PROFESSIONAL SINGER AMONG MY RELATIONS!

For all of you that don't FaceBook, Archer just got a PAID singing gig. He was given an honorarium of a couple hundred dollars but not surprisingly the choir is short on funds so he offered us about 300 in private lessons so we we eagerly took that deal. Of course we need to pay him his honorarium ourselves.

He needs some work on some particular isssues, mainly volume so we were glad to get the lessons, though. The song he sing ends on a B SHARP! so range isn't one of them. (The hymn books usually end on E for the sopranos, five notes lower).

Anyway this will be for Portland Mormon Choir, the MOTAB of the Northwest. I am trying to convince him to wear a tux because how many times is this going to happen? I suppose a lot if he decides to graduate to the Ovation group when his voice changes. But a 12-yr-old in a tux is adorable so I am going to go for it.

Figuring out my life

I have been actually reading about long-term sleep deprivation and it is me. It really explains a lot, not just the acute problems in the last few years.

Sleep deprivation is often not unpleasant and that might effect whether or not an individual chooses to do anything about me. Anyone who knows me like from my college or even sleepover days knows that I liked to stay up all night. I used to thrive on it as a way to get extra hours of productivity during the day. Slade used to have me drive all day and night when we went on trips because it seemed to not affect me.

But that is because of the difference in some individuals' response to sleep loss. Some people get more tired some people get LESS tired. Slade used to beg me to try to sleep after a while because I didn't think there was anything wrong with it and I didn't seem to need it. I definitely didn't get more tired.

But those who claim that they need sleep are the ones that have the proper sleep-tiredness relationship. I definitely have the opposite one in which I get less tired and even less inhibited and I actually felt good. There are some studies in which sleep deprivation is used to cure depression because it tends to make people manic.

So I got the reputation of not needing sleep but the thing was I needed it all along, just as much as the people who get tired. So I used to not even care until the last few years where I obviously passed some sort of tolerance threshold.

How far you can trust social scientists

Linguistics is one of the social sciences but not typically one of the ones that makes important sociological observations. Well actually it turns out that no one makes important sociological observations, because most of the observations that end up getting made are 100 percent wrong. The latest one is the theory of dysgenics. Actually that is a loaded term.

Dysgenics means doing something that is contrary to the benefit of the gene pool. And there were not that many things in that category. One of the very few of them was that women who are uneducated have more children than the women that aren't, as noted by the precipitous drop in world fertility rates.

Oh yeah, did all of you know that fertility rates are dropping? For them to drop in the first place was itself not predicted by social scientists, who all subscribed to a population bomb theory that the world is destroying itself because human beings are having too many offspring. Well, that might not be how everyone looks at it because often human beings are not viewed as part of the planet but part only of what is destroying the planet by its offensive behaviors like aresol cans and children. In the 1960's Paul Erlich of Stanford popularized the "one child" ethos because he made a bunch of predictions that human beings would either destoy themselves or the planet (whatever came first) by having too many children.

The problem with Erlich in particular and social science (my opinion) in general is that they do not make accurate predictions. And in my opinion there is no need for any predictions at all if they don't come true. It is interesting that all of these dire doomsday environmentalist theories have not come true but have still ended up causing major changes in human reproductive behavior. Well that is the theory anyway, even if it isn't an accurate one. It seems to me that all of this money and effort poured into the environmentalist movement is a waste of time because it has been geared toward averting a disaster that wasn't really going to happen anyway.

Back to why the population theory is wrong. Well no one knows, really. They just know that it hasn't been right. They don't even know to what extent it can be disproven. It is just obvious that it isn't all happening like Erlich et all said it would. He predicted that we were eating and throwing garbage away so fast that we would destroy the planet, but he wasn't even right about either how fast we are reproducing or its effect on the environment.

Because even though Erlich UNDERESTIMATED the number of human beings there would be at the end of the century, he OVERESTIMATED the amount of damage they would cause to the ecosystem. Meaning that there are even more people around right now but that it isn't cauing environmental catastrophe. That is because on of the original social scientists (in his day he was an economist but there is not must distinction anymore) Thomas Malthus predicted a linear relationshp between an organism and its environment.

The thing that Malthus got wrong, among others, was that the relationship between human beings and their environment can be manipulated. We are not like grazing cattle who will only limit their own voraciousness when we have eaten it all and we begin to starve to death. We can avoid eating up our entire environment and we can also create more of it. We don't just move on to other pastures, we can create greener ones that sustain more of us. Also not only can we avoid having a bad consequence on the environment we can have a beneficial environment, UNLIKE ANY OTHER ORGANISM ON THE PLANET. This is leaving Malthus now.

We are probably the only organism that is capable of developing a technology that will be able to actually avert an environmental catastrophe a la ones caused by bacteria pre-Cambrian explosion. Meaning that also the degree to which we reproduce can actually be beneficial to the environment, and the riskiest thing is that we not reproduuce fast enough to evolve a solution that will save the planet from eventual destruction, such as being obliterated by a meteorite.

Exercise for weight GAIN???

Recently I have been meaning to try to implement some sort of exercise routine, but for completely the opposite reason that most people do it. I hate exercise, but I think that is because mainly I have few reasons to think I need to. Mainly I haven't really seen the point, but I have to remind myself that that is only because of the reputation that exercise has nowadays as being a cure for whatever ails ANYONE.

Longevity is not an issue for me, nor is cardio-vascular health, as I normally outdo those I know that are exercisers in terms of wearing out. I went to New York with a friend that is up every day at 6 jogging for an hour, among other people who exercise much more than I do, and I noticed right away that they wore out much faster in the day than I did (in fact they all complained LOUDLY about my sightseeing pace), which was funny to me as an avid partaker of stationery activities primarily.

Anyway, as I have not really ever thought of needing to use exercise to loose weight, and in our culture that is primarily what it is associated with. In fact I have exercised even LESS in the last few years because I haven't felt well in other ways and I have not had any appetite, dropping 20 lbs. When your back kills you you don't FEEL like exercising even though you aren't any less comfortable running than sitting. But the irony is that I think the less active I have become the less I feel like eating, and it tends to be a vicious cycle that way to where I literally have no energy because I don't eat. Today for instance I ate two pieces of fish in addition to my prenatal vitamins, probably loosing some more fat today meaning I will eventually have to force feed myself something like ice cream which I do eventually.

It makes me wonder what exercise does to those that try it as a primary method of weight loss. It is obvious to me that those who rely on exercise without also attempting to modify their diet usually fail. I think that traditionally people blame this on overestimating how many calories that exercise actually burns, which turns out to not be a great amount over what is needed for just primary respiratory purposes.

This makes a lot of sense evolutionarily. More active people probably adjust to how active they are without needing significantly more food intake, or else it would be a lot harder to simply stay alive if you are active, and it turns out that evolution favors active people usually rather than punishing them. Also this can be explained in mathematical terms. I think a lot of people consider non-exercise like sleep or lying there as 0 and jogging as 100 in terms of rate of burning calories but it is probably more like 70 to 100, with simply maintaining bodily functions being a significant percentage of what is necessary, depending on physiology. I have a very high muscle tone naturally without exercise, seriously my muscles are rock hard like a man's so that is probably some part of why I seem to have a high metabolism, and why I probably dropped weight so fast after being unable to support it with eating a lot.

It also is an interesting theory for anyone needing to loose weight. Most people take to the gym or put on jogging shoes this time of year when they have resolved to loose a few, but a lot more effective method in my experience would be mimicking my lifestyle over the past five years. Try to be really really still without doing anything for two weeks, and I swear you won't feel like eating a bite. And since it is really food intake that counts, and exercising not that much more of a burden on the body than simply lying their immobile, I think it would do the trick.

Ever hear of the phrase "working up an appetite?" I think that the concept must be somewhere in folk wisdom even if popular culture has adjusted to the notion that skinny people exercise. Skinny people might, as it eventually becomes very difficult to be active if people are very overweight and usually healthy behavior clusters together, meaning that MOST of the time if someone has gone through the trouble of working out (at least for the purposes of loosing weight) they have also adjusted the amount they eat.

I would be interested if anyone tried it. I am going to be trying the opposite, that is if I can find a way to overcome my great inertia against exercise. People assume that I am not healthy because it is true I have been sick the last few years, but that doesn't mean I am easily fatigued or can't walk or run. Probably my inability to sleep (really my one and only health problem even though it is a serious one and hard to solve, well impossible actually) is related to the fact that I DON'T tire easily and need a whole heck of a lot of activity, more than I feel like performing, before my body feels worn out.

So I am cardio-vascular gold (my genes tend toward people whose tickers need to be stopped because everything else wears out first) and comfort-wise I swear I do even better running than I do just sitting or standing, and up until recently I thought that must be my imagination. But it really does make sense that I actually experience less pain when I am walking or running than when I am stationary. My chiropractor says that is because the muscles need to become rigid when holding the body in a sitting or standing position and they can become more relaxed when maintaining fluid motion.

Argument for naturopathic regulation

As a general anti-government conservative type I generally oppose government regulation. But the naturopathic movement is becoming so alarming of a threat to not just the health of those that fall for it, but also those close to them, that it gets to a breaking point of sorts. At the very least, if REAL medicine is regulated, perhaps discouraging some from seeking treatment for those in their care or for a public health threat, then the corner drug guy selling root extract really should be too.

At the very least, peddlers of 5.99 bottles of whatever should not be allowed to treat the same conditions that a real doctor treats just by finessing the words on the label, by saying things like "creates the feeling of wellness" instead of "makes you well." And currently, that is allowed. Amazingly. I think that the fact that rubbish is collected from a bunch of weeds in someone's garden and sold as medicine has come to the attention of health officials in Canada, but they are going the exact wrong direction with it.

Knowing that there is a segment that is for some reason desperate to avoid actual health screening by those who MIGHT be able to help them, they want to give the naturopathists that people go to instead the right to prescribe actual medicne rather than only having fictitious concoctions at their disposal, perhaps many of them that they profit from directly. THIS IS SO ABSURD. It is true that much of the naturopathy industry is fueled by sales of their own products, while medical doctors have the option of suggesting drugs that they don't profit from directly, but this will lead to other problems. These people do not have any medical training, and no systemic knowledge of chemistry, medicine, the body or public epidemiology.

They are noted and most revered for not their actual ability to cure ANYTHING but rather their paranoia-fueled rants against anything an actual doctor does, including the doctors that have ended up ending public health crises such as cholera or plague and the ones that if we leave them alone may solve problems like heart disease or cancer, and not by ingesting some strange substance in a bottle or rubbing some ineffectual rubbish over the skin when we fall ill of a tumor, by actually understanding the cause of the illnesses so that they no longer occur. (This will not be possible by tapping into the secrets of the Native Americans or some other folk medicine - the Native Americans' secret to not getting cancer was dying by their twenties of an ear infection or broken bone.)

The most the naturopathists do is dispense sensible dietary advice that is widely available, parasitically employ selectively those things they choose from the medical community, and peddle their own products (all the while deriding big pharm for making money!). At least my doctor doesn't peddle his own wares like these snake oil salesmen do.

So what will naturally (haha) happen if people can go to their buddy the naturopathist is that people will route through these guys and not end up being seen by a doctor at any point, and not only jeopardize their own health but also will encourage any spread of public disease that might be going around.

See I think that it should be someone's right to not get treated for a health problem such as cancer if they really don't want to. It is interesting that when a bone is broken or anything actually diagnosable happens it becomes obvious that the naturopathists can't help anyone. Even a very basic medical practice such as setting bones, which real doctors mastered three hundred years ago, the magnets and vitality crowd are absolutely helpless to treat. The reason that the naturopathists still have patients seeking to treat cancer is that NO ONE treats it effectively yet, shielding them from the fact that they haven't a clue what they are doing. Why anyone would think that the people who can't treat a broken bone or a strep throat can cure cancer, I don't know, but I think it has something to do with the wishfull thinking of those who want an easy cure for a bad problem - and more acutely one that doesn't exist yet at all. But just because the cutting edge doctors can't cure it doesn't mean the witch doctors CAN, they are just unpoliced to the point that they will SAY they can.

And again, if I have a personal pain or other health problem and I want to go see someone who simply waves their arms around me or burns incense for my own sense of comfort or well being, it should be my right to waste my own money. But if they are given primary care specialist rights or rights to dole out medicine, what will happen is that people with treatable conditions that are currently controlled by the basic health screening of someone who has attended a year or two of medical school will probably, in focusing on mercury or silver to treat some various issue, allow a basic and understood and nearly extinct disease to rage out of control, unduly taxing emergency or palliative care when it becomes more serious than splinting a bone or taking penicillin.

This is particularly alarming due to the tendency that people have to under treat even their own children when there are very serious symptoms if they have caught the anti-doctor bug. The anti-vaccine crowd has already resulted in somewhat of a resurgence in diseases that were almost licked twenty years ago before the autism insanity began (and was dispatched by controlled studies showing vaccines to definitely NOT be the culprit), and things like Rubella are rearing their head again when it need not. There are already reports of people staying home and surfing the internet rather than taking their kid to a doctor when the kid has a fever of 106.

Part of the problem is that official channels of health care are regulated and therefore rationed, making it much more difficult to seek the advice of a trained doctor than it is to type your list of symptoms on a search engine, so with the appearance of some kind of screening or vigilance, there will be a segment of the population that attempts to treat their own problems with Tylenol or worse some kind of distilled herbal product that who knows what it is doing to them or their kids. And they run the risk that they won't be seen by a doctor when they have something serious or worse, that will spread.

Even diseases like chicken pox are very curable and preventable, such that the risk is that there is a percentage will likely escape the disease entirely into adulthood, as I did. I got chicken pox when I was 26, between pregnancies thank goodnes, just as the vaccine was coming out, and would definitely have gotten it and given it to my children a year or two later when it became more widely-used. But today mothers are more likely to fear the phantom menace of the vaccine than what the diseases themselves can do.

It used to be a very real situation what it was common to die of something like smallpox or even a bad case of influenza. But I think that in our post-epidemic society we take for granted that we won't die very often from communicable disease so people's fears are turned to the rather more benign threats of the administration of the very health care advances that see the majority of us living into our forties. I felt really bad that in my ward a mother of an autistic child had become so brainwashed by the anti-vaccine hype that her baby died in utero of a chicken pox infection that SHE GAVE IT. Very sad.

But it made me not only sad for her but frightened for others to think of her and her children spreading chicken pox to the unvaccinated and the one percent that are unresponsive to the vaccine. At some point it crosses the line from being an individual freedom to the point of being a public health concern. The reason that I don't fear that it is a big-brotherish threat (to the tune of violating my conservative, anti-government principles), however, is that if the public health officials act in accordance with scientific principles and observed data, there will a limit and check upon their options, so there will be less risk of them acting in a way that is not in accordance with the public interest. All actions on the books, and above board to be seen and evaluated by other health officials at a later date, so no funny business will likely be encouraged.

It is easy for me to say, because I know that I would never allow my child to die of a treatable disease because of an irrational fear of white coats, but whether or not others would is a very real problem, and not just for themselves or their children--I could catch whatever it is that they are spreading out of unjustified fear. And those that have no understanding of or respect for the scientific method and its fruits, preferring some hoodo voodo instead, should in my opinion not be allowed to negatively impact the health of the rest of us.

I think it is interesting that even Canada has an unusual caveat on their naturopathy proposal. The faux doctors will not be able to treat family members or friends. Hmmm. I wonder if even those who would allow the unknowing to go without treatment don't think it is right for people to dispense their 'wisdom' to their doctor-fearing friends or worse their own children, when a doctor's care to the unbiased would obviously be the sensible option.

Insomnius Majorus

I wrote about this on facebook but some of you don't do facebook so I will double up on some of my posts.

I am finding that lately I have to eat constantly to even stop loosing weight. I am under my pre-pregnancy weight still by about five pounds even though I am eighteen weeks along. It is either a direct consequence or a co-symptom of my insomnia disorder. Probably whatever keeps me from sleeping also super charges my metabolism. It is most likely some sort of hyperadrenal situation where I have a zillion extra stress hormones coursing through my body and making me have a super high idle.

Also by the time I skip two, three or more nights of sleep it gets even harder to eat the minimum amount that I need to stay level. Food gets really disgusting sounding because all of my senses become super sensitive. Just like light gets too bright and noises too loud (known as my vampire syndrome by Slade) smells and tastes become way too intense and if I smell or eat the wrong thing I will puke and voila, negative caloric intake.

In the last year or so it has gotten so bad that I have had doctors apologize to me. Of course insomnia results in mock symptoms of mental disorders like mood disorders or general mental deterioration, but it is very obvious looking at me, much less keeping track of my schedule, that I am sick. Very simple, no fancy names or need for talking to therapists. Something is seriously wrong with me, and they can't do a darned thing about it.

And also...

Also if anyone has guessed girl and has girls stuff that they may be retiring permanently, especially stuff that wouldn't be good enough to sell or whatever I have pretty much gotten rid of most of my girl things. I sent a big box to Rachel, to Sarah, have given some and will continue to since sadie is bigger than elle to Elle, plus a lot of other friends and people in the ward. I have also gotten rrid of things like car seats and baby swings. The money wouldn't be that big a part of t because I used to get it at garage sales mostly, but as I don't drive it will probably come to new or nothing, which is different than I have done any of the previous kids. So if anyone can help me out, for loan or if you are lightening up, much appreciated, you can't even know. In fact no one I am sure would haveto buy me anythng by the time people take inventory of their 4-6 kids' stuff. I will probably be ok if no one has anything but any old thing that I don't have to stress in preparationj would be great. I figure maybe I could get together with Rachel Bentley sometime ether in Utah maybe or online/on the phoneand give her a whole load of clothes from 4-10 in exchange for some baby and toddler girls stuff coming off the back end, what do you say? We tend to have pretty similar taste. Lots of gap. some Gymboree. etc, some really cute dresses, shoes and dressup things. I bought Sadie about four outfits in france with matching hats and kerchiefs and she grew out of them immediately. Sigh. Plus cute holiday dresses, etc. and ski stuff.

Slade is going to take his two months off and take two before the baby and we are going to make 6 months of meals and put them in the freezers. I am actually going to have a frozen food shower if anyone offers to throw me one. Frozen food, formula. baby food and diapers are the only things I want. Hand me downs if they must bring clothes or gear. And then he will be with me for the six weeks after the baby is born - the screaming weeks. It will be great not to be alone and feel trapped here with that young of a baby all day. The kiids will help a lot summers. weekends and evenings but I will be alone with the baby no car for a bit of time and it will be great to have slade ease me into it. If all this works out, it will be fine, if it doesn't I will be stressed but what else is new... If anyone wants to visit us while Slade s off work that would be fun and we could hang wth the new babe and cook things for the store.