Speechless

This is the first time I can remember that I'm sitting at work in a GOOD mood. I feel so happy I can barely stand it.

This morning was my first commute on the fixie. I guess I'm pleased to report that I only applied my brakes twice; once on the rather steep downhill on Portland Ave as it slopes down toward the Stone Arch Bridge (there's a stop sign at the bottom) and again (coincidentally) at University and SE 10th Ave, rapidly approaching a yellow light as I was thinking about how I only used the brake once.

I'm not at all winded, I made near record (or maybe record indeed) time, and all I want to do is keep going. I'm apparently riding a harder gear, but I tackled the really long eastbound University Ave incline with alot less effort.

Slowing/stopping is still a bear, but I think it's getting to be less so. We'll see how my knees feel by the end of the week. I feel like there's more balance and that the bike itself is noticeably lighter without the extra cogs and chainwheels and cables and that one hanging do-hickey wheely thing (I forget what they're called...).

I'm really trying to pay attention to the motion of the pedals, so I can pedal in nice circles.

Everyone should ride a fixed gear.

Fixed Gear Good

Took the Takara to the Hub to have it converted to a fixed gear. However, due to availablility problems with the Mavic WE9068 wheel, I only have a brand new rear wheel (actually, there were NO front wheels available, save for the low-end model). Of course, it has a nifty Surly flip-flop hub; fixed on both sides.

This is a new experience. Everything seems more fluid. Stopping/slowing is where the real change is. I'm running a 50x16 gearing (I'm a bit of a masher), and all I can say is that I'm glad I'm running breaks!

Once I get everything all set up (new bar tape, and the front wheel), I certainly PROMISE that pics will go up.

Anyone have any riding tips? Are there any aches or pains that I should expect in the next week or so?

And do you think I should pop an 18 tooth cog on the other side of my hub?

LIBBY INDICTED - 5 COUNTS

2 Perjury
2 Making false statements
1 Obstruction of Justice



It's a good start...

Human Caricature

It doesn't get any better than this:


-In a file photo Exxon Mobil Corp. Chairman and CEO Lee Raymond laughs during a news conference in Dallas, Wednesday, May 25, 2005. Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005, said third-quarter profit surged, buoyed by higher crude-oil and natural-gas prices, even as the period's hurricanes hampered production. Revenue grew to $100.72 billion from $76.38 billion in the prior-year period. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

Rats

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Early nerve damage caused by repetitive motion on the job can cause "sick worker" syndrome, a fatigue or depression that can be mistaken for poor work performance, according to a study published in this month's Journal of Neuroimmunology.

The study done on rats found that nerve injuries caused by low-force, highly repetitive movement -- common to typists, pianists and meatpackers, among other professions -- can be blamed on increased production of proteins known as cytokines.

Cytokines show up in injured nerves as early as three weeks after the first signs of cell stress, much earlier than previously thought, researchers at Temple University found.

Cytokines also are known to spark symptoms of malaise and the study concludes that an onslaught of these proteins affected the rats' psychosocial responses, the researchers said.

With so many cytokines entering the blood stream so early, some apparently traveled to the brain, sparking the rat version of "sick worker" syndrome, the study said.

"At three weeks, even before the rats experienced pain from their wrist injuries, we watched them self-regulate their work behavior," researcher Ann Barr said. "With inflammatory proteins in the bloodstream, they began to slack off from completing their tasks."

By five weeks to eight weeks, when cytokine production reached "peak" levels, some rats curled up in a ball and slept in between tasks, the study said.

-'Sick worker' malady may be early RSI sign-study
Reuters
25 Oct 2005

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

-Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx
1848

The researchers theorized that as cytokines first appear in the newly injured nerve of workers who perform the same physical movement over and over, signs of "sick worker" syndrome begin. People may call in sick with undefined symptoms, or slow down their work production or a low-grade depression may set in, the researchers said.

Some bosses might see the cytokine connection as an excuse for employees to slack off work, but Temple researcher Mary Barbe disagrees.

-'Sick worker' malady may be early RSI sign-study

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

-Communist Manifesto

"Cytokines are self-protective," she said. "This undefined feeling of malaise may be telling the body to take some time off to heal, before things get worse."

-'Sick worker' malady may be early RSI sign-study

But, instead of changing The System, I'm sure we'll just study how to develop a drug that blocks the production of cytokines...

Irony

SAN FRANCISCO - The latest "Got Milk?" commercial hit a little too close to home for Major League Baseball. Poking fun at the league's steroid scandal, the television ad for the California Milk Processor Board talks about a player getting pulled from a game "after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance."

In the next scene, a coach pulls a carton of milk from the slugger's locker.

"There is nothing humorous about steroid abuse," said Tim Brosnan, executive vice president for business for the league. "I would think that the California Milk Processor Board and their advertising agency would know better regarding an issue that threatens America's youth."
[...]
"It's just milk," Goodby said. "Believe me, we know parody is based on a serious topic. So we wanted to make sure that it was goofy enough so that people didn't get upset."

He said ad was meant to deliver the message that "milk is good for you, that milk actually does many of the things that people hope those wonder drugs might do for them and does so naturally."

-New 'Got Milk?' Ad Not a Hit With MLB
Associated Press
24 Oct 2005

*********************************************************************************

IGF-1 and Milk: Q&A

Q. What is IGF-1?
A. Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1)is a normal growth factor. Excess levels have been increasingly linked by modern research to human cancer development and growth.

Q. How does IGF-1 get into milk?
A. In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). According to rBGH manufacturers, injections of rBGH causes cows to produce up to 20 percent more milk. The growth hormone also stimulates the liver to increase IGF-1 levels in the milk of those cows. Recently, Eli Lilly & Co., a manufacturer of rBGH, reported a ten-fold increase in IGF-1 levels in milk of cows receiving the hormone. IGF-1 is the same in humans and cows, and is not destroyed by pasteurization. In fact, the pasteurization process actually increases IGF-1 levels in milk.

Q. How does rBGH milk containing IGF-1, affect, humans?
A. After the rBGH milk is consumed, IGF-1 is not destroyed by human digestion. Instead, IGF-1 is readily absorbed across the intestinal wall. Additional research has shown that it can be absorbed into the bloodstream where it can effect other hormones.

Q. Is IGF-1 likely to increase the risk of specific kinds of cancer?
A. It is highly likely that IGF-1 promotes transformation of normal breast cells to breast cancers. In addition, IGF-1 maintains the malignancy of human breast cancer cells, including their invasiveness and ability to spread to distant organs. (Increased levels of IGF-1 have similarly been associated with colon and prostate cancers.) The prenatal and infant breast is particularly susceptible to hormonal influences. Such imprinting by IGF-1 may increase future breast cancer risks, and may also increase the sensitivity of the breast to subsequent unrelated risks such as mammography and the carcinogenic and estrogen-like effects of pesticide residues in food, particularly in pre-menopausal women.

Q. Are cows adversely affected by elevated IGF-1 levels?
A. Cows injected with rBGH show heavy localization of IGF-1 in breast (udder) epithelial cells. This does not occur in untreated cows. Cows are also affected in other ways by rBGH, through increased rates of mastitis, an udder infection. Industry data show up to an 80 percent incidence of mastitis in hormone-treated cattle, resulting in the contamination of milk with significant levels of pus. Mastitis requires the use of antibiotics to treat, which leaves residues to pass on through the milk for human consumption.

-Milk: America’s Health Problem
Cancer Prevention Coalition
2003

Fatigued

So I've been studying math for my GRE for the last, oh, eternity or so. I just ran through another practice test - 600 verbal and 520 quantitative. I still want (need?) a higher quant score; I'm not sure how much more ready I can get ebtween now and Sunday.

I think the analytical writing/argument went well, though.

I can't wait to get this over with.

On a lighter note, I see I proved a cliché true...I took the Takara to the car wash and hosed it down. The chrome is chrome and shiny again. So, now that it's all cleanied up, of course it rains out.

Oh well.

Okay, I have to go figure out if the area of 18 nonoverlapping circles with a diameter of 2 inches each is greater or less than 36 square inches...

Check Your Premises

Evangelist Franklin Graham told an audience that Hurricane Katrina could lead to a spiritual rebirth of what he called a sinful New Orleans.

"There's been satanic worship. There's been sexual perversion,'' Graham said Monday in an appearance at Liberty University. "God is going to use that storm to bring revival. God has a plan. God has a purpose.''

-'Revival' ahead for New Orleans, Billy Graham's son says
Associated Press
4 Oct 2005

First off, those who are Christian may be better off if they realize that "god" doesn't have a plan. "He" just is. Remeber that creation myth about the apple of the tree of life? The one "god" warned us about? The apple that promised to tell us right from wrong? Maybe you were being told something; heed no clergy.

These guys are business men, selling religion to the masses. Beware. There are no lemon laws when the product is your soul...

But I digress.

One thing that I've been quite interested in is that many an evangelist is trying to have us believe that Katrina struck a degenerate New Orleans. That the breaking of the levees was a sort of baptism of the city's sins.

Yet, none of them has noted that it was the French Quarter - the purported playground of perversion loathe to the fundies - that remained mostly unharmed by the storm. Ironic, no?

Perhaps Katrina was really the work of Satan - the poor and black Ninth Ward, suburban Jefferson Parish, and "red" Biloxi and Gulfport Mississippi took the brunt of the storm. Of course Satan hates the upstanding suburbanite and the moralist republicans in MS. And yes, of course Satan would be a racist and an economic elitist.

Or, perhaps when we look deeper, other "targets" can be seen. The gambling industry took a big hit. Maybe because...

So did Big Oil. Oil is alot like money. It's not inherently bad, but often the love and addiction pursuit of it is. Bush, Cheney, and Condolezza Rice (to name a few) are all oil industry luminaries.

Just who's under attack?

Besides, if I were a New Orleanean, I'd think long and hard about heeding the moral clarity of Billy Graham's kid. They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and lord knows that a certain Billy Graham revival was rather ineffective.

Remeber, by their works, ye shall know them...


(An Iraqi girl screamed Tuesday after her parents were killed when American soldiers fired on their car when it failed to stop, despite warning shots, in Tal Afar, Iraq. The military is investigating the incident.)