bubbly and lovely: i'm too poor for therapy.
been there and back again. too many thoughts and opinions and hormones get me in trouble.
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4.29.2004
double whammy in one day
what is bush doing to the environment?! please, if you have any concern for the state of the natural world when your kids are born, vote bush out of office. accusations are flying that he's manipulating EPA science to weaken clean air act regulations, and he's fudging the numbers of salmon to include hatchery fish, to satisfy some endangered species act clause. and his whole act in florida to protect the everglades -- well, consider that it was FLORIDA, THE DISPUTED STATE OF THE 2000 ELECTION. he's making it all sound good so he can get the vote and then if he does win, he'll be like oh well can't do it because it would reduce the amount of mercury in drinking water and we can't have that!
Air Quality Experts Decry New Bush Policy
The EPA modelers say science is being altered to suit objectives. U.S. officials reject notion.
By Elizabeth Shogren
(LA) Times Staff Writer
April 29, 2004
WASHINGTON — Career government experts in the arcane field of air quality modeling have joined to oppose a new Bush administration policy that they say threatens air quality over national parks and wilderness areas.
In a rare internal protest, they contend that science is being manipulated to suit policy objectives.
The air quality modelers in all but one of the Environmental Protection Agency's 10 regions have told their bosses that they believe the policy, which alters the air quality modeling for North Dakota's national parks and wilderness areas, represents "substantial changes from past air quality modeling guidance … and accepted methods."
They also warned that the policy change "could set a precedent" for other regions, according to an internal EPA memo dated April 21.
Veteran EPA officials said the agency's modelers decided to take a stand against the policy because they were offended by what they termed the administration's efforts to use science to mask a policy change that would hurt air quality. They also were worried that the new policy would make it more difficult to protect the air over federal lands.
"I was aghast," said one of the modelers, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The modelers said they decided to write the memo despite fears of repercussions.
"This is what our job is — to protect air quality," the modeler said. "If we don't speak up at a potential threat like this, what are we for?"
Bush administration officials involved in the new policy rejected the notion that they had altered the science to meet their policy aim.
"That's ridiculous," said Bill Wehrum, counsel to the EPA's air office. "Absolutely untrue.
"We've been accused of trying to give the state a break, but that's not the case."
The EPA's regional modelers and the analyses they produce are so deep in the agency's bureaucracy that they escape public notice. But their work can make a crucial difference in determining whether industries can increase pollution and whether the air will become clearer or more healthful.
"This is an unprecedented stand by career EPA scientists who are fighting for integrity in the basic foundation of EPA's air pollution control policies," said Vickie Patton, a former EPA career employee who is now an attorney for Environmental Defense, a national environmental group.
Analysts who follow the way the Bush administration has been running agencies that deal in science said the modelers' complaint echoed critics' concerns that the administration had adjusted scientific analysis — on issues from global warming to AIDS — to meet political objectives. The risk, they said, is that the public would begin to question the credibility of the government's science and the regulations that stemmed from it.
"Americans have great doubts about government in many areas, but where government has always been strong has been on the science," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University. "There hasn't been a consistent perception of government manipulation of the facts. But this administration is doing considerable damage to public confidence in the facts."
Some veteran EPA officials said the case of the new modeling techniques for the air over North Dakota's national parks and wilderness areas was a perfect example.
"The modelers believe it was manipulated in a manner to give a predetermined answer," said another longtime EPA official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Much of the concern of the modelers is that the agreement that was reached with the state of North Dakota allows them to manipulate the data in a way that will demonstrate less of an impact [from polluting power plants] than was actually occurring."
The Clean Air Act provides special protection for the air over national parks and wilderness areas, allowing only minor increases in pollution. Modeling done by EPA's Region 8, which includes North Dakota, found that pollution in the state had increased since 1977, the baseline year, and that the state would have to force reductions in pollution before it could allow more power plants to be built. The state, which has ample supplies of coal, wants to open more plants so it can produce and export energy to other areas.
The modelers specifically criticized the new policy for allowing the state to choose the year it wants as the baseline, which shows whether pollution has increased more than the minimal amount allowed; the higher the pollution in the baseline year, the more pollution that will be allowed in the future. A 2002 analysis by the EPA's Region 8 suggested that allowing facilities to pick their baseline years could more than double the pollution levels.
But administration officials said they let the state pick the baseline years because regulations allowed them to do so.
The EPA modelers also criticized the policy for letting state modelers use average emissions over the whole year, rather than periods of peak emissions.
But Bush administration officials countered that they opted to use annual emissions because there were no good data on peak emissions days from the late '70s.
What troubles the modelers most is that the changes the administration made to modelers' general practice all appear to allow higher levels of pollution. That, in turn, opens the way for the state to allow more power plants without requiring costly pollution controls on existing facilities.
"If you rearrange your science to fit your goal, that's not really science," said the first unnamed EPA official.
But a director in the EPA's office of air quality, planning and standards, Bill Harnett, disagreed.
"It isn't about allowing more pollution," said Harnett, a longtime career official. "What it's about is doing the analysis in a manner consistent with our rules and with what Congress intended."
Hatchery Salmon to Count as Wildlife
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page A01
SEATTLE, April 28 -- The Bush administration has decided to count hatchery-bred fish, which are pumped into West Coast rivers by the hundreds of millions yearly, when it decides whether stream-bred wild salmon are entitled to protection under the Endangered Species Act.
This represents a major change in the federal government's approach to protecting Pacific salmon -- a $700 million-a-year effort that it has described as the most expensive and complicated of all attempts to enforce the Endangered Species Act.
The decision, contained in a draft document and confirmed Wednesday by federal officials, means that the health of spawning wild salmon will no longer be the sole gauge of whether a salmon species is judged by the federal government to be on the brink of extinction. Four of five salmon found in major West Coast rivers, including the Columbia, are already bred in hatcheries, and some will now be counted as the federal government tries to determine what salmon species are endangered.
"We need to look at both wild and hatchery fish before deciding whether to list a species for protection," said Bob Lohn, Northwest regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Lohn added that the new policy will probably help guide decisions this summer by the Bush administration about whether to remove 15 species of salmon from protection as endangered or threatened.
From Washington state to Southern California, the decision to count hatchery-bred fish in assessing the health of wild salmon runs could have profound economic consequences.
In the past 15 years, the federal government's effort to protect stream-bred wild salmon has forced costly changes in how forests are cut, housing developments are built, farms are cultivated and rivers are operated for hydroelectricity production. Farm, timber and power interests have complained for years about these costs and have sued to remove protections for some fish.
They are enthusiastic advocates of counting hatchery fish when assessing the survival chances of wild salmon. Unlike their wild cousins, hatchery fish can be bred without ecosystem-wide modifications to highways, farms and dams.
"Upon hearing this news, I am cautiously optimistic that the government may be complying with the law and ending its slippery salmon science," said Russell C. Brooks, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, an industry-funded group that has challenged federal salmon-protection efforts in court.
Word of the new policy was greeted by outrage from several environmental groups.
"Rather than address the problems of habitat degraded by logging, dams and urban sprawl, this policy will purposefully mask the precarious condition of wild salmon behind fish raised by humans in concrete pools," said Jan Hasselman, counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.
"This is the same sort of mechanistic, blind reliance on technology that got us into this problem in the first place," said Chris Wood, vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited. "We built dams that block the fish, and we are trucking many of these fish around the dams. Now the administration thinks we can just produce a bazillion of these hatchery fish and get out from underneath the yoke of the Endangered Species Act."
Six of the world's leading experts on salmon ecology complained last month in the journal Science that fish produced in hatcheries cannot be counted on to save wild salmon. The scientists had been asked by the federal government to comment on its salmon-recovery program but said they were later told that some of their conclusions about hatchery fish were inappropriate for official government reports.
"The current political and legal wrangling is a sideshow to the real issues. We know biologically that hatchery supplements are no substitute for wild fish," Robert Paine, one of the scientists and an ecologist at the University of Washington, said when the Science article was published in late March.
Federal officials said Wednesday that the new policy on hatchery salmon -- to be published in June in the Federal Register and then be opened to public comment -- was in response to a 2001 federal court ruling in Oregon. In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan found that the federal government made a mistake by counting only wild fish -- and not genetically similar hatchery fish -- when it listed coastal coho salmon for protection.
To the dismay of many environmental groups, the federal government chose not to appeal that ruling, though it seemed counter to the reasoning behind the spending of more than $2 billion in the past 15 years to protect stream-bred wild salmon.
"There was an inescapable reasoning to Judge Hogan's ruling," said Lohn, chief of federal salmon recovery in the Northwest. "We thought his reasoning was accurate."
He said the Bush administration will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on habitat improvement for salmon.
"We have major problems to overcome, both with habitat and with improving the way hatcheries are operated," Lohn said. "Run right, hatcheries can be of considerable value to rebuilding wild fish runs."
12:36
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4.26.2004
I HATE HOTMAIL
i've switched my personal email account from hotmail to fastmail.fm. i've been told the fm part stands for the federation of micronesia. so even tho' as an active blogger i get to beta test gmail, google's venture into the free mail service, i kind of have issues. because google searches through all your emails to tailor the advertisements that are presented on your screen, kind of like the way the advertising on their regular search engine works. so out of respect for my friends and corresponders, and on the recommendation of a friend, i've defected to fastmail.
here's what happened: i got an email the other day from some web address i'd never heard of, something like deee.ed.ie or something like that, saying i had tried to send a message that was bounced back because of an executable attachment that resembled a virus. now, i've never sent such an attachment, and i'd never seen the address. so i was concerned that someone was using my account, without my knowledge, to send email. i wanted to ask the folks at hotmail if this was possible, but IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THEM! perhaps in the interest of cutting back on their costs, if you send an email to "support@hotmail.com", you get an email back saying that it's an unmonitored email account. and there's no other way to get in touch with them. there are NO MORE HUMANS AT HOTMAIL! THE MACHINES HAVE TAKEN OVER! so i decided to f*** them. hotmail's heyday has come and gone. it's now the day of fastmail!
ps: i hate working. i'm such a schlub.
14:29
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4.22.2004
augh! i'm dying of frustration! i don't even know why!
01:32
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4.18.2004
my escape
i am 27 years old, incredibly independent, have traveled half the world on my own, am heastrong and adventurous, have jumped off 30-foot cliffs and rafted grade five rapids and led pre-pubescent girls on river adventures of their own ... and i still view a romantic relationship/marriage/love as an escape from my life. from the dysfunction. because at the same time, i feel as if no one will ever understand me, be able to accept me and my family and its deep deep dysfunction and issues. no one will be able to love me once he has met my family. this is pointless thinking. i haven't slept all night and i should just go to bed.
07:36
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4.15.2004
an excerpt
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
p 694
It's of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It's maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it's the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume are but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip -- and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. ONce we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. Sentiment equals naivete on this continent...
11:27
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today is my birthday
from the ny times
Sex and the Brain: Researchers Say, "Vive la Différence!"
March 16, 2004
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
For almost a decade, researchers at Pfizer struggled to
show that Viagra, the male impotence drug, could enhance
sexual function in women.
Last month, they gave up.
Countless tests on thousands of women made it clear that
the little blue pill, though able to stir arousal, did not
always evoke sexual desire.
Viagra's failure underscored the obvious: when it comes to
sexuality, men and women to some extent are differently
tuned. For men, arousal and desire are often intertwined,
while for women, the two are frequently distinct.
Scientists have recently begun to map out how this
difference shows up in the brain.
For example, male arousal, studies find, is strongly
visual, and when men engage in sexual activity or even
anticipate it, brain structures once thought to have little
connection to sex spring into action. The same brain
regions, however, remain relatively quiet when women are
aroused.
At the core of the sexual divide, some researchers say, is
the amygdala, an almond-shaped nugget embedded in the
limbic system, the brain's seat of emotions. Once thought
to be involved exclusively with emotions like fear and
anger, the amygdala is now believed to be more complicated.
In one recent study, a team of researchers at Emory
University had 28 men and women look at erotic photographs
while an M.R.I. took snapshots of their brains. A pattern
immediately emerged. The photographs set off a frenzy of
brain activity, particularly in the amygdalae of men. Yet
the two groups reported equal arousal most of the time.
"This definitely emphasizes that up until recently the
amygdala has been overlooked," said Dr. Stephan Hamann, a
professor of psychology and the lead author of the study,
which was published online by Nature Neuroscience last week
and is scheduled to appear in the journal in April. "Often,
the amygdala is involved in the anticipation of positive
emotions, which this parallels nicely with."
Much of the insight into the amygdala's role in
anticipating sex, and possibly other pleasant emotions,
stems from research on animals.
In a study in 1989, scientists trained caged male rats to
gain access to females by pushing a lever. The researchers
then destroyed part of the amygdala. The rats lost interest
in pressing the lever. Yet despite this lack of motivation,
they had no problem engaging in sexual intercourse when the
females were placed in their cages.
Other studies have gone further. In a study published last
year, researchers in the Netherlands recorded brain
activity in men as their female partners brought them to
orgasm.
The amygdala, the scientists found, showed decreased
activity during climax. Other studies have suggested that a
larger amygdala may lead to a more robust sex drive.
Dr. Hamann pointed out that the amygdala is known to have
intricate connections to primates' visual systems. One
reason for the powerful response to visual stimuli in men,
he said, could be cultural. Men tend to be inundated with
sexual imagery and, possibly, are more likely to seek it
out.
Evolution may also have a role. Some experts argue that,
over time, men naturally became more dependent than women
on sight in selecting a mate.
"For millions of years, men have had to size up a woman's
reproductive capacity by looking for signs of youth and
health that would enable them to carry a healthy baby,"
said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the Center for
Human Evolutionary Studies at Rutgers, and the author of a
recently published book, "Why We Love: The Nature and
Chemistry of Romantic Love."
Dr. Fisher has studied the brains of people in the early
stages of romance. For a man, she found, pictures of a new
partner light up parts of the brain involved in visual
processing and arousal. But women, she noticed, show more
activity in areas linked to reward, emotion and attention.
"Men, despite what most people think, fall in love faster
than women do, probably because they're so visual," Dr.
Fisher said.
Women, on the other hand, may be more attuned to the signs
that a man will make a good father or provider, she added,
though some other researchers find this assertion dubious.
A woman's choice of a mate, Dr. Fisher argues, could
involve an interplay among a number of factors, including,
some experts now theorize, a man's odor.
Several years ago, Swiss scientists discovered that women
could sniff out genetic differences in potential mates.
When women were asked to smell T-shirts that different men
had worn, they often ranked more favorably the shirts that
belonged to men with dissimilar genes for major
histocompatibility complex, a group of proteins involved in
immunity to disease. The odors a woman preferred also
tended to remind her of past and current partners.
Seeking out different immune-system genes might be a way to
prevent inbreeding or to arm offspring with a more
versatile immune system, said Dr. Rachel S. Herz, a
psychologist at Brown who in a study in 2002 found that
women ranked body odor above almost every other factor in
attraction, except "pleasantness."
"For women, the costs of pregnancy like time and energy are
pretty high," Dr. Herz said. "So to balance those costs,
you want to make sure the child is going to live. And what
is indicative of how healthy you are is your immune system,
which is manifested in your smell."
Yet to play down the role of visual stimulation for women
would be unwise, researchers say, and female admirers of
Brad Pitt or George Clooney would probably agree. In
research last year at Northwestern, Dr. Meredith Chivers,
demonstrated that women could sometimes have more powerful
responses to visual stimuli than men, although in different
ways.
In her study, which ignited a small firestorm, Dr. Chivers
used a device to measure genital arousal in subjects as
they looked at pornography. Heterosexual men, she found,
were aroused by footage of men and women having sex. Gay
men reacted to two men having sex. Women, regardless of
sexual orientation, responded to everything.
In some cases, she said, women reported no sexual arousal,
though the device said otherwise.
"One of the fascinating things was that the female
responses to sexual images were fast and automatic," said
Dr. Chivers, who is now at the Center for Addiction and
Mental Health in Toronto. "The fact that they were not
always aware speaks to there being other factors involved
like emotion and psychological influences."
What is apparently a disconnection between female arousal
and desire, researchers note, squares nicely with the
Pfizer findings on Viagra.
Still, other experts point out that it is impossible to
define neatly or predict how men and women will respond.
People's perceptions are colored by their personal
experiences, said Dr. Leonore Tiefer, a sex therapist who
is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New
York University medical school.
"Differences between genders are boring," Dr. Tiefer said.
"The big differences are within the sexes, between
individuals. It is not the case that every person pays
attention to the same thing.
"It's like everything else in life - eating, dancing,
traveling. The whole experience is shaped by your history
and by what you're paying attention to."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/health/16SEX.html?ex=1081686374&ei=1&en=47836e278027b046
10:32
(0) comments
4.09.2004
what to do
i caught the tail end of michael moore's documentary bowling for columbine on t.v. today and it has made me quite despondent. i usually think i'm quite lucky to have been born and raised in the united states. my parents have done pretty well here, business-wise, and thusly i have been quite priveleged. i graduated from a very good college with no debt. i have had a car since the day i turned 17. i haven't ever gone hungry because we couldn't buy food (financially speaking). and as a result of many of these advantages, i've been educated and enlightened enough to realize just how shitty america can be sometimes. why do we kill each other so wantonly? why are we so confused about sexuality (i.e. we freak out when janet shows a nipple but billboards of 30-foot-tall nearly naked women are plastered all over times square)? why do we go around the world trying to bully everyone? why are we so wasteful and heartless? why do we insist on driving huge cars and depending on oil? why is everything so disposable (mops, toilet brushes, face cleaner, etc etc)? i'm not ungrateful for my freedoms, but why can't we be more enlightened to do good even more good with our freedoms? why do we use our freedomes to be evil?
true i am suffering from some withdrawal. i've just returned from new zealand and in my head it's being played up as some sort of heaven on earth. i know that's not true. every country has its problems. i guess ... it's just a phase.
07:57
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