From the land of milk and duh

An interesting new scientific study is beaming around the Internets today. The story goes deeper than the premise, but I think it’s important, or at least relevant to me, to highlight it. Consider:

Redheads sunburn easily, putting them at high risk of skin cancer.

Really? No kidding.

Ok, so that was the setup so that I could write “from the land of milk and duh.” There’s actually an interesting scientific discovery here. Consider:

Duke chemistry professor John Simon analyzed how the pigments in naturally red and black hair reacted as they absorbed either ultraviolet B rays associated with sunburn, or ultraviolet A rays, which can penetrate and damage skin even without a burn.

Both kinds of light caused a reaction with the redheads’ pigment that creates molecules that damage DNA and cells in ways that can spur cancer.

In contrast, only UVB light caused that oxidative reaction with the pigment from black hair, called eumelanin, Simon reported.

Dr. Simon stated that this is only a theory, with more research necessary to determine if his findings are consistent with other researchers. That, of course, is how science works. Doctors knew that redheads have a higher risk of skin cancer, but no one knew why. Dr. Simon presents his hypothesis based on test observations and now other scientists work to disprove that theory. Sorta like evolution, one suspects.

This theory may not lead to the proverbial cure for cancer (literally in this case), but the advance of knowledge is important. I’m not even sure it adds much because it doesn’t change my relationship with the sun; I treat the sun as a stalker and avoid it as much as possible. (I’m practically a shut-in.) But, again, satisfying intellectual curiosity is useful in a developed society. And it allows me to write “from the land of milk and duh.”

Particularly annoying, though, is I now know that even when I’m walking around, my arch nemesis UVA is lurking. Bastards.

(Yes, I know I’m probably the only person who thinks that’s funny, but holy crap, am I laughing.)

Why am I admitting this?

Today is Michael Jackson’s birthday. I didn’t see this on a celebrity birthday list or on some random website today. I know this useless fact from memory, which amounts to more than twenty years of precious grey matter real estate wasted on a trivial piece of non-information. Why do I know that today is Michael Jackson’s birthday? I know because, like every other pre-teen in the early ’80s, I couldn’t listen to Thriller enough or learn enough details about Michael Jackson. That meant no end to watching every fluff-piece MTV could air. One of the details I learned was that his birthday is August 29th.

Like every other fact I ever encountered, his birthday should’ve bypassed my brain as it passed through my ears. It didn’t, and here is the embarrassing reason it didn’t. I was born in July, six weeks early. If my mom had carried me to term, her due date was August 29th. As a child obsessed with pop culture’s biggest star, I thought that would’ve been the height of cool. Michael Freaking Jackson! Instead, I share my birthday with Linda Ronstadt. That crushed my then pre-teen spirit.

Today, I can’t tell you which year Michael Jackson was born, and I’m as pleased as possible about that for someone who still remembers the day. But not knowing the year doesn’t mean this post doesn’t offer proof that we’re wise not to let children make meaningful decisions without some form of intelligent supervision. How many ten-year-olds would’ve written “Michael Jackson” on their presidential ballots in 1984?

I won’t even discuss “Break the cable! Break the cable!”

Reading through my Virginia Tech news feed tonight, I realized that classes started Monday. Normally, this wouldn’t factor into my world anymore because I graduated more than seven years ago, except that memory sparked another memory. So I’ll share it here.

After my freshman year, the annual influx of freshmen always entertained. It was the common belief as we all aged, the new students looked younger and younger. I swear that toddlers attended VT by the end of my graduate career.

But we had no sympathy for the kids. We’d ride the Blacksburg Transit (the free bus system) just to mess with them. They were always the impatient chatterboxes intent on pestering the driver with their constant giddiness about where all the parties were. They’d only been in town for six or seven days, so they knew nothing. As knowledgeable Blacksburg inhabitants, we always told them when to get off the bus. We didn’t tell them the correct bus stop, but they couldn’t expect everything, could they?

I bet he wrote it on a TPS report

Coinciding perfectly with my move into a new house, which requires a different route to work, the train system begins it’s once-every-decade track upgrades. Perfect. Primarily, this has meant that the train proceeds slower than normal, without actual stops between stations. It’s a little frustrating, but I always have a book or a movie, so the annoyance factor is low.

Wednesday, this was not the case. The train stopped once for a signal problem. The delay lasted nearly 30 minutes. But I semi-expect that right now because of the track work. We stopped again a few minutes after the train journeyed past the signal delay. The conductor announced this:

Please do not laugh when I tell you this, but we’re being stopped for a mandatory Federal Railroad Administration efficiency test.

The efficiency test delayed us an additional 20 minutes. Thank you, Uncle Sam.

Do they serve an orthopedic function?

I was never one of the cool kids in grade school. My mother made certain that we lived in a good neighborhood with good schools, but we never had much money left over after the basics. I rarely had the latest clothes or shoes. My red hair already made fitting in with the cool kids that much harder, so without the hip fashion, I spent my academic years as one of the smart kids, instead.

I’m not complaining. I’ve achieved enough through my intelligence that I can now afford all of those hip fashions, if I want. But I’m not complaining because, as much now as then, I don’t want those finer things. I’m content with t-shirts, shorts, and a pair of Chucks. It might be hip, I don’t know, but the whole bit costs maybe $60. Living in the D.C. area, I know people who spend more than that on their left sleeve. It’s insanity. Happily, because I’m still the old man I was at thirteen, I don’t feel bad about it. I think I’m adjusted enough to just accept that people are different, with different tastes, wants, and needs. Yay, me!

So why am I so pleased when I see one of the fashionable cool kids in D.C. getting into his Saturn?

Ah, c’mon, Lois, isn’t “bribe” just another word for “love”?

Remember how Janet Jackson almost ruined America? Parents Television Council president Brent Bozell hasn’t. And he’s mad because Congress, specifically the Senate, has. Consider:

“This should have happened a long, long time ago,” said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, an entertainment industry watchdog group. “The House continues to do its job and the Senate continues not to do its job.”

Last year the Senate bill was held up and eventually scuttled by Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-S.C., who wanted the legislation to include a requirement that the Federal Communications Commission study violence on television. This year the issue has been bottled up in the Senate Commerce Committee.

Is it safe to consider this a situation in which our un-oiled wheels of government encountered the friction of common sense and ground to a halt? (Did I take the metaphor too far?) I would like to believe that the bill hasn’t passed the Senate because enough senators are smart enough to understand this:

“What has become clear is this really isn’t about protecting kids. This is about changing television,” said Jim Dyke, executive director of TV Watch, an advocacy group funded in part by the entertainment industry. “A politically active, savvy group of Americans has figured out a way to make TV in their own image.”

Unfortunately, I don’t believe our senators are that smart. Remember, the Senate’s Majority Leader, a medical doctor (dare I say “scientist”) recently backed President Bush’s call for Intelligent Design lessons in America’s science classes. This is also the same Senate Majority Leader who initially failed to correct ridiculous claims of how HIV can be transmitted so as not to discredit scare-mongering nonsense from a few radical conservatives. So, no, that’s probably not it.

So what is it? What could be the reason? Perhaps this is an answer:

Lanier Swann, director of government relations at Concerned Women for America said the panel’s chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, “needs to answer for the reason that he isn’t helping move this forward when it’s something that the American public would really like to see.”

Stevens hasn’t said why two indecency bills pending in his committee have yet to get a hearing. He has advocated stronger indecency rules for broadcasters, and has complained about vulgarity on cable. His aides say he is not ignoring the issue and is crafting his own legislation.

Committee staff director Lisa Sutherland said Stevens would use the House bill as a framework, but would make changes. She did not detail them, but said Stevens was exploring how parents with cable television can protect children from indecent programming.

Senator Stevens is crafting his own legislation, which I think implies that he’ll use this to gratify his ego, since he’s already spouted off about regulating cable. Perhaps he’ll name it after himself. I hope he does, because history will not be kind to that. Another possibility is that he is determining, with other senators, ways to bury pork in the indecency bill. Perhaps he could fund a free television, with V-chip, for every citizen of Alaska. I would complain, but I vow to stop complaining if he offers one of those televisions to Mr. Bozell.

I get 70 miles to the gallon on this hog.

I can’t read and article about the impact of rising gas prices on poorer families without highlighting this nugget:

Morales and a cousin who lives next door are saving gas money by working together to cut trips. Maria Puicon, 28, a single mother of three, works in the office of a local hospital. If one of them is out, that one checks with the other to see if she needs anything.

They also gather at home on Friday nights instead of going out, and their kids play in the backyard.

“We cannot go anywhere because of the gas,” Puicon says.

Right, so now you know that my sense-of-humor tends toward the four-year-old mentality.

Shut your mouth, funny guy, and make it.

I’ve taken on the potentially misguided task of refuting liberal media bias claims by partisan hacks over the past few months. I’ve tried to make it clear that I can accept bias in individual media outlets, but for every liberal bias, there’s a corresponding conservative bias. My argument, even when poorly stated, is that bias is bad, regardless of its blue or red tint. The facts are what matters. Anyone who claims otherwise isn’t interested in learning, just propagandizing.

Perusing through the Internets (I’m making the Ha Ha there, people) this morning, I stumbled upon an interesting article relating to the perpetual nonsense that is the media bias argument. Consider:

Pardon me for being either ignorant or naive, but isn’t a reporter’s first responsibility the finding–and publishing–of the truth? And isn’t it at least possible that this drive “to make the world better” is at the core of the media’s current malaise? My point here is that if one goes into a job with a zeal to transform the world, instead of a zeal to tell the world’s stories, isn’t it more likely that one would search for and “find” those stories that serve to support and reinforce one’s own prejudices?

I’m not abandoning my underlying assumption that bad news sells (“if it bleeds, it leads”), but yeah, I think that paragraph highlights a contributing factor. Report on facts with a view of how the world “needs” to be and the reporting will slant to a bias. That’s as true for conservative media outlets as it is for liberal media outlets. Any journalistic notion disappears when facts become soapbox-support.

I may be reaching here, but I consider myself sufficiently intelligent to understand what’s going on. I don’t care about non-stories. Blather on about how America is run by imperialistic, capitalist pigs and I’ll turn away from your news. Shock me with the latest missing pretty blonde and I’ll turn away from your news. Give me the facts because that’s what I want. Then, because media is a business, sell me an extension (news) product, such as interviews, features, or even something radical with a blogging mentality. Give me a reason to stay tuned. Call-in radio shows succeed for more reasons than just the opportunity for listeners to shout “Baba Booey” over the phone.

However, make certain that there’s a difference between the two. The first, I can get anywhere, or better stated, elsewhere. The rest is the part that gets my brain going and makes me a (semi-) participant in the process. Treat me as though I’m intelligent and I might not hate media outlets. Educate me without pandering to a lowest common denominator mentality, or what some blow-hard thinks I should think, I might even stay tuned.

(Hat tip: Donklephant)

There’s this chick… there’s these two chicks… they’re triplets, man.

In a recent mailbag column, Bill Simmons fielded this question:

Q: In your “Midseason Form” column, you write about how your wife hates Mariah Carey and that most women do. Try this: Tell your wife that you find Jennifer Love Hewitt attractive and you enjoy her acting. You may even be able to squeeze a whole column out of her reaction and the pure bile that women spit when hearing her name. Ask any sisters, sisters-in-law, other female friends; they all hate her universally, and it is unexplainable.
–Jack, Cleveland

SG: Just for the record, I tried this with the Sports Gal this week … she reacted like George Brett in the Pine Tar Game. Highest of high comedy. Somebody needs to film the pilot, “Everybody Hates Jennifer.”

I encountered this very topic Saturday when flipping through the new issue of Entertainment Weekly. Encountering an underwear ad featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt, I made some random comment about it to Danielle and tilted the magazine so she could see. A look of scorn quickly pierced the magazine’s flimsy paper, followed by a “She can’t act and that photo is so airbrushed.” Hmmm… interesting.

I agreed, of course, but not just because it was the manhood-saving correct response. I don’t give Jennifer Love Hewitt much thought, other than my inability to turn the channel if I land on an airing of Can’t Hardly Wait, but that’s really little more than my enjoyment of the Preston Meyers character. Or maybe it’s just my inexplicable man-crush on teen comedies. Regardless, I don’t get the Jennifer Love Hewitt hatred, but it obviously exists and seems universal. Fascinating.

Perhaps I should draw horns and facial hair on the picture and leave it on top of the trash, just to be safe.