A Free Man

Georgia 45
Georgia Southern 21

A good start for your Number 1 Georgia Bulldogs.

Certainly a better start than Joe’s Wolverines had. Ouch.

 

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Today, at long last, marks the beginning of the college football season in the U.S.* It also marks the day that this site makes the temporary transition from well reasoned and researched posts on parenting, music, politics and science to rabidly partisan support of the Number One college football team in the nation, the South’s Best University and my alma mater - the University of Georgia Bulldogs.

Georgia opens their season with the slightly less than whelming Georgia Southern Eagles. There’s not much analysis to be done for this game. The Eagles are a Div. I-AA team (or whatever that league is called now), have eight players suspended and are starting 37 or so freshman. It’s likely to be pretty much a cake walk for the Number 1 Georgia Bulldogs. Lest you think I’m being all cocky and jinx inducing - after all look what Appy State did to Michigan last year - Georgia Southern is no Appalachian State and Georgia is no Michigan. This one’s done. It will be a chance for Coach Mark Richt to see what he’s got and for the team to warm up for a championship run.

Kick off is 2 a.m. Sunday (Adelaide time), which means that I may sleep this one out and so, god willing, will Zach. Night games are going to work best for us this year, so let’s see what we can do about that, schedule folks.

But we’ll be with you in spirit. Go Dawgs!

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* Yes, I know that there were some games on Thursday, but those don’t count. Thursday night is for Junior High School football. Kind of like the Gamecocks.

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Iron & Wine’s “Our Endless Numbered Days” is available from .

 

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There is a gang of thugs that are wreaking havoc on the streets of my quiet South Australian suburb. For the third time this week, I’ve been accosted on my way to the bus stop by these hooligans for doing nothing more than walking down the sidewalk with a spring in my step. They’ve come charging across the street, hissing verbal threats, limbs raised aggressively with a glint of madness in their eyes. A couple of times I’ve had to sprint away lest I come to some physical harm by these ruffians.

Well, this morning was the last straw. Next time I’m going bring the boy’s baseball bat and batter those f*cking birds. We’ll have roast goose for dinner in the Free Man household.

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What? Sorry, did I not mention we were talking about geese? Geese can be very dangerous, you know. A goose can break a man’s arm with his beak. Or is that a swan?

The thing is, I’m a bird lover. Within the first month of living in Oz, before I even had a job, I bought a bird feeder to feed all the beautiful avian wildlife we’ve got around these parts. I love the bird songs in the morning, I even walk to the bus stop without my iPod plugged in to my ears so I can hear the birds. But these geese! It must look ridiculous to see a grown man running away from water chickens, but when they’re coming at you… You’d run too.   

The ironic thing is that these bastard geese were in the middle of the road a couple of weeks ago as I was driving home. I did the ‘humane’ thing and stopped and waited for the to waddle insolently across the street. They even stopped in front of the car and gave me a brazen look. I should have mowed the damn birds down.

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I read a blog post this week about researchers who had claimed that some birds can recognize human faces. I believe this to be true. I’ll go further and say that I believe birds can warn each other about the humans that they recognize. I believe that these avian thugs are retaliating for crimes visited on them by a member of my family - Timmins. The dog has kind of a history with local fauna, but he’s always left birds alone. This is primarily because they’re difficult to catch - the whole flying thing. However, in our temporary Happy Valley home, we have a back patio which is currently partially closed off for the winter with rolls of plastic sheeting. The dog spends more time outdoors in Oz because we finally have a yard that he can’t escape from and so his food and water bowls are kept outside. Birds are stupid, but not that stupid and have discovered that Timmins’ food bowl is a good source for a snack when the dog’s otherwise occupied. And even if the dog notices they can always fly away.

Except when they can’t. Except when they fail to notice the difference between transparent plastic and the lack therof and get stuck in what is essentially an elaborate, and unintended, bird trap. The carcasses are starting to add up, but to date have only been pigeons - the modern dodo. Don’t get me wrong, I do feel bad, but they are only pigeons.

Problem is, the birds don’t seem to see it this way and through the grapevine the word has spread about me and my homicidal dog. I’m pretty sure that the geese are the hit men of the bird world. And they recognize me. And they’re angry.

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Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” is available from .

 

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Wow. I haven’t seen Obama deliver a full speech since the 2004 Convention and am glad that I took the time in the middle of the working day to watch MSNBC’s coverage of this one. How anyone could have watched this speech and not want this man to be our president is beyond me.

Here are some of my highlights:

“It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.”

“Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance.”

“Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility – that’s the essence of America’s promise.”

“We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans – have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.”

“But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you.”

“That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours – a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.”

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It’s been a fair while since my last proper science post largely because they’re a bit harder to throw together than a cute kid or cheesy dad story or opinionated rant. But after the last Science Tuesday post that I wrote on autism, I got my first request. Not Afraid To Use Itsuggested that I take a look at artificial sweeteners, specifically Splenda. Not being used to getting requests, I was flattered and happy to oblige.

The science surrounding non-nutritive artificial sweeteners is interesting and contentious. Most official bodies have declared the common artificial sweeteners on the market to be “safe”. Medical organizations recognize the dietary advantage of artificial sweeteners. Human beings are born with a sweet tooth and a lot of dieticians and nutritionists recognize that artificial sweeteners can promote diet healthfulness by serving as a substitute for sugar.

There are five artificial sweeteners that have been approved for use in the U.S.A. by the F.D.A. as additives - saccharin (Sweet ‘N’ Low), acesulfame-K (Sunnett), aspartame (NutraSweet), cyclamate (Sugar Twin) and sucralose (Splenda). FDA approval generally assesses toxicity of the compound, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity (ADA). The FDA decision is based on studies carried out, often by the company or organization that is requesting approval. Many of these studies are not available to consumers. This is where the problems come up with drugs and foods that turn out to be poison - the lack of independent verification of the claims presented to the FDA. Increasingly in the FDA approval process, the companies that produce food additives have the power; lobbying money well spent. For example, many of you will remember the cancer scare surrounding saccharin in the late 1970’s This stemmed from a couple of reports associating heavy saccharin consumption to bladder cancers in rats. The FDA proposed a ban on saccharin in 1977, a ban which was overturned by Congress under heavy pressure from lobbyists.

One of the most entertaining things that I learned about sweeteners was the serendipitous way in which many of them were discovered (Whitehouse, et al.). Now, I worked in labs for nearly a decade and not once did I think it would be a good idea to taste what I was working on. But saccharin, aspartame and acesulfame-K were all discovered when scientists licked their fingers after accidentally splashing something on them. (Yum, that chemical tastes like diet soda). Even better is the story of the discovery of sucralose. Apparently a Ph.D. student misunderstood his supervisor’s request that he “test” the compound on which he was working. Boss said “test”, student heard “taste”. I’ve heard of some odd Ph.D. supervisors, but I might rethink things if my boss suggested that I orally assess my experiment.

To the matter at hand - there is a fair bit of uncertainty regarding the safety of sweeteners. Because they have been approved by the FDA, the general public considers them to be completely safe. Fair assumption that you’re government has your safety as its top priority, eh? However, there are a number of reports in the scientific literature that would urge a bit of caution regarding the use of some of these substances. This uncertainty is due to the FDA’s almost complete reliance on private studies undertaken by the companies seeking approval for their products. Let’s take a look at some of the issues surrounding popular sweeteners.

Saccharin

The oldest of the sweeteners seems to be the safest. The studies linking saccharin to cancer back in the 70’s involved rats that were fed diets containing 5 - 7.5% saccharin. It would be virtually impossible to consume this much saccharin in your diet. This is the reason that saccharin was ultimately deemed to be safe. One disturbing study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994 did find that drugs with a low level of saccharin as a flavoring agent were associated with liver damage, but this was in a very small sample of people (Negro, et al.). However, saccharin is not used as commonly as it was prior to the 1990’s due to its distinctive and unpleasant aftertaste.

Aspartame

The sweetener used in Nutrasweet or Equal is the most suspicious of the artificial sweeteners. Since gaining approval as a general-purpose sweetener in 1996 there have been peer-reviewed studies linking aspartame to pediatric and adolescent migraines, insomnia, seizures, Alzheimer’s and other brain pathologies, urinary tract tumours, lymphomas and leukemia. A number of these studies are controversial and for this reason aspartame maintains FDA approval and is found in numerous sugar-free or reduced sugar products. In fact, the level of disagreement within the scientific community about the safety of aspartame is intense. It’s hard for me to distill what’s really going on as almost every peer-reviewed study showing harmful effects of aspartame use is disputed by another scientist. Seems to be a pretty contentious field.

But there are a few studies in particular that are troubling. Particularly ones that looks at harmful effects of aspartame at a reasonable dietary level. Some of these are troubling to the point that I’m going to keep the boy away from the stuff. In one study, Italian researchers found that in utero exposure to low levels of saccharin a significant increase in incidence of lymphomas and leukemias in rats. (Soffritti et al.). A Hungarian group looked at expression of oncogenes in mice dosed with FDA appproved levels of aspartame and found that expression was increased. Oncogenes are genes which, when deregulated, are associated with the onset of cancer. So, aspartame is associated with an increase in expression of genes that, when expression is increased too much, can induce cancer (Gombos et al.).  This kind of biology isn’t my field, but in my opinion, researchers are beginning to put together a fairly convincing picture regarding the carcinogenicity of aspartame.

Sucralose

Splendid Splenda is the new kid on the sweetener block and thus there is less research available regarding potential health risks. Initially, there were concerns about reports that excessive sucralose consumption caused shrunken thymus glands. However, it was later determined that this effect was due to a very low calorie diet rather than sucralose itself. There have been a couple of reports that link sucralose with migraines, but even these are fairly controversial. There were some concerns that ingredients that sucralose is often bulked with may cause cavities, but it was found that the cavity causing potential of these was less than sugar. So, NATUI, as far as I can tell you can go Splenda crazy.

As for the other sweeteners, cyclamate, acesulfame-K and neotame, there aren’t a lot of studies looking at these. The scientific community seems to have cleared cylcamate’s name but would like to see further research on neotame and acesulfame-K.

Part of the reason that the potential toxicity of sweeteners is so controversial is that the medical establishment believes that because obesity rates have increased globally, the benefits of sweetener in reducing food energy intake outweigh their potential harmful effects. In other words, the health problems that can be induced by obesity are far worse than potential harmful effects from artificial sweeteners. Therefore, it is better for people to have access to low calorie foods whenever possible. For example, the American Dietetic Association, while acknowledging some studies linking sweeteners to cancer, migraines and other health problems, believes “that consumers can safely enjoy a range of sweeteners when consumed in a diet that is guided by current federal nutrition recommendations (ADA).”

Unfortunately, low sugar or sugar-free food and drinks may not actually help that much in terms of our obesity epidemic. Another factor to consider is that artificial sweeteners may actually contribute to weight gain. A recent study suggested that low-calorie sweeteners may actually increase appetite for sweet foods, promote overeating, and lead to weight gain (Bellisle and Drewnowski). Other reports have been published that support this theory, demonstrating that artificial sweeteners blunt the body’s energy expenditure mechanisms and activate taste pathways differently than sugar. In other words, a Coke Zero diet is probably not going to help you with your weight and may cause more serious health risks.

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The White Stripes’ self titled album is available from  .

Photos:

Sweetener packets

Pouring sweetener

Diet sodas

 

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Trying out some more Aussie slang today. Maybe one of my Antipodean readers can tell me if I’ve got it right.

I’ve always been a fairly cliched Gen X-er - sarcastic, cynical and suspicious of excessive earnestness. But nearly a year ago, with the arrival of Baby Z, the bulk of that sardonic skepticism got left on the delivery room floor. These days if you want to see me go all soft, see my eyes well up, see me get all gooey like baked brie, all you need to do is tell me a good evocative Dad story.

Like the one that I heard on a Radio 4 podcast this morning. A Ryanair flight (useless busses with wings) from Bristol to Barcelona lost cabin pressure at its cruising altitude. The oxygen masks deployed but did not dispense oxygen and neither the pilot nor crew made any announcement as to what was happening until they got down to a ’safe’ altitude of 8,000 feet. So the passengers on the plane were subjected to a few very frightening minutes during which they had no idea whether they were going to live or die.

One of the passengers was Pen Hadow - explorer, inspiration, environmental and motivational speaker and A Free Man’s new hero - was asked later by Radio 4 if he was frightened:

“Honestly, I don’t wish to sound sort of typically stiff upper lip about it, but for the first second or so I was sort of confused, it all happened so quickly. And then when I looked at my son’s face I knew what I had to do.”

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This got to me as well, for the same softie Dad reason. If I was still uncertain about what to do on the upcoming election day, this might be enough to sway me.

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Well, I just got my e-mail from Barack*, we’re apparently on a first name basis, four hours after the story broke in the media. I’m thrilled to see Joe Biden join the ticket, absolutely thrilled. I know that he brings a bit of baggage with him and that, with 3o some odd years in the Senate, he dampens the Change® message. But Biden’s a terrier and right now Obama needs a terrier.

Because something is not going according to plan in the Obama campaign.  In the most recent generic polls, in which respondents are asked whether they would vote for a Republican or Democrat for President, the Democrat leads by 10. In the most recent daily tracking polls, Obama leads McCain by no more than three points. This is a discrepancy that’s been troubling me since Obama secured the nomination. The Democratic nominee has led McCain by as much as 7 points, but tends to hover around 45%. McCain is creeping up and in some recent daily tracking polls has surpassed Obama.

I know that polls in the summertime are about as reliable as British weather forecasting, but something doesn’t add up. Admittedly, up until the end of last week, McCain had been bashing Obama around quite a lot without much response. Obama spent a week on vacation, completely yielding the stage to McCain. Maybe that’s why McCain is catching up a bit, but what I find more disturbing is that if the election were held today, a generic Democrat wins by ten and the specific Democrat ties at best. I’m not the only one to wonder that, the pundits have been mashing numbers and waving hands and have come up with all sorts of ‘gaps’:

• The gender gap - stubborn Clintonistas that haven’t come into the party fold. In other words, they would vote for a generic Democrat if that Democrat was specifically Hillary Clinton.**
• The experience gap - McCain’s decades of public service, makes him stronger than the generic Republican. Similarly, Obama’s less than a decade in national office makes him weaker.
• The foreign policy gap - with uncertainty in the Caucuses and Middle East, voters are flocking to military man McCain. Because, you know, foreign policy equals war.
• The attack gap - McCain’s campaign is charging forward, arrows flying like a mob of Hun horsemen. They’ve tried every possible avenue of attack and have found a few that hurt.

All of these probably have something to do with the differences in these polls. But, increasingly, I’m beginning to fear that the real gap is a darker and unsurmountable one. I’m beginning to think that the gap that is hurting Obama is the skin color gap.  Consistently, in polls, a huge majority of Americans (76% in the most recent) say that the country is ready for a black president (or a woman for that matter). That’s both predictable and suspicious. For one thing, the phrasing of the question is tricky. Pollsters are not asking the respondents if they are ready for a black president. Only the most blatant of racists would admit, to a stranger, over the phone that they were unwilling to put a black man in the White House. But, occasionally in this election cycle, hard numbers have belied these whitewashed polls. The discrepancy between the polls in the New Hampshire primary and the results, for example, has been attributed to the so called “Bradley Effect” by a number of pundits. More disturbing and less contentious, however, are the results in West Virginia exit polls, in which 22% of respondents said race was important in their decision between Clinton and Obama. Of those 22%, 82% voted for Clinton. If 22% admitted to being driven by race, how many felt the same way but didn’t admit it?

And the answer to that question is what I’m worried about. Has Obama reached a glass ceiling of his own? When I first heard Obama, at the 2004 Democratic conveniention, I was blown away by his oratory. At that time, I thought that Obama was a rising star in the party but that his race, and more particularly, his name would keep him out of the oval office. I’ve been surprised and thrilled to see him get to the spot he is today - just days away from accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination. It’s been an amazing year in American politics and one that makes me proud of my country. But what if I was right in 2004, what if Obama can’t get past that 45% number. What if there is a enough of a minority of Americans to turn an election who are still so riddled with bigotry that they can’t fathom the idea of a black man in the White House.

I realize that there are scores of reasons that a person wouldn’t vote for Obama that have nothing to do with race. If you’re a Republican and have reasoned policy differences with the Illinois senator, then I have no problem with you. If Obama is a bit too conservative for your taste, I respect that and Nader is running again this year. If you really believe that Obama doesn’t have ample experience for the job, despite the fact that many that have come before him had even less, then fair enough.

If you’re not voting for Obama because his middle name is Hussein, or because he lived in Indonesia then I have a big problem with you. If you won’t vote for Obama because “you can’t relate with him culturally” or because of the church that he went to, then I have a big problem with you. When it becomes, at any level, about the color of Barack Obama’s skin, then you are not making an intelligent, well informed decision. You’re making a decision based on hatred. If you’re one of those 22% of West Virginians, you made a bigoted decision. More importantly, if you, even deep down, agree with them, you are a racist.

Similarly, I don’t think that voting for Obama solely because of his race is legitimate. Again the problem, the fear, the anxiety that is with me is the difference between the number of people who would like to see a Democrat in the White House and the number of people that would like to see this Democrat in the White House.

America is at such a thrilling place historically. We’re primed to finally resolve over two hundred years of slavery, segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow, and racial hatred. We’re at the doorstep of a colorblind society. And I hope that I’m wrong about this. I hope that the fickle summertime polls bear no relation to reality and that the number of people that refuse to vote for Obama because of his skin color are restricted to a few stubborn Klaverns and 22% of West Virginia. Because the election of Barack Obama could be a turning point in American history - like the rise of JFK in 1960 and the Reagan revolution in 1980, but moreso.

The last two presidential elections have not gone the way I had hoped. In 2000, I was confused after the presidential election results finally came in. In 2004 I was angry. 2008 can still go either way. If Obama becomes that generic Democrat, I’ll be able to walk around my adopted foreign home with pride in my country again - a pride that’s been hard to drum up in the last eight years. If Obama has indeed hit that glass ceiling, if he does come in around 45% and loses to McCain, I’ll just feel very, very sad and a little bit ashamed.

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*Started writing this on Sunday morning, but free time is at a premium these days. Daily tracking polls remain about the same as then.

** For those of you saying to yourself, “See, I told you Obama couldn’t get elected”, I firmly believe that Clinton would be having the same problem with a subset of voters that couldn’t handle a woman in the Oval Office.

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Or Sheilas if I can continue with the vaguely sexist (and potentially hackneyed) metaphors. But it makes a catchy title for A Free Man’s musical picks of the week, both of whom happen to be Australian women.

I probably should have already heard of Missy Higgins, the 24 year old Melbourne based singer-songwriter. Her 2005 debut, “The Sound of White” got a fair bit of attention Down Under and last year’s follow-up “On A Clear Night” went triple platinum here and got her an ARIA award. But, if you’re outside the Antipodes and outside of that earnest female singer-songwriter sphere, you may not have heard of Missy Higgins.

I certainly hadn’t and came in blind when I cued up the first track from “On A Clear Night” and was pleasantly surprised. Higgins is polished, country tinged pop. It all comes off a bit too sincere sometimes, but Higgins definitely has a set of pipes and a clever pen. Highly recommended for fans of Sheryl Crow, Kathleen Edwards,  and their ilk. Higgins’ sophomore record is out and available from .

MP3: Missy Higgins - “Sugarcane”

The more compelling, musically and personally, of the pair is Sophie Koh. Melbourne based, New Zealand born of Malaysian parents, Koh represents 21st century Aussie culture at its most wonderfully diverse. Her sophomore record, “All Shook Up” came out earlier this month and the more that I listen to it the more sublimely beautiful it sounds. Koh’s got a wonderfully sweet voice and it’s accented by the minimalist, yet engaging instrumentals. Outstanding from this record is “Gan Lan Shu (The Olive Tree)” a reworking of a Chinese folk song.

Koh is a little reminiscent of Suzanne Vega, but instrumentally stripped down and without the vocal (and emotional) fragility. “All Shook Up” is A Free Man’s pick of the week. It came out earlier this month and is available at finer record stores in Australia. No U.S. or U.K. release date yet, but keep your eyes peeled.

MP3: Sophie Koh - ” Gan Lan Shu (The Olive Tree)”

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“Lighted in a room, lanky room
Lighted, lighted, laughing in tune
Lighted, lighted, laughing…”

What better way to start of a Friday than this. Nothing warms my heart more than hearing and seeing Z laugh. Here’s hoping it’s always this easy…

R.E.M.’s essential “Murmur” is available from .

 

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For the last decade or so, and up until the last couple of months, my work in science has been in academia’s ivory towers. Working as an academic, particularly as a student or post-doc with little responsibility for bringing in grant money, allows for a lot of high minded philosophizing (hence the Ph), grand rhetoric and remarkably little gray for all the black and white.

For example, not so long ago I wrote in response to a post by cyber-friend Maggie about animal research. In the post, I zealously defended the ethics of high-minded scientists performing life-saving research. Funny thing is, and in my defense I stated this clearly in that post, I’m not now nor have I ever been an animal researcher. I’m a plant geneticist, which means that the closest I ever got to animals was chasing the occasional raccoon out of my corn field.

Until now. One of my two current jobs brings me a step closer to the world of animal research.  You’ll have to pardon me if I’m not specific enough for your inquiring minds, but it’s all about self-protection. This job involves writing up research for a company that is within the broad umbrella of the “Pharmaceutical Industry”. Sitting at my desk in a building downtown, I’m still not  any physically nearer the animals than when I was fannying about in corn fields or greenhouses full of Arabidopsis. In fact, I’ve been intentionally avoiding a trip down to the animal house as I’m a bit squeamish about  blood. But in the reports that I write up on a daily basis, I’m exposed to a bit of the reality of animal research and, out of the abstract, it’s not particularly nice. Sometimes these mice don’t have it easy. Sometimes they’re exposed to what turn out to be toxic chemicals and all sorts of unpleasant things happen to them. Sometimes, technicians make mistakes and the mice deal with a bit more than they should have to deal with.

But, and this is a crucial but, these things happen so that they don’t happen to people. It’s a decision that we’ve collectively made as a society. The alternative is either we test drugs on people or that we don’t develop drugs at all.  My company, like most of them, is not one that is working on cosmetics or things to make your erection function. They’re, quite literally, trying to ‘cure cancer’.

Nonetheless, Big Pharma is no place for an animal loving socialist botanist. Sometimes I just have to put my precious, delicate academic morals in the cupboard and get on with the business of business. And sometimes I just have to laugh at the disconnect of it all.  In a recent report I wrote the following sentence in the “Results” section:

“X days after treatment one of the mice suffered a rectal prolapse.”

Which prompted a visit a couple of days later from my boss who reminded me, “Chris, mice don’t suffer. The ethics people get very unhappy if the mice suffer. ‘The mouse developed an rectal prolapse.’”

Reallllly? Shall we ask the mouse?

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Smashing Pumpkins’ “Gish” is available from .

 

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