's so impossible that i feel like giving up and not trying anymore, but because i care so much i can't stop trying. sometimes, i almost feel like she wishes we weren't all happy with our lives so that we would go crying to her and she could feel needed. this is an awful thing to think, but not unsubstantiated. aren't your parents supposed to be happy if they raise three girls who are successful in their own way and happy with their lives?

sorry if this is a total rant, but i just feel really frustrated about the whole thing."

Posted 11:21 AM by Blah blah

Financial Planning

I went to see a financial planning team yesterday. The company had called me up asking about life insurance, and when they found I was too young for it, they asked if I needed some financial planning. I jumped at this question. It was perfect timing, because with all the changes in my life recently, I DO need to organize my finances and figure out the best way to use and grow my money. I want to understand investing, taxes, and money more seriously and become more financially disciplined.

My advisers are two guys. One is an older guy who knows about retirement, wills, trusts, etc. He used to have his own clients and has established enough of a reputation that he gets all of his work from referrals. The other is a young guy my age who worked at Solomon Smith Barney advising people on stocks and other investments. He has helped people who were starting companies. When he heard about the business we want to start, he encouraged me to join the Monte Jade Science and Technology Association. They have their dinners at Ming's in Palo Alto. Christine is involved in Monte Jade, I recall. Their mission is to "promote the cooperation and the mutual flow of technology and investment between Taiwan and the U.S....The Association creates social and technical opportunities for professionals and corporations at both sides of the Pacific to share their valuable experiences in research, investment, and business."

They were really friendly and instructive, telling me that, considering the lousy economy, I've actually saved up more than many people my age around here. They asked how much I ideally would want to save out of a regular income. When I guessed "uh...75%?" They laughed and said 60% is the max most people save. After leaving their office, I felt energized and more confident. I need to comb through all my financial statements and meet with them again.

Here are some of my financial goals:

1. Invest more wisely---both: 1) try to grow my money through some market risk and 2) invest in a safer long-term pattern as a hedge against a bad economy.
2. Learn more about financial strategies and tax law for someone who is starting a business.
3. Save enough to fund an MBA degree and other education I may need.
4. Save enough for a better loan deal when I buy a house, as well as planning a strategy that ensures continual mortgage payments. According to a real estate agent I know, the amount of people defaulting on their mortgage payments in Silicon Valley shot up this year, causing them to lose their homes! Sad.
5. Save enough for being able to support my future wife's mom or dad (if necessary) when I get married. The Asian tradition. I'm not sure about living with TWO parents, though. And I definitely would NOT want to live with mine. But in case she would like her mom or dad to move in, I need to be ready.
6. Save more to take trips around the world. Go on more vacations.
7. Learn more about financial accounting, investments, taxes, and money in general. They recommended I read the Investor's Business Daily and Wall St. Journal to stay regularly informed. Think about things like saving for my future kids' college education.

Whew...I'm glad they pushed me to think seriously about these issues. It's about time. I'm gonna get a financial software package like Quicken and start making personal budgets. Raymond the capitalist! YEAH!

Posted 10:19 AM by Blah blah

Blind Psychic Gropes Buttocks to See Future (Reuters):
______________
Forget palm-reading. A blind German psychic claimed Tuesday he could read people's futures by feeling their naked buttocks.

Clairvoyant Ulf Buck, 39, claims that people's backsides have lines like those on the palm of the hand, which can be read to reveal much about their character and destiny.

"The bottom is much more intense -- it has a much stronger power of expression than the hand in my experience," Buck told Reuters. "It goes on developing throughout your life."...

"An apple-shaped, muscular bottom indicates someone who is charismatic, dynamic, very confident and often creative. A person who enjoys life," he said. "A pear-shaped bottom suggests someone very steadfast, patient and down-to-earth."

He is quick to shoot down any suggestion that his buttock groping might be motivated by anything other than a genuine desire to probe people's futures.

"I do not need to feel bottoms for my own pleasure. My wife is quite beautiful enough for me," he said.
______________
Ooh, can you feel the INTENSITY? *Fanning myself*

I think I must be an apple butt man. As a baby, I was definitely marshmallow. By my teens, I had grown into a pot sticker.

Posted 10:10 AM by Blah blah

European Plane Crash

Next time, listen to the machine! Controller Sent Jets Into Crash, Flight Data Show (NY Times):
______________
Information from the flight recorders aboard the two planes that crashed into each other one week ago over southern Germany show that a Swiss air traffic controller in effect put the planes on a collision course by ordering the Russian pilot to descend at the same time that the plane's own collision-avoidance system was urging him to climb.

The new data, released today by German investigators, show that the two planes' automated systems communicated with each other exactly as they were meant to do and that the accident would probably not have occurred if the Russian pilot had simply ignored the Swiss controller in Zurich. The collision killed 52 Russian schoolchildren and 19 adults....

German investigators said today that tapes from the flight data recorders showed that both planes' collision avoidance systems worked exactly as they should have and would have prevented the crash if the traffic controller had not intervened.

Known as a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, the on-board systems communicate with each other and plot out evasion maneuvers for each airplane.

Slightly less than one minute before the crash, the systems aboard both planes barked out a preliminary warning of "traffic, traffic."

About 15 seconds after the first warning, the system aboard the DHL cargo plane issued an order of "descend, descend." The system aboard the Russian Tu-154 issued an order of "climb, climb."

But in a moment of confusion, the traffic controller in Zurich ordered the Russian plane to "descend level 350, expedite descent" a direct and urgent order to drop from an altitude of 36,000 feet to 35,000 feet....

The tape disclosed today makes it clear that the Russian plane was grappling with conflicting instructions that came almost simultaneously, and aviation experts said this was probably the reason the pilot hesitated before reacting.

"He knows the air traffic controller is telling him to descend, and he knows the TCAS system is telling him to climb, and that is a difficult spot to be in," said Peter Quaint-Mere, a former air traffic controller who is now the director of Global Aviation Audit, a consulting firm that specializes in airport safety. "Pilots tend to listen to the air traffic controller because they trust a human being and know that a person wants to keep them safe."

But Georg Fongern of Cockpit, the German pilots union, said that if the TCAS does come on during a flight, the pilot should give that top priority. "We train for that," he said....

European aviation experts say the air crash was a result of an increasingly acute shortage of qualified air traffic controllers. The West European air traffic authorities say they need about 1,800 to 2,000 controllers in addition to the 18,000 already in service. In Germany alone airports need 100 more controllers, experts say, and the country has already begun importing Irish controllers.

Air traffic has been increasing steadily by about 6 percent a year for the last decade. In January, to accommodate more airplanes, the European authorities reduced the minimum vertical distance between planes from 2,000 to 1,000 feet.

Posted 9:09 AM by Blah blah

My cowriter Christina moved her pictures to Sony ImageStation, where mine now sit. ImageStation lets you view pix in full-size, unlike Yahoo Photos. If you didn't notice, I've posted 8 photo albums. At the bottom of my photo pages they have "Other public albums by" and a drop-down list. From any photo album you can move to any other album.

Here are Christina's rearranged photos:

- Her older pix
- Her friends
- Her trip to Thailand (Feb. 2002)
- Shanghai
- Tibet (She didn't go there.)
- Nanjing
- Her trip to Sanya (Hainan province)

Posted 2:35 AM by Anonymous

Continuing along the vein of "superficial”, shallow gossip on yummy men (sorry, Raymond but girls must be girls sometimes) ... So, I saw Minority Report over the weekend. (I thought it was good on the whole, a little bit iffy in certain aspects but then again, as with anything concerning time travel how do you really expect it to make full logical sense?)

But I begin to digress. Yummy men, that’s what I was going to talk about. Yeah, so Colin Farrell - whom I’ve found out is 26 years old, Irish and rumoured to be recently married (why? Oh why?) – is the latest on my list of “doable” men. Those piercing dark eyes, the adorable little boy face on a hard well-muscled body, and that smile ... well, they just bowl me over! (And doesn’t he look a little like Brad?)

What do you gals (and guys, we welcome your comments too) think? And who would be on your list of "doable people"?

Posted 8:12 PM by Anonymous

Say Hi to Jasmin

I'm a little behind in posting this, but I would like to introduce myself to all of you, as I am the newest co-writer of this wonderful journal. My name is Jasmin, I'm 24, and I live in San Francisco. I began my journal writing earlier this year in March, and since then I haven't stopped writing. I've also had the pleasure of discovering many beautiful journals along the way, and I'm so glad I found this one. I would like to thank Raymond for allowing me to write here, and for his acceptance and friendship. I look forward to posting more in the future. Until then, have a great Monday everyone. :)

Posted 3:20 PM by Blah blah

The Atkins Diet

You MUST read this article by Gary Taubes, a correspondent for the journal Science, about the Atkins diet! This makes a convincing case that

Eating a low carbohydrate, high fat diet will help you lose weight,
while eating a high carbohydrate, low fat diet helps make you FATTER!

According to this, the USDA's recommended diet food pyramid is totally wrong! It's a long article and very hard to summarize. It goes into the science behind this claim, as well as the business and politics that have caused the idea of "low fat diet = weight loss" to become the common wisdom for the last 20 years!

For more on how to try the Atkins type of diet (advocated by Dr. Robert Atkins), look on the web and check out Atkins Nutritionals. I want to try this!

Here's our talk on the pros and cons of this diet on the Rice Bowl Journals Discussion Boards.

Here's the article:
What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? (NY Times Magazine). I summarize it like this:

1. Intro. to Endocrinology 101
2. American obesity jumped in 1970s
3. No link found between fat and heart disease, according to five major studies
4. How fat can be good for you
5. High carbohydrates (high insulin) causes us to be hungrier and eat more. Low-glycemic-index diets are better.
6. Robert Atkins
7. Ketosis, a way to kick-start weight loss
8. Two serious tests of Atkins diet
___________

1. Intro. to Endocrinology 101

The members of the American medical establishment [may be finding] that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America....

Over the past five years, however, there has been a subtle shift in the scientific consensus....Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health,...is the de facto spokesman of the longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health studies ever performed, which have already cost upward of $100 million and include data on nearly 300,000 individuals. Those data, says Willett, clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message ''and the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.''...

The science behind the alternative hypothesis can be called Endocrinology 101, which is how it's referred to by David Ludwig, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who runs the pediatric obesity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, and who prescribes his own version of a carbohydrate-restricted diet to his patients. Endocrinology 101 requires an understanding of how carbohydrates affect insulin and blood sugar and in turn fat metabolism and appetite. This is basic endocrinology, Ludwig says, which is the study of hormones, and it is still considered radical because the low-fat dietary wisdom emerged in the 1960's from researchers almost exclusively concerned with the effect of fat on cholesterol and heart disease. At the time, Endocrinology 101 was still underdeveloped, and so it was ignored. Now that this science is becoming clear, it has to fight a quarter century of anti-fat prejudice....

[I]f the alternative hypothesis is right, then a low-fat diet is not by definition a healthy diet. In practice, such a diet cannot help being high in carbohydrates, and that can lead to obesity, and perhaps even heart disease. ''For a large percentage of the population, perhaps 30 to 40 percent, low-fat diets are counterproductive,'' says Eleftheria Maratos-Flier, director of obesity research at Harvard's prestigious Joslin Diabetes Center. ''They have the paradoxical effect of making people gain weight.''...

the number of misconceptions propagated about the most basic research can be staggering. Researchers will be suitably scientific describing the limitations of their own experiments, and then will cite something as gospel truth because they read it in a magazine. The classic example is the statement heard repeatedly that 95 percent of all dieters never lose weight, and 95 percent of those who do will not keep it off. This will be correctly attributed to the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, but it will go unmentioned that this statement is based on 100 patients who passed through Stunkard's obesity clinic during the Eisenhower administration.

2. American obesity jumped in 1970s

With these caveats, one of the few reasonably reliable facts about the obesity epidemic is that it started around the early 1980's. According to Katherine Flegal, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of obese Americans stayed relatively constant through the 1960's and 1970's at 13 percent to 14 percent and then shot up by 8 percentage points in the 1980's. By the end of that decade, nearly one in four Americans was obese. That steep rise, which is consistent through all segments of American society and which continued unabated through the 1990's, is the singular feature of the epidemic. Any theory that tries to explain obesity in America has to account for that. Meanwhile, overweight children nearly tripled in number. And for the first time, physicians began diagnosing Type 2 diabetes in adolescents. Type 2 diabetes often accompanies obesity....

Fast-food consumption, for example, continued to grow steadily through the 70's and 80's, but it did not take a sudden leap, as obesity did....

[Article says the "thrifty gene" may be a myth:]...because some of us are obviously predisposed to gain weight while others are not, this explanation also has a genetic component -- the thrifty gene. It suggests that storing extra calories as fat was an evolutionary advantage to our Paleolithic ancestors, who had to survive frequent famine. We then inherited these ''thrifty'' genes, despite their liability in today's toxic environment....[T]he thrifty gene...provides the kind of evolutionary rationale for human behavior that scientists find comforting but that simply cannot be tested.

As far as exercise and physical activity go, there are no reliable data before the mid-80's, according to William Dietz, who runs the division of nutrition and physical activity at the Centers for Disease Control; the 1990's data show obesity rates continuing to climb, while exercise activity remained unchanged. This suggests the two have little in common....

It is also undeniable, note students of Endocrinology 101, that mankind never evolved to eat a diet high in starches or sugars. ''Grain products and concentrated sugars were essentially absent from human nutrition until the invention of agriculture,'' Ludwig says, ''which was only 10,000 years ago.''...What's forgotten in the current controversy is that the low-fat dogma itself is only about 25 years old. Until the late 70's, the accepted wisdom was that fat and protein protected against overeating by making you sated, and that carbohydrates made you fat....

This is what my mother taught me 40 years ago, backed up by the vague observation that Italians tended toward corpulence because they ate so much pasta. This observation was actually documented by Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physician who noted that fats ''have good staying power,'' by which he meant they are slow to be digested and so lead to satiation, and that Italians were among the heaviest populations he had studied. According to Keys, the Neapolitans, for instance, ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week, but ate bread and pasta every day for lunch and dinner. ''There was no evidence of nutritional deficiency,'' he wrote, ''but the working-class women were fat.''...

3. No link found between fat and heart disease, according to five major studies

In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same. ''It's an imperfect world,'' Rifkind told me. ''The data that would be definitive is ungettable, so you do your best with what is available.''

Some of the best scientists disagreed with this low-fat logic, suggesting that good science was incompatible with such leaps of faith, but they were effectively ignored....

4. How fat can be good for you

Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified. If nothing else, it effectively ignores the fact that unsaturated fats, like olive oil, are relatively good for you: they tend to elevate your good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (H.D.L.), and lower your bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (L.D.L.), at least in comparison to the effect of carbohydrates. While higher L.D.L. raises your heart-disease risk, higher H.D.L. reduces it.

What this means is that even saturated fats -- a k a, the bad fats -- are not nearly as deleterious as you would think. True, they will elevate your bad cholesterol, but they will also elevate your good cholesterol. In other words, it's a virtual wash. As Willett explained to me, you will gain little to no health benefit by giving up milk, butter and cheese and eating bagels instead.

But it gets even weirder than that. Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it's true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.

The crucial example of how the low-fat recommendations were oversimplified is shown by the impact -- potentially lethal, in fact -- of low-fat diets on triglycerides, which are the component molecules of fat. By the late 60's, researchers had shown that high triglyceride levels were at least as common in heart-disease patients as high L.D.L. cholesterol, and that eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would, for many people, raise their triglyceride levels, lower their H.D.L. levels and accentuate what Gerry Reaven, an endocrinologist at Stanford University, called Syndrome X. This is a cluster of conditions that can lead to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes....

the major trends in American diets since the late 70's, according to the U.S.D.A. agricultural economist Judith Putnam, have been a decrease in the percentage of fat calories and a ''greatly increased consumption of carbohydrates.'' To be precise, annual grain consumption has increased almost 60 pounds per person, and caloric sweeteners (primarily high-fructose corn syrup) by 30 pounds. At the same time, we suddenly began consuming more total calories: now up to 400 more each day since the government started recommending low-fat diets.

If these trends are correct, then the obesity epidemic can certainly be explained by Americans' eating more calories than ever -- excess calories, after all, are what causes us to gain weight -- and, specifically, more carbohydrates. The question is why?

The answer provided by Endocrinology 101 is that we are simply hungrier than we were in the 70's, and the reason is physiological more than psychological....

5. High carbohydrates (high insulin) causes us to be hungrier and eat more. Low-glycemic-index diets are better.

The primary role of insulin is to regulate blood-sugar levels. After you eat carbohydrates, they will be broken down into their component sugar molecules and transported into the bloodstream. Your pancreas then secretes insulin, which shunts the blood sugar into muscles and the liver as fuel for the next few hours. This is why carbohydrates have a significant impact on insulin and fat does not. And because juvenile diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin, physicians believed since the 20's that the only evil with insulin is not having enough.

But insulin also regulates fat metabolism. We cannot store body fat without it. Think of insulin as a switch. When it's on, in the few hours after eating, you burn carbohydrates for energy and store excess calories as fat. When it's off, after the insulin has been depleted, you burn fat as fuel. So when insulin levels are low, you will burn your own fat, but not when they're high.

This is where it gets unavoidably complicated. The fatter you are, the more insulin your pancreas will pump out per meal, and the more likely you'll develop what's called ''insulin resistance,'' which is the underlying cause of Syndrome X. In effect, your cells become insensitive to the action of insulin, and so you need ever greater amounts to keep your blood sugar in check. So as you gain weight, insulin makes it easier to store fat and harder to lose it. But the insulin resistance in turn may make it harder to store fat -- your weight is being kept in check, as it should be. But now the insulin resistance might prompt your pancreas to produce even more insulin, potentially starting a vicious cycle. Which comes first -- the obesity, the elevated insulin, known as hyperinsulinemia, or the insulin resistance -- is a chicken-and-egg problem that hasn't been resolved. One endocrinologist described this to me as ''the Nobel-prize winning question.''

Insulin also profoundly affects hunger, although to what end is another point of controversy. On the one hand, insulin can indirectly cause hunger by lowering your blood sugar, but how low does blood sugar have to drop before hunger kicks in? That's unresolved. Meanwhile, insulin works in the brain to suppress hunger. The theory, as explained to me by Michael Schwartz, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington, is that insulin's ability to inhibit appetite would normally counteract its propensity to generate body fat. In other words, as you gained weight, your body would generate more insulin after every meal, and that in turn would suppress your appetite; you'd eat less and lose the weight.

Schwartz, however, can imagine a simple mechanism that would throw this ''homeostatic'' system off balance: if your brain were to lose its sensitivity to insulin, just as your fat and muscles do when they are flooded with it. Now the higher insulin production that comes with getting fatter would no longer compensate by suppressing your appetite, because your brain would no longer register the rise in insulin. The end result would be a physiologic state in which obesity is almost preordained, and one in which the carbohydrate-insulin connection could play a major role. Schwartz says he believes this could indeed be happening, but research hasn't progressed far enough to prove it. ''It is just a hypothesis,'' he says. ''It still needs to be sorted out.''

David Ludwig, the Harvard endocrinologist, says that it's the direct effect of insulin on blood sugar that does the trick. He notes that when diabetics get too much insulin, their blood sugar drops and they get ravenously hungry. They gain weight because they eat more, and the insulin promotes fat deposition. The same happens with lab animals. This, he says, is effectively what happens when we eat carbohydrates -- in particular sugar and starches like potatoes and rice, or anything made from flour, like a slice of white bread. These are known in the jargon as high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, which means they are absorbed quickly into the blood. As a result, they cause a spike of blood sugar and a surge of insulin within minutes. The resulting rush of insulin stores the blood sugar away and a few hours later, your blood sugar is lower than it was before you ate. As Ludwig explains, your body effectively thinks it has run out of fuel, but the insulin is still high enough to prevent you from burning your own fat. The result is hunger and a craving for more carbohydrates. It's another vicious circle, and another situation ripe for obesity....

[Basically, starches, once swallowed, are indistinguishable from sugars!]

Sugar and corn syrup from soft drinks, juices and the copious teas and sports drinks now supply more than 10 percent of our total calories; the 80's saw the introduction of Big Gulps and 32-ounce cups of Coca-Cola, blasted through with sugar, but 100 percent fat free. When it comes to insulin and blood sugar, these soft drinks and fruit juices -- what the scientists call ''wet carbohydrates'' -- might indeed be worst of all. (Diet soda accounts for less than a quarter of the soda market.)

The gist of the glycemic-index idea is that the longer it takes the carbohydrates to be digested, the lesser the impact on blood sugar and insulin and the healthier the food. Those foods with the highest rating on the glycemic index are some simple sugars, starches and anything made from flour. Green vegetables, beans and whole grains cause a much slower rise in blood sugar because they have fiber, a nondigestible carbohydrate, which slows down digestion and lowers the glycemic index. Protein and fat serve the same purpose, which implies that eating fat can be beneficial, a notion that is still unacceptable. And the glycemic-index concept implies that a primary cause of Syndrome X, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity is the long-term damage caused by the repeated surges of insulin that come from eating starches and refined carbohydrates....

At Ludwig's pediatric obesity clinic, he has been prescribing low-glycemic-index diets to children and adolescents for five years now. He does not recommend the Atkins diet because he says he believes such a very low carbohydrate approach is unnecessarily restrictive; instead, he tells his patients to effectively replace refined carbohydrates and starches with vegetables, legumes and fruit. This makes a low-glycemic-index diet consistent with dietary common sense, albeit in a higher-fat kind of way....

6. Robert Atkins

The 71-year-old Atkins, a graduate of Cornell medical school, says he first tried a very low carbohydrate diet in 1963 after reading about one in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He lost weight effortlessly, had his epiphany and turned a fledgling Manhattan cardiology practice into a thriving obesity clinic. He then alienated the entire medical community by telling his readers to eat as much fat and protein as they wanted, as long as they ate little to no carbohydrates. They would lose weight, he said, because they would keep their insulin down; they wouldn't be hungry; and they would have less resistance to burning their own fat. Atkins also noted that starches and sugar were harmful in any event because they raised triglyceride levels and that this was a greater risk factor for heart disease than cholesterol.

Atkins's diet is both the ultimate manifestation of the alternative hypothesis as well as the battleground on which the fat-versus-carbohydrates controversy is likely to be fought scientifically over the next few years. After insisting Atkins was a quack for three decades, obesity experts are now finding it difficult to ignore the copious anecdotal evidence that his diet does just what he has claimed. Take Albert Stunkard, for instance. Stunkard has been trying to treat obesity for half a century, but he told me he had his epiphany about Atkins and maybe about obesity as well just recently when he discovered that the chief of radiology in his hospital had lost 60 pounds on Atkins's diet. ''Well, apparently all the young guys in the hospital are doing it,'' he said. ''So we decided to do a study.'' When I asked Stunkard if he or any of his colleagues considered testing Atkins's diet 30 years ago, he said they hadn't because they thought Atkins was ''a jerk'' who was just out to make money: this ''turned people off, and so nobody took him seriously enough to do what we're finally doing.''

In fact, when the American Medical Association released its scathing critique of Atkins's diet in March 1973, it acknowledged that the diet probably worked, but expressed little interest in why. Through the 60's, this had been a subject of considerable research, with the conclusion that Atkins-like diets were low-calorie diets in disguise; that when you cut out pasta, bread and potatoes, you'll have a hard time eating enough meat, vegetables and cheese to replace the calories.

7. Ketosis, a way to kick-start weight loss

That, however, raised the question of why such a low-calorie regimen would also suppress hunger, which Atkins insisted was the signature characteristic of the diet. One possibility was Endocrinology 101: that fat and protein make you sated and, lacking carbohydrates and the ensuing swings of blood sugar and insulin, you stay sated. The other possibility arose from the fact that Atkins's diet is ''ketogenic.'' This means that insulin falls so low that you enter a state called ketosis, which is what happens during fasting and starvation. Your muscles and tissues burn body fat for energy, as does your brain in the form of fat molecules produced by the liver called ketones. Atkins saw ketosis as the obvious way to kick-start weight loss. He also liked to say that ketosis was so energizing that it was better than sex, which set him up for some ridicule. An inevitable criticism of Atkins's diet has been that ketosis is dangerous and to be avoided at all costs.

When I interviewed ketosis experts, however, they universally sided with Atkins, and suggested that maybe the medical community and the media confuse ketosis with ketoacidosis, a variant of ketosis that occurs in untreated diabetics and can be fatal. ''Doctors are scared of ketosis,'' says Richard Veech, an N.I.H. researcher who studied medicine at Harvard and then got his doctorate at Oxford University with the Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs. ''They're always worried about diabetic ketoacidosis. But ketosis is a normal physiologic state. I would argue it is the normal state of man. It's not normal to have McDonald's and a delicatessen around every corner. It's normal to starve.''

Simply put, ketosis is evolution's answer to the thrifty gene. We may have evolved to efficiently store fat for times of famine, says Veech, but we also evolved ketosis to efficiently live off that fat when necessary. Rather than being poison, which is how the press often refers to ketones, they make the body run more efficiently and provide a backup fuel source for the brain. Veech calls ketones ''magic'' and has shown that both the heart and brain run 25 percent more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar.

8. Two serious tests of Atkins diet

The bottom line is that for the better part of 30 years Atkins insisted his diet worked and was safe, Americans apparently tried it by the tens of millions, while nutritionists, physicians, public- health authorities and anyone concerned with heart disease insisted it could kill them, and expressed little or no desire to find out who was right. During that period, only two groups of U.S. researchers tested the diet, or at least published their results. In the early 70's, J.P. Flatt and Harvard's George Blackburn pioneered the ''protein-sparing modified fast'' to treat postsurgical patients, and they tested it on obese volunteers....

Blackburn, who later became president of the American Society of Clinical Nutrition, describes his regime as ''an Atkins diet without excess fat'' and says he had to give it a fancy name or nobody would take him seriously. The diet was ''lean meat, fish and fowl'' supplemented by vitamins and minerals. ''People loved it,'' Blackburn recalls. ''Great weight loss. We couldn't run them off with a baseball bat.''...

The second trial, published in September 1980, was done at the George Washington University Medical Center. Two dozen obese volunteers agreed to follow Atkins's diet for eight weeks and lost an average of 17 pounds each, with no apparent ill effects, although their L.D.L. cholesterol did go up....

Now researchers have finally decided that Atkins's diet and other low-carb diets have to be tested, and are doing so against traditional low-calorie-low-fat diets as recommended by the American Heart Association....

None of these studies have been financed by the N.I.H., and none have yet been published. But the results have been reported at conferences -- by researchers at Schneider Children's Hospital on Long Island, Duke University and the University of Cincinnati, and by Stern's group at the Philadelphia V.A. Hospital. And then there's the study Stunkard had mentioned, led by Gary Foster at the University of Pennsylvania, Sam Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, and Jim Hill, who runs the University of Colorado Center for Human Nutrition in Denver. The results of all five of these studies are remarkably consistent. Subjects on some form of the Atkins diet -- whether overweight adolescents on the diet for 12 weeks as at Schneider, or obese adults averaging 295 pounds on the diet for six months, as at the Philadelphia V.A. -- lost twice the weight as the subjects on the low-fat, low-calorie diets.

In all five studies, cholesterol levels improved similarly with both diets, but triglyceride levels were considerably lower with the Atkins diet. Though researchers are hesitant to agree with this, it does suggest that heart-disease risk could actually be reduced when fat is added back into the diet and starches and refined carbohydrates are removed.

Posted 1:18 PM by Blah blah

For all you SATC girls out there! Candace Bushnell Single No More (AP):

"The author of Sex and the City has gotten hitched. Bushnell, whose best-selling book was adapted into the HBO television program starring Sarah Jessica Parker, married Charles Askegard July 4 on a wind-swept Nantucket beach in Massachusetts."

Candace Bushnell and Charles Askegard (NY Times). The story of their courtship, and why an alpha female decided to marry a ballet dancer.

With all of Unica Hija's talk of the "alpha male" (with epsilon, mu, nu, omicron, and pi men sure to follow), this book seems to lie contrary to conventional wisdom about him. Endangered species (Salon.com):
_____________
Why are there no more rugged, self-reliant he-men like the subject of Elizabeth Gilbert's The Last American Man? Because no women will put up with them....

[Eustace] Conway sees himself as a woodsman, in the tradition of such boyhood heroes as Daniel Boone. As a child he embarked on an extremely methodical and focused campaign to teach himself how to live in the wild, and he became very good at it. He's an expert hunter who knows how to turn his prey into clothing as well as food. For years at a time he lived in the forests of North Carolina in a teepee he made himself. He carved his own bowls from wood and made his own pots from creek clay. He wove baskets and started fires without matches. He hiked all 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail, eating only what he could catch or forage along the way. He rode a horse across America.

Gilbert sees Conway as both the consummate woodsman and as the last specimen of something she holds dear, a classic American man. It's not quite clear if Conway himself finds the question of masculinity very compelling (although at one point Gilbert describes him as regretting the vanishing of coming-of-age rituals for boys), but for Gilbert it's the crux of the matter. For her, Conway truly is what the rest of American men can only imagine themselves being; "computer programmers, biogenetic researchers, politicians, or media moguls" may call themselves "maverick," or "pioneer," but Conway is both things in actuality....

He's had a series of beautiful, strong, capable girlfriends and many worshipful disciples. And yet these people, no matter how much they may idolize Conway at first, have a way of getting fed up and walking out on him. Despite his heartfelt desire for a wife and children, he has neither....

The thrilling masculinity practiced by [Daniel] Boone and other frontiersmen, it turns out, was founded on the principle of bossing everybody else around and getting no back talk about it, either. Why would anyone want to live with that who didn't have to? And what happens to the patriarch when suddenly there's no more patriarchy, when everybody who doesn't like playing by his rules decides to take the ball and go home?

Posted 11:45 AM by Blah blah

Fake Wedding Rings

For the ladies: sometimes I see girls who wear a ring on their wedding finger, even though they are single. Is the only reason they do this to keep guys from bugging them? How many of you do that, why, and how common is that?

I started this poll on RBJ:

I am single but wear a ring on my wedding finger to keep guys from bugging me.
I am single but wear a ring on my wedding finger for another reason. (What is it?)
I am attached and wear a ring on my wedding finger.
I am attached and wear a ring on my (which?) finger.
I am attached but don't wear a ring.
None of the above, but I know a single girl who wears a ring on her wedding finger.

Please take it if you can!

Posted 11:27 AM by Blah blah

Yen and Her 50 Questions

I miss reading Yen and her journal, Shinkansen. She's a Filipina girl in Japan who was my all-time favorite journaller last year, before she quit writing. One glance will tell you why I think she's both ear candy and eye candy. How are you, Yen?

Last April, she sent out a list of 50 questions to us on her notify list. (They were the original 50 questions, before Aiyah's.) Please join my Notify List, by the way. That will let me send general notes to all of you.

Here were our answers to the 50 questions. Here were my answers.

Amazingly, most of what I said then is still true! What about you?

Posted 10:38 AM by Blah blah

From Unica Hija (which means "only girl" in Tagalog):

Top 10 Reasons Why there Wouldn't be a Filipino-American President
(from an e-mail I got; it's so damn funny just had to post it!)

10. White House is not big enough for in-laws and the relatives.
9. Not enough parking spaces at White House for 2 Honda Civics, Toyota Celica, 1985 Mercedes Benz Diesel, BMW (big mean wife) and MPV (My Pinoy Van) and the jeepney owner..
8. Dignitaries generally intimidated by eating with fingers at state dinners.
7. Too many dining rooms in the White House (Where will they put the last supper picture?)
6. White House walls not big enough to hold giant wooden spoon and fork.
5. Secret Service staff won't respond to "psssst, psssst."
4. Secret service staff uncomfortable driving presidential car with rosary hanging on the rear view mirror or the statuette of Santo Nino on the dashboard.
3. No budget allocation to purchase karaoke machines on every White House Room.
2. State dinners do not allow "Take Home."
AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON
1. AIR FORCE ONE does not allow overweight balikbayan boxes.

HAHAHA, Unica Hija! I don't get the balikbayan joke. Those lousy habits die hard. Once I treated my parents to this French restaurant for dinner...

Mom: (To my dad) No, NO, dummy. You don't use the salad spoon to eat your soup!
Dad: Oh c'mon!
Mom: When I was studying foods and nutrition in college, we were very picky about using the right fork. We're in a nice place now. As I said before, only use that fork for dessert. And fold your napkin like this...
[We finish eating.]
Mom: (To waitress) HEY, xiaojie...I mean, EYYY! EY!...Pssssssst, psssst!
Waitress: Oui, mademoiselle?
Mom: Can we have a DOGGIE BAG?

Then one time I took a sophisticated Beijing girl to lunch at Mistral, a French-Californian place.

Me: Why don't you try the Angel Hair Pasta with Chicken Provencal? It sounds sweet and delicious!
Girl: Okay, great!
[Food comes.]
Girl: (To waiter) Wait! Can I have some...[drum roll]...STEAMED RICE? And hot tea?

[Ba dum...dump!]

Posted 6:56 PM by Anonymous

Oof ... I’m back! It was a difficult weekend. I had all these plans to post stuff about my obsession with Spike (yes, he of Buffy fame), my thankfulness for old friends (who seem like fine wine ... your appreciation of them improving in direct correlation to the number of years you’ve know them), about how, sometimes, “the truth really does set you free”.

But instead, I had a huge blow up argument with someone I care about more than anything in this world. It’s this little vicious dance the two of us do ... since I’ve been home, I’m fought with her on average every two weeks. Each argument is draining and horrible; we both say things that pierce right through to hurt the other. And the precise reason these fights are so debilitating is because we love each other so much. Isn’t it ironic that we always end up hurting the ones we love most? (I’ve found that lately, such trite phrases like that, have become a reality in my life. I guess there was a reason why they were coined in the first place, why they continue to be used, huh?)

And then, this morning I woke up, the last one at home, on a Monday morning. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was alone in an empty house, our little family unit now down to 3 persons. (With a fourth member all the way across the world, and the last, resting in a peaceful sleep of forever) I didn’t just feel alone, I felt sad. Despite knowing that I was going to see them by the end of the workday, I missed her and my sister so much. I’d spent the last 2 days angry and resentful that she refused to understand me. But damn, I missed her.

Perhaps what we need is some sort of “couples” counselling. I wish I could apologize and somehow magically become the perfect daugther that I’m just not. But I worry that we’ll repeat this all over again, like we’ve been doing for the past 5 months.

Listen, I’m sorry, mum, I really am. I wonder if that will help?

Posted 8:45 AM by Blah blah

Where are you, my cowriters? S X? J A? And you know whom? Tap tap...

Michelle

Michelle, a blonde lady from Germany who seems like a shy actress, left a surprising note in my guestbook yesterday. She, a huge Michael Jackson fan, had found me from my post about Jackson and his album Invincible last year. She wrote (about me?): "One e.g. wrote about MJ's online-chat past year. It's funny. He was very critical, but I can accept it that way. Nobody has to love MJ just because I do. And it's not like just because you don't love somebody you're disrespecting the person. I felt the critic of that person was very well-thought, and I like to read it that way then. It's totally fine with me."

Thanks, Michelle! I do respect Jackson and meant it exactly as you said. I glanced through her site and she's a fantastic artistic photographer! I like this series of photos of her, plus she has a cute cat Moorao.

The most disturbing part of her site is her biography. Her text is extremely small and very very hard to read. Her life sounds absolutely HORRIFYING:

Michelle says she was sexually abused from ages six to twelve by a total of six people.
Taken from her parents (her mom was sent to prison for drugs) and sent to a home for children.
Raised by her maternal grandmother. Parents divorced.
Suffered from anorexia.
Had suicidal thoughts and had attempted suicide several times.
Been in therapy but not found a satisfying therapist yet.
Had many surgeries on her hip, which is damaged somehow.
Been in and out of many relationships.
Started a business...her field is graphic design.

Please send her your good wishes. I don't know what to say, Michelle. You obviously have huge huge psychological issues, and it's gonna take time, therapy, and a lot of supportive friends to help you conquer your demons. I am pleased that you are pushing forward with your life and trying to be happy and productive. Be careful with how you seem to rush into meeting new guys, though. You've got a lot of work to do on yourself. Warm wishes!