• 12:57 Homeland Security detains Italian guy for visiting US gf too frequently. Crazy.: tinyurl.com/5b79go #
• 13:00 DHS forcibly sedates detainees being sent home, violating human rights codes.: tinyurl.com/4pgjtb #
• 13:01 Let's try the second DHS link again: tinyurl.com/4pgjtb #
• 13:42 Internet connectivity sucks. Twhirl sucks. TOday, the pre-Internet days look pretty good. #
• 14:12 @waysofseeing: actually, frat hazing rituals are based on military hazing rituals during WWII. #
• 14:30 Am now craving udon. #
• 17:36 Did you know the oldest animal ever found was a 405-year-old quahog? That healthy ocean lifestyle... #

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• 13:44 DAMN YOU FIREFOX!!! Why do you hate me so? #
• 15:55 @seanpercival: perhaps they are a crappy company, but DSW has great shoes! #
• 18:12 @cognizance: awww. Your coworkers love you, too. #
• 18:52 heading home #

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• 10:37 Awake and at work. Trying to decide if I need more caffeine. #
• 10:41 Excerpts from Shatner's new autobiography.: tinyurl.com/5k5qtj #
• 15:47 Those earthquakes seem to be working their way around the Pacific Rim. Am nervous about one hitting L.A. Never been in a major quake. #
• 17:20 Won't do it for all the tea in China? You're missing out on about $2.55 billion, or so my back-of-the-envelope calculations say. #
• 18:10 After today's research, I'm craving a pot pie. Hmm. Must figure out how to make a vegan pot pie. #

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• 12:08 Cannot find a copy of Big Black's "The Model" to buy for the life of me. Anyone have an MP3? #
• 14:29 Great video promo for Swingtown.: tinyurl.com/679qh7 #
• 14:44 Oooo, photographic instructions on how to make paneer!: tinyurl.com/5tovc3 #
• 19:47 FINALLY heading home! #

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So, from interviews, it looks like the creator of "Swingtown", the upcoming CBS show about swingers in 1970s Chicago, is probably poly.

If you want to know more about it, YouTube has this trailer, which takes a dramatic left-hand turn in the middle:


Or this one, which is much more straightforward about the premise:

Looking for a job like...Systems Engineer, Los Angeles? We've got one!

Note: NO TELECOMMUTERS. This is a Los Angeles-based job. Pass the word if you know someone who lives/wants to live in LA and fits the bill for this one.

The details:

Mahalo.com, Inc. is a new human-powered social search service backed by Sequoia Capital (the world's #1 venture firm), Newscorp, CBS, Elon Musk (Paypal founder), and others. This kind of opportunity is extremely rare in LA: these high-profile rewards are usually found only in Silicon Valley.

We're looking for a seasoned Systems Engineer. You should be expert in massively scalable architectures, how MySQL and Linux interact, how MySQL and memcache interact, sharding, replication (including multiple
master replication) and how to tune MySQL based on various schemas for maximum performance and availability. You are a HANDS ON implementor, a get-it-done kind of developer. The right person is a self starter
with the "general get it factor". You work well with a team of like-minded engineers, and have a genuine desire for excellence.

You should be expert with:
Applications: PHP 5.x, MySQL 5.x, memcache 1.2.x
Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, Unicast and Multicast socket programming
Scripting languages: Unix shell scripting
Other languages: Applicants with C, Java, and Objective-C experience preferred
Bonus: Hadoop / HBase, Lucene, Nutch, Spread

Well rounded candidates such as release engineers with a background in both large corporate environments and small startups have an edge.

I'm doing some demographic research today.

I knew that more than 1 in every 100 adults in the US is in jail, and that seemed startling to me, but not unbelievably so. I knew that, percentage-wise, we also had the highest number of people in prison. I figured we weren't much above other countries. I still didn't think it was that startling.

It turned unbelievably startling when I looked at the statistics of other countries.

The U.S. has more people in prison numerically - not PER CAPITA, just by straight numbers - than China. China, as you may know, has a total population that's well over 4 times the size of the US population. It's also a country that many people would call a police state.

U.S prison population: 2,319,258 (according to a February Pew Charitable Trust report)
China's prison population: 1,538,498 (according to the British Home Office report "World Prison Population List, 7th Edition" (2007))

The U.S. has 738 prisoners per each 100,000 citizens.
China has 118 per 100,000 citizens.

Okay, okay. So perhaps China is under-reporting, and the percentage in jail is higher than that. Or maybe they just exile everyone. They're not a first-world country anyway, so they're not good for comparison. We can't be much worse than other first-world countries, right?

Japan: 62 per 100,000
U.S.: 738 per 100,000

But Japan is a homogeneous society, and cultural norms are different there and work to keep people from doing anything illicit. What about a European country, where they're more like us?

Germany: 95 per 100,000
U.S.: 738 per 100,000

Well...Germany's a homogeneous society, too, right?

Nope. 8.8% of the population is immigrants, many from Turkey.

Yeah, well...everyone knows Germans are very law-abiding. Besides, our population isn't really German.

Actually, 17.6% of the U.S. population say they're of German ancestry. It's the biggest ancestry group in the U.S.

Well...but we're really not German culturally. Our culture was far more formed by people from the British Isles. They're probably like us.

United Kingdom: 139 per 100,000
Ireland: 72 per 100,000
U.S.: 738 per 100,000

Oh, but they're European. They've been around longer. They're more civilized. An English-speaking country that was colonized about the same time as us...that would be a better comparison.

Canada: 107 per 100,000
U.S.: 738 per 100,000

But those Canadians! They're so polite! And it wasn't used as a place to put miscreants and prisoners, like the U.S. was. Now, if there was a country colonized in the past couple of hundred years, that spoke English, that was about as large as the U.S. and had had a bunch of prisoners dumped off in it, that would be a good point of comparison.

Australia: 126 per 100,000
U.S.: 738 per 100,000

Yep, any way you slice it, the U.S. beats every other nation hands-down when it comes to prison population. And while someone out there may chant, "We're #1! We're #1!" at this, it sure isn't me.

Beer consumption by country. Distressingly, the U.S. is #14. You Americans who read my LJ - go out tonight and try to fix that!

But don't get involved in this (via dietrich: Drunken UConn student sexually assaults a female student. Crowd cheers him on. When she beats him down, the group assaults her. And she fights them off. And writes about it. And gets harassed.

• 14:38 Argh. I feel like someone is cutting the muscles in the back of my right shoulder. Good thing today is my Friday. #
• 15:10 getting hair cut tomorrow. About darn time! #

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The Wall Street Journal ran an article today about New Zealand dairy production, why it needs to industrialize further, with info on how much more food production comes out of industrialized, large farms.

Meanwhile, Colony Collapse Disorder, as well as several other ailments, are killing lots more bees. How many? About a third of the bee population. Without the bees, we can't pollinate those large industrial farms. And why has it spread so fast? Because all those bees are being trucked in to California from around the nation to pollinate at those large, industrial farms that the Wall Street Journal says are the answer to the global food crisis.

Meanwhile, the Pew Foundation just did a study that says industrial farm animal production poses great risks to American health.

Small farms may be less productive immediately, but it is starting to look like they're a much better idea when you view things on a broader time scale. Unfortunately, many large corporations, as well as business publications such as the Wall Street Journal, focus only on the next quarter.

• 15:48 Just realized that if you swap around Amanda Tapping's name, you get "Tapping Amanda". Can think of several friends who'd like to do that! #

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I said yesterday I'd write more when I wasn't so sleepy, right? Here goes.

First off, someone over at Slate wrote an essay that encapsulates how I feel about not eating meat. (Thanks to mycranium1 for sending it to me.) And this leads me to why I'm so uncomfortable being a vegan.

If I'm a vegan, then I wind up lumped in with those people.

Let me explain.

So last week, mycranium1 and I poked around a newsstand. I picked up the two vegetarian magazines they had on the rack.

Vegetarian Magazine #1 had that slightly unpolished look that branded it "edgy". I flipped it open, and the first article I saw recounted the joys of childlessness, and explained that anyone who had children was raping the Earth of its bounty, completely selfish, and was leading us on a one-way path to hell and destruction. I rolled my eyes and put it away. (Interestingly, some of the most procreative people I know are vegan - but I digress.)

Vegetarian Magazine #2 was much slicker, and looked full of recipes. I flipped through. Every recipe had tofu or tempeh. This annoyed me not just because I'm allergic to soy, but also because it was like flipping through a food mag that had only recipes with chicken and turkey - a little redundant. Then I ran into an article titled something like "A Nutritionist Discusses the Dangers of Soy."

Oh, great! I thought. Finally, someone who doesn't just say, "Soy. It's the miracle food!" I read on.

No, no. In fact, the entire article said, "Soy's the miracle food! Everyone should eat it! At every meal! And it absolutely can't hurt women who've had breast cancer!" At this point, I forcibly tossed the magazine back onto the rack. The fact is, the latest literature on soy and breast cancer survivors says, "We don't know if soy will increase their chances of getting it again or not." There's arguments on both sides of the fence for it, and it's freaking irresponsible not to acknowledge that. In addition, soy allergies are incredibly common; as many children are allergic to wheat as to soy, and almost as many are allergic to soy as to peanuts - you know, that legume no one can have any more due to deadly peanut allergies. Soy is one of the eight foods that is responsible for 90% of food allergies (the others are peanuts, milk, shellfish, seafood, eggs, wheat, and tree nuts). There are fifteen different proteins in soy that one can be allergic to.

Science Sidebar: Why Blood Tests Can't Diagnose Most Food Allergies
If you're trying to see if you have a food allergy, blood tests often don't work, as they only check for IgE-mediated food allergies - i.e., an allergy that causes the allergic antibody IgE to appear in the blood. Food allergies of that type are the kind that give you trouble breathing, hives, nasal congestion, anaphylaxis, etc. There are also a number of non-IgE mediated food allergies. These are normally called food "intolerances", to differentiate them from the classical allergic reaction. Lactose intolerance? That's a non-IgE mediated food allergy.

If you're really lucky, like me, you get one of each. My soy allergy is IgE-mediated: I have trouble breathing, my nose runs, my throat swells. Research I've done in academic papers...oh, tonight...indicates that by cutting out soy for so long, I may have actually recovered from this, which a doctor could discover with a food challenge. Sadly, not Iron Chef - they would just feed me a wad of tofu, and have equipment standing by to help the problem in case I'm still allergic. I'm considering it.

My corn allergy is non-IgE-mediated, and many thank yous to the Internet for putting so many bonafide medical papers online, because it turns out that the gastritis/eosinophilic esophagitis (OMG! It has a NAME!!!)/etcetera that I suffered from corn are completely normal symptoms of a non-IgE-mediated food allergy. (None of my doctors seemed to know that, but there's so much literature out there on so many topics that I can't fault them for not having read it all. But if they had, damn, that could have saved me several thousand dollars in medical bills.) There's lots of other symptoms you can get with a non-IgE mediated food allergy, so if you suspect you might have one, I highly recommend an elimination diet. A nutritionist can help, and feel free to ask me for background - I'm happy to go on and on (and on and ON) about my experiences.

End Sidebar

I know many nice individual vegetarians and vegans, but as a group, much as the Slate article I linked to says, there is the stereotype of the sanctimonious veggie who says, "I'm saving the earth! I'm so much more virtuous than you are! And by the way, that cow you're eating once had a mommy and daddy cow, and you probably ate them, too." I've known far too many of those people, and I'm uncomfortable being lumped in with them. There's also the stereotype of the veggie who hates food and would prefer to just consume nutrition in a flavor-free wafer - which, if you've taken a look at my figure, isn't me either. Well, I love food, and I don't feel that everyone has to be a veggie just 'cause I am. I'm not going to lecture you for eating meat or cheese (although if you give me a hard time about not eating meat or cheese, I'll tell you just what went in to producing yours - and yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Sample). Please, enjoy your burger. I'll be over here, enjoying the nummy vegetarian stew over couscous that mycranium1 made me. And if you're really nice, I'll share my brownies after.

• 17:31 going for a much-needed massage courtesy @possumblossom #

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I've tried out eating not-vegan a bit over the past couple of weeks. The biggest test was eating chicken on Saturday in Berkeley.

To my surprise, I've found that:

1. Dairy is totally boring.
2. So is chicken.
3. My favorite part of every meal was the vegetable bits.

It was one thing to go vegan for the variety of reasons I've recounted before. Trying to go back? Well, I didn't notice any immediate health benefit, and it wasn't pleasing to my palate. That's a pretty big incentive to stay vegan.

I've had lots more to say about this, but I'm really sleepy. I'll try to expand on this later.

A suspicious package was found a block away from my house today. I go to that Washington Mutual and Trader Joe's all the time. No idea what was in it yet, but they'd blocked off our block, too. (At least they moved it offsite.)

A few days ago, I made a joking, tongue-in-cheek post regarding a piece of furniture mycranium1 had picked up, with some teasing statements about alleged pack-rat-ness. Unfortunately, even though I prefaced it by saying it was meant lightheartedly, several people took it differently, and seemed to think he was being inconsiderate of my needs.

Instead of just responding to the comments that were made, I want to state in public right now that I was wrong to make such a post. I left many people with a poor impression of mycranium1 that was absolutely unwarranted, which led to comments that have left him with (understandably) hurt feelings. I was a big jerk to ever post anything like that, and saying that it was meant in jest does not take away from the hurtful results of my post.

For the record: mycranium1 has done an amazing job with building things to improve our house. He's consolidated and gotten rid of a lot of his stuff so that my stuff - a lot of which I haven't gone through since the move - can have space until I have the time to look at it. He's been incredibly patient with me, and has been doing far more than his end of the housework. He doesn't deserve any negative commentary.

And I've once again learned my lesson about posting anything in jest.

• 13:56 @angelcityblues: I would absolutely vote for you for the LJ board. #
• 15:00 argh. hungry. #
• 15:52 Getting way too noisy to think in here. #

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• 13:22 I have just hit crowd overload at Maker Faire. Hiding in a chair at Current TV booth. Rednikki needs food badly. #

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• 13:26 There is an abundance of wildflowers in Golden Gate Park. #
• 18:52 Maker Faire wasn't run efficiently today. M. is frustrated. Had chicken for 1st time in 2 mo. @ dinner. Wasn't worth it. Liked veggies more. #
• 20:48 Hmmm. $5 each + 1 hour each way, or $4/bridge toll and 20 min. each way? I think we're driving. #

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• 00:11 We've found the local grocery store with all the obscure ethnic food! Including tarragon soda! And German branded Mexican food! #
• 09:01 The hills are carpeted with purple and orange flowers. Beautiful. #
• 19:59 At the Metreon to see Iron Man. #
• 23:12 If you went to Iron Man and did not stay through the credits, I am very sad for you. #

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