Skinny Bitch

A Quackenfriend gave JLQ "Skinny Bitch." She is reading/scanning it casually out of curiosity, but certainly not taking it to heart. I scanned a few of its pages and not surprisingly took it to heart. It hit one of my pet peeves about the world - bad "science" and terrible research.

I'll just post my rambling email I sent to her this morning. I thought it was a good idea to write this email instead of, say, "getting ready for work" and "making sure I'd be on time." Priorities, people, all about priorities.

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Re: Skinny Bitch

Are you effing kidding me? This is poor science. Maybe the rest of the book is better, and the chapter I read in the beginning seemed very good, but the meat eating thing reeks of poor science - having a conclusion, then hunting around for evidence to support it. I haven't taken an anthro class in a decade and can tell this section is rubbish.

The Atkins diet is moronic. Obviously. "If you study animals in the wild, you will note that they do not rely on anything other than their natural hunting ability, speed, strength, claws, teeth, and jaws." Then the girls go on to describe how physically frail we are. And that we'd get our ass kicked if we tried to hunt with our bare hands. That we would be helpless without silverware or an oven.

What? There are so many things wrong with these three pages it is unbelievable. It seems that the girls have forgotten that controlling our environment through intelligence and tool use can change our evolutionary trajectory. It seems they have forgotten that there are things called "scavengers" that can also eat meat. They seem to have forgotten about half of our teeth, designed for ripping and tearing. They must have forgotten that before using ovens, humans domesticated fire...i dunno...two MILLION years ago.

"Even if this were the case and eating meat did help us evolve, look at what we evolved from. We looked like friggin' apes and had massive heads, strong jaws, and brute strength. Maybe back then we were supposed to eat meat."

Really? Seriously? Did they watch 1,000,000 BC for their evolutionary research? We looked like apes because of our common ancestor. True. But these big cave dudes that we evolved from were...smaller than us. Every Australopithecine was smaller than us. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and I'm sure the half dozen other early Homo species were *all* smaller than us. What was a reason they had huge heads and jaws? We had bigass teeth to grind tough plant material. When we domesticated fire and could begin breaking down plant and animal products into more easily digestible substances our teeth and skulls began to get smaller.

"But the last time we checked, we aren't cavemen anymore."

I'm pretty sure they think early humans meant Neanderthals. Big dudes with clubs, eating a mammoth a day. Last I checked, Neanderthals were evolutionary dead ends.

It is apparent they are discounting or not aware of the last two million years of human evolution. They go on to talk about our digestive tract, our saliva, comparing it to carnivores. Maybe it differs because we are OMNIvores. Maybe it differs because unlike every other carnivore, we tend not to eat raw meat, and haven't for a long, long time.

Want to get preachy about factory farming? No problem. Want to talk about fad diets being dumb? Good, they are. Want to try to help girls eat sensibly? Fantastic. But read this book with a grain of salt (which I know you already are). The fact that my passing knowledge of human evolution can completely rip apart these three pages of text makes me think that if I had passing knowledge of some other topics in this book, they, too may not hold up to scrutiny. Books like these that sound like science can be as bad as the fad diets and myths they are trying to debunk, and there is no reason more research wasn't done to avoid that.
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See, this pisses me off in the same way intelligent design pisses me off. It is worse than Creationism, because it wears a veneer of science while possessing none of its rigors and operates in the wrong direction (conclusion first). Boo, I say. Boo.

Sample Sizes

I've got irrefutable, scientifically sound evidence that people in New York are nicer than people in Philly.

A couple of weekends ago, I met a few of my friends (Ian and his girl Kim, Chandra and her girl Tavara) in Philadelphia to have a touristy weekend. We stayed at Elizabeth and Greg(g?)'s place, which are a few of the Quackenfriends with their two dogs, two cats, one newborn, and one 2.5 year old. Good mammals and a real credit to their species, all of them (except maybe that temperamental basement cat).

I had been listening to the JLQ iPod a bit on the train ride down and stashed it in the front packet of my trusty AMEX duffel bag before exiting the SEPTA R7 train in Philly. When we got to the Quackenfriend's place, I didn't see the iPod. The only possible explanations were that the iPod was stolen from my bag or that it fell out somehow and some guy in a Chase Utley jersey saw this happen, picked it up, began cackling, and scurried off to his 3-bedroom house in the suburbs. These are the only things that could have happened.


Contrast that to my experiences this month in NYC.

A few weeks ago, during an especially hot day, I was rushing to an appointment off 1st Avenue on the Upper East Side. A few seconds after I got to the building, two tweens rush in after me and inform me that I had dropped my cell phone. I thanked them a few times and headed up the elevator to my appointment, thinking that I should have given them ten bucks or something for being such rad girls.

Last week, during a somewhat hot day, I was rushing to an appointment off Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side. I walked out of the 6-train stop at 96th street, listening to my iPod and generally oblivious to the world. I saw a woman in front of me stop and look back over her shoulder down the subway stairs. Since it was 9:15am and I had just taken four trains and was late to my appointment, my first thought was, "MOVE, YOU RETARDED IDIOT SHITFUCK! I AM LATE AND I HATE THE MORNINGS AND RUSH HOUR AND YOUR FACE!" A fraction of a second later, I figure I may want to look at what's going on and maybe step out of my grumpy morning zone for a second. Turns out a 30-something year-old guy was trying to tell me I had dropped my cell phone from my pocket and that maybe I should take it from him. I thanked him a few times and walked to my appointment, thinking that it was ok that I didn't give him ten bucks or something for being such a rad guy.


My conclusion? That I shouldn't drop my phone so much? No. That I shouldn't go to the Upper East Side anymore because every time I lose my phone I'm there? No, that's not the point.

The correct conclusion is that 100% of the time when I lose one of my electronics in NYC, someone makes damn sure I get it back. And 100% of the time when I lose portable electronics in Philly, a guy in a Chase Utley jersey steals it, then sells it to buy mediocre cheese steaks at Pat's and Gino's.

All hail the camera phone!

I like my little phone. It has a touch-screen, a keyboard, it is small, it usually works, it cost me less than a hundred bucks. It has a pretty bad camera. I'm not going to carry a real camera around with me, so most of the pictures I'm going to take in 2008 are going to be horrible.

I've also mentioned to to fellow blogger Gordon that personal blogs seem to have different purposes. I envisioned this thing being one-third diary, one-third keep-in-touch-with-friends-that-don't-live-so-close-no-more, and one-third things that I think are deep/cool/observations that other people have noticed for along time but I just realized and now I think I'm special and clever.

This entry is going to be mostly diary, unless other people enjoy blurry pictures of things I've seen without much in the way of context, explanation, or conclusions.

Let's get to the pics -

Care Bears on Fire were fun.



The 19-piece Jersey-Metal band later in the night at Otto's Shrunken Head was fun.



The last band at Otto's was surprisingly good and even had a few fans.



The Loved Ones, who opened before the Hold Steady, rocked the shit out of the crowd during a insane storm.




The Hold Steady did not disappoint, and it was nice to be in the first two rows of people the entire show.


And oddly enough for the area (Williamsburg/Greenpoint) the crowd was really good.




Frightened Rabbit (below) and Oxford Collective at Southpaw were both fun.


Live music is fun.
Unfortunately, I probably won't go to one of the best free NY concerts, the Siren festival, this weekend because God is going to make it really hot again this year and my jerkface friend Stefan is having his awesome, shitty birthday party that night.

They're really scottish

The drummer played the drums really hard and loud.

A good opening band.

One too many drinks.

A nice walk home in perfect weather from a show in my neighborhood.

Some Goose. A touch of the pipeweed.

A good client to pay the bills.

No time to pick up laundry, get a haircut, or clean the apartment.

How lucky am I?

(Anya and Jerf missed a show)