Echoes in a Hollow Space

I read a number of interesting things in the last week and it’s been difficult choosing “most interesting,” so I’ve settled on something of a smorgasbord. First up, two somewhat-related articles:

USS Monitor Faces

Nearly 150 years after they went down with their ship in a fierce Cape Hatteras storm, two members of the crew of the famed Civil War ironclad USS Monitor have come back to life in the form of newly created facial reconstructions.

The Ever-Amazing Ötzi

Since it was discovered in 1991, preserved in 5,300 years’ worth of ice and snow in the Italian Alps, the body of the so-called Tyrolean Iceman has yielded a great deal of information. Scientists have learned his age (about 46), that he had knee problems, and how he died (by the shot of an arrow).

Now, researchers have sequenced the complete genome of the iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, and discovered even more intriguing details. They report in the journal Nature Communications that he had brown eyes and brown hair, was lactose intolerant and had Type O blood.

Honorable mentions:

A Romani Mystery from Dr. Beachcombing’s Brizarre History

Scientists found Romani mitochondrial DNA in a cemetery in Norwich in East Anglia in use from the tenth to eleventh centuries when conventional wisdom says they didn’t arrive in England until the 17th century.

And Scott Turow on how lack of competition amongst booksellers hurts authors.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

You think political discussions are touchy? Try talking about the issue of obesity. There are firebrands on either side of the fat/thin divide who turn into blowtorches at the drop of a donut.

The issue, however, is far more complicated than the zealots would have you believe. That doesn't preclude some politicians from trying to make obesity political. Some legislators are even trying to make it illegal for restaurants to serve fat people, but the cost/benefit ratio of ending obesity is, like obesity itself, a far more complicated issue. Turns out, it may cost more in the long run to keep large folks alive.

I recommend reading the entire Slate article referenced above for it's sane and balanced approach to the subject. I particularly appreciated this, which appears near the end of the article:

But these estimates are more than meaningless—they actually make the problem worse. A second study, published in the American Journal of Public Health on Jan. 30, looked at the relationship between body image and health. The authors compared people of similar age, gender, education level, and rates of diabetes and hypertension, and examined how often they reported feeling under the weather over a 30-day period. It turned out that body image had a much bigger impact on their health than body size. In other words, two equally obese women would have very different health outcomes, depending on how they felt about their bodies. Likewise, two women with similar insecurities would have more similar health outcomes, even if one were fat and the other thin.

These results suggest that the stigma associated with being obese—feeling fat—is a major contributor to obesity-related disease and ill health. This would account for the strong association between body-mass index and depression (especially among women), and the high rates of morbidity and mortality that ensue. Sure enough, racial and cultural subgroups with more moderate attitudes toward obesity seem to experience more moderate health effects. Overweight and obese African-Americans, for example, are much less vulnerable to weight-related illness—even among women who are 5 feet 5 inches and 250 pounds.

I'd also recommend this article for a nuanced analysis of just exactly what makes people fat. Yes, environment, especially the privileged environment of the last twenty years—but it's about 77 percent hereditary as to whether you will be predisposed towards being a thin person or a fat person. Predisposed. That doesn't mean someone with bad genes can't maintain a healthy lifestyle, that they are completely helpless when it comes to gaining weight, but it does mean they're going to have to be constantly vigilant. And as the author of this article points out, thin people need to put away their holier than thou attitudes towards fat people. Turns out they have almost as little to do with their thin waistlines as obese people have to do with theirs.

Quote of the day:

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion."

—Barry Lopez, interview, Poets and Writers, Mar/Apr 1994

Writing business of the day: 1000 words today. Not even a half-page yesterday. There's always a bit of struggle and flailing about when I segue from the 6th century portion of my novel to the 1975 and then 1968 portions. It's like I'm so caught in the dream of that distant past that I have to reset the Tardis and give it a couple of good kicks in the control panel before it enters the next dream. The mindset is very different in the Back Way Back. (Which reminds me, I've got to finish the last 40 pages of The Life of the World To Come that I've been afraid of reading for the last month and a half.)

The reverse happens, too: transitioning from '68 to the 6th. Getting my head, man, around the really old timey way of thinking after being in such groovy times. It's a trip and a half, man!

Typo of note: "You cannot hold on to that which is list!"

Sounds like somebody's got a Scots accent.

Ouch of the day: I'm fine until the Alleve and the Myoflex wear off. At this rate, I should be just about healed by the time I'm ready to do this to myself again. :-)

I told my mother that they had classes for people who had restricted movement, either because of surgery, injury, age, weight. "That's nice," she said. "You should go," I told her. "It's just ten minutes from your house." "Oh no, I'd be way too intimidated to walk into a class like that."

My God, it's genetic. And I'm just like my mother after all. Oh noooooo!