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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
7:53p |
IVF travel adventure
Patri: Let's not mention anything about refrigerated and injected medication at the airport, when we're explaining why we aren't checking our bags through to LA.
Shannon: Sounds good!As if international travel wasn't complicated enough, refrigeration, injection timing, and the timing of the 9 different oral medications Shannon is on are involved for us - all in a world of security theater. Fortunately it shouldn't turn out to be an issue, thanks to our 24-hour stay in Singapore there is a simple plan that meets all requirements. And if travel screwups happen, well, one of the refrigerated injections isn't needed for weeks, and the other one, they didn't even give Shannon in Panama. I am glad I'm logging all med events in a notebook in UTC, though, what with the time zone changes... |
patrissimo
|
5:15p |
Are belly rolls particularly unhealthy?
My claim was that the midsection is the least healthy place to store fat. This is somewhat true, but with a caveat: visceral fat (around organs) and subcutaneous fat that happens to be in the abdominal area are different. It's the visceral fat that is more harmful. Subcutaneous abdominal fat, like any other abdominal fat, is not healthy but not as bad: As people go through their middle years, their proportion of fat to body weight tends to increase — more so in women than men. Extra pounds tend to park themselves around the midsection
At one time, we might have accepted these changes as an inevitable fact of aging. But we’ve now been put on notice that as our waistlines grow, so do our health risks. Abdominal, or visceral, fat is of particular concern because it’s a key player in a variety of health problems — much more so than subcutaneous fat, the kind you can grasp with your hand. Visceral fat, on the other hand, lies out of reach, deep within the abdominal cavity, where it pads the spaces between our abdominal organs.
Visceral fat has been linked to metabolic disturbances and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In women, it is also associated with breast cancer and the need for gallbladder surgery. I was assuming that the thick midsections in Hyderabad represent visceral fat, and it is possible they do, as they are part of an "apple shape": Fat accumulated in the lower body (the pear shape) is subcutaneous, while fat in the abdominal area (the apple shape) is largely visceral. Where fat ends up is influenced by several factors, including heredity and hormones. As the evidence against abdominal fat mounts, researchers and clinicians are trying to measure it, correlate it with health risks, and monitor changes that occur with age and overall weight gain or loss. On the other hand, I have particularly noticed the frequent "belly rolls" as part of women's thick midsections, which suggests subcutaneous fat. [TROLL ON](Isn't it weird how I'm tying specific aspects of physical appearance and health together, almost as if there is a scientific relationship or something. Gosh, that's not like the bullshit fairytales we get fed that everything's OK and everyone's equal...weird, huh?)[TROLL OFF] Anyway, proper diet and exercise are private goods - privately produced and privately enjoyed, so there is no need to go on any kind of crusade about them, even though the issue gets my blood flowing. [TROLL ON]Other people are welcome to believe that being fat is healthy, and die sooner than those of us who have correctly evaluated the evidence. I'll restrict my sympathy for those who wish to lose weight but struggle with their sugar-craving instincts. And other people are welcome to believe that beauty is subjective and cultural and that one should just "be yourself" - we'll see how they do on the dating market compared to those who ape the "arbitrary" Western standards of beauty and seek to improve their skills at sexual dynamics. If you're happy, great. Let's check back in every decade or so.[TROLL OVER] |
patrissimo
|
5:08p |
Well
Now I can say I've walked the streets of a city where the military were patrolling in order to maintain order in the face of civil unrest. How bracing! (Not that I'm particularly foolhardy or brave or badass or anything for doing it - things were very calm and quiet and the anger is not against foreigners, so it was no big deal) |
| Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
3:19p |
Rant: Dumpy = no muscles = unhealthy
[Only 2 more days to make rants before I stop, or limit them, or make them private, or remove comments, or something like that....so time to get in the rants!] Before I get into the offensive ranting, I'll start by agreeing that my posting about the aesthetic appearance of Hyderabad's women is objectifying and contributing to a culture of valuing women primarily by their appearance. I think female appearance is important, but it is not the only thing that is important. It's a bummer that my observations from taxi, which are of course mainly about appearances, have this small negative effect. But...the idea that many gave that I am imposing arbitrary subjective irrelevant aesthetic standards is total bullshit. Several commenters zeroed in on exercise being a big part of the issue, for example: There is a general cultural attitude against fitness and muscle among middle/upper-class indians in general, not just women. My mom tried to dissuade me from applying for a commision in the Marine Corps by telling me that indians are not strong. I think that the middle/upper classes view muscles as a sign of being a poor laborer, while fat (or skinny-fat) as a sign of wealth. People who are flabby and untoned look unattractive to me. People who are flabby and untoned are also UNHEALTHY AND GOING TO DIE SOONER. If India truly has an anti-muscle, anti-fitness culture, that is a self-destructive belief which is hurting their lifespan. An intervention aimed at making Indian women less "dumpy" and more attractive to Patri Friedman would reduce heart disease, diabetes, and death.
You people bemoaning my aesthetic judgements, privileging local standards of beauty, and acting like beauty is arbitrary are on the side of unhealthiness and death. Is that really what you want?
So I call total bullshit on this politically correct idea that beauty is totally arbitrary. Yes, some small part of beauty is arbitrary. But I'd be willing to bet a big chunk of money that "people Patri thinks are hot" is substantially correlated with biomarkers of health and longevity. Attractiveness is not arbitrary. Deal with it.
Current Music: Discord - After Forever |
patrissimo
|
1:42p |
Eggs
They retrieved 13 eggs. On Thursday they will let us know how many are fertilized and developing well. I think they may do the implantation then too. Current Music: Discord - After Forever |
| Monday, December 28th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
9:39p |
|
patrissimo
|
9:15p |
If you're going to be contrarian, this is the way to do it
Robin Hanson reviews the randomized evidence on mortality from smoking, and finds vastly lower harm than most sources (which use non-randomized data). Like, 1. It seems to be a general truism in health that randomization is much much better than retrospective because there are serious confounding factors - people who do one healthy thing also do lots of other healthy things, more than you can control for. Here's an idea: maybe rather than ranting, I should try to start a red pill meme. A red pill is a very well-backed contrarian claim, to open people's minds to the possibility that mainstream belief is wrong in a given area. One works on a red pill, rather than ranting, because a red pill can actually change minds. Red pills will tend to be simpler, weaker claims, like: "There is a genetic basis for race" (say, using population genetics studies), rather than full memeplexes ("There is a genetic basis for race and it correlates with our visual stereotyping, and abilities vary between races, occasionally even by more than differences within races") Eh...no. That would be something to do if my main goal from ranting was to change minds and I wanted a more effective way. But I think my main goal is just to get these things out of my system. I have strong emotional beliefs that differ from those in the world, and it feels good to spout them off every once in awhile, especially when I encounter contradictory beliefs, knowing that (because they are emotional) they are less likely to be true and less fun to argue about that other beliefs I hold. Maybe I should just label all my rants and turn off comments on them. Hmm...strategies to ponder. Current Music: Discord - After Forever |
patrissimo
|
8:01p |
Avatar is porn
via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) martian687, Please mount my hot blue alien: Let's talk about those tails. Oh, honey. Did you know animal tail fetishism is one of the biggest sexual fetishes in all of fetishdom? Well it's not. Or rather, it might be. I really have no idea. I just made that up, too. But it sure sounds right, doesn't it? A tinge of bestiality? A hint of exotic animal play? Face it: on the right kind of creature, tails are sexy as hell. Just ask a mermaid. Catwoman. The devil. I mean, come on. Hah! Current Music: Discord - After Forever |
patrissimo
|
6:55p |
Rant post
Thanks for all the great, thoughtful responses on my post about how not to rant. Many of the comments were about habits / resolutions in general, which is great b/c one of the things that made my short list of 2010 projects/priorities is lessening negative habits. I'll share whatever methodology I decide on, of course! Current Music: Discord - After Forever |
patrissimo
|
11:59a |
Ideas on not ranting?
Any of y'all successfully implemented a New Year's resolution like "not ranting", and have advice on how to do it? Make a bunch of bets with people? Put up a big "NO RANTING" sign by my computer (or that XKCD, which is already up on my wall)? Taper by ranting into private journal entries, or text files? Every time I want to rant, think about that time I cracked my windshield by bouncing a postman off it? This is probably 100% obvious to most of you, but just in case there are a few of you who like my rants, the reason to not rant is that it is very unproductive. It's like folk activism - it feels like "fighting the war of ideas", but really, ranting rarely convinces anyone of anything, and even if you do convince a few people, that isn't how popular opinion gets changed. Doing studies, or writing really good really popular books assembling the evidence - that's how minds get changed. I guess nowadays I would add blogs like GNXP and Climate Audit - but the blogs have to be really popular and really good to make a difference. And that takes expertise and a serious time commitment. I just don't think this is an area where a little work makes a little difference. Also, there is the whole issue of "pulling on the ends of a rope vs. pulling it sideways", which I got from Robin Hanson. The idea is: for very emotional topics, with lots of people on both sides, you have a very taut rope, and it is very hard to move it. It's the opposite of a point of leverage. The place you can make the most difference is on ropes that aren't being pulled. Or if you do focus on a major issue, find a way to pull the rope sideways. Seasteading is an example, instead of advocating for any policy or political system (that would be pulling on a very taut rope), we advocate for the more diverse, innovative government industry that would come from a competitive market for government. My personal goal and passion for seasteading is the same as my personal goal and passion for arguing libertarianism (because I want to live in a society which shares my morals), and so the drive feels the same. Yet as methods of implementation, seasteading and libertarian ranting are vastly different in their likely effectiveness. My rants here are, in my opinion, pulling on a taut rope. Or trying to move a big object without a lever. There are places where I have levers. They don't feel different emotionally (if anything, they are less satisfying and less cathartic, because they are less emotional!), but they can actually make a difference. |
patrissimo
|
11:41a |
Rant addendum
I haven't read past the first few comments to the rant yet, but a couple things popped into my head overnight: 1) I think IQ's heritability is 0.8, not 0.6, so I understated the case. 2) As a commenter mentioned, the proportion of the variance explained by the correlation is the square, so 0.8 heritability explains 64% of the variance. 3) The SAT test is highly g-loaded, especially the math half. Something like 0.6, I seem to recall? So "doing well on the SAT" is not identical to "have a high IQ", but it's pretty close. 4) A crucial important add-on fact for why "my parents read big books to me when I was little" is preposterous as an explanation for intelligence/doing well on the SATs is: what is the source of the non-genetic variance in IQ? After all, even if you buy that a big chunk of the variation is genetic, if the rest is due to how kids are raised, then the statement is perfectly sensible. It turns out that there are two main sources: a) shared prenatal environment, b) non-shared environment. There is little to no variation detectible from c) shared family environment.What (a) means is that fraternal twins have a higher IQ correlation than siblings, even siblings separated by only a year in age. I'm not sure if there are other angles on this effect - none come to mind quickly. (This could be further confirmed by studies using surrogates, though, which would offer a great source of variation in prenatal environments, but AFAIK such studies haven't been done). What (b) means is something like "It's random", or "We don't know, but we know it isn't the family", because (b) is what is left over after taking out (a) and (c). We take out (c) through comparisons like: how does the IQ correlation of identical twins raised together differ from identical twins raised apart? How about adopted kids raised together vs. adopted kids raised apart? Siblings raised together vs. siblings raised apart? "raised together" vs. "raised apart" isolates whatever it is that the family does uniquely - like read to kids. The results, very surprisingly, are that none of the variation in IQ outcome comes from the shared family environment. |
| Sunday, December 27th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
6:11p |
Feel the burn
First workout in weeks, at hotel gym. They had some annoying multi-use strength machine and dumbbells, so I did dumbbell hang clean / front squat / push press, ie a hang clean into a thruster. Dumbbell thrusters are my hotel gym standby, and I figure adding a clean can't hurt. Worked from 8kg up to 18kg I think, sets of 10 early down to 7 late, maybe just 5 on the last one (I was having trouble stabilizing the dumbbells). Owww my thighs! It doesn't seem like much weight, 18 * 2 * 2.2 = 79#. Wow, that's more than I expected, actually, that is a decent amount of weight, considering I went deep and am out of shape. I need to get a weightlifting userpic, I should get someone to take one at Tortuga sometime. Current Music: Richard Cory - Simon & Garfunkel |
patrissimo
|
6:10p |
Book
The good news: 243 pages, 83K words. Which sounds like a lot. And, is a lot. The bad news: It's very rough, with many sections needing substantial editing and others not yet written. I've spent the last 10 hours of work trying to get 1 of 3 major chapters in 1 of the 3 major sections (Why Seastead) (so roughly 1/9th of the book) into shape, and it's maybe halfway to a rough draft. The 2nd major section (How To Seastead) is as rough as Why. The 3rd (Q&A) is much better though, it's not getting revised much from the existing FAQ except for the addition of two new sections that are outlines and need writing (the two major challenges: dealing with current states, and the general difficulty/expense of the ocean). So...if we downweight the 3rd section by half, that means 10 hrs * 2 is a rough draft for (1/3) of (2/5) of the book. So that's 150 hours, or roughly a month of full-time work at 40hrs/week. In reality, it will be more like 1/3 time, I think. 3 months is way longer than I wanted to have a full rough draft ready. Hmph. Hopefully I can squeeze more than 40 hrs/week out of myself in Jan! Speaking of which, back to work... (written while offline) |
patrissimo
|
6:10p |
Get my ranting in
evwhore says I should get my genetics & global warming ranting in before Jan 1, 2010, and steuard made a post that pushed my trigger button hard, so it's ranting time! He wrote: I find the premise of the study to be pretty cheesy. They apparently believe that my ability to take standardized tests way back in 7th grade is supposed to correlate significantly with intelligence. That was probably a factor, but especially at that early age I'd think that my parents' habit of reading to me (and encouraging me to read grown-up books) contributed at least as much, to say nothing of the Lincoln public school system's fantastic gifted program To paraphrase the brilliant mhartl: "So then you believe the difference between humans and chimpanzees is that our parents read to us, and we have good public school systems?" Oh, you don't? So then, intelligence is genetic, right? Oh, but it just doesn't vary within the species? Wait a sec, pardon me for bringing in the details of science, but I thought the way that evolution proceeded was by selecting for differences among individuals of a certain species? Doesn't that mean that the way you get from chimpanzees to human is through heritable differences in the relevant traits? And I keep hearing that we split from the other primates relatively recently, by evolutionary standards, and that the selective pressure for intelligence was really strong, so doesn't that mean we aren't at steady state yet, and the variation is still there? ( Really long rant about Mendelian genetics )The people who are finding this don't want this to be true. I don't want this to be true. I'm a parent! But that is what the evidence says, and that is good science - to believe it. There are plenty of reasons to read to our kids, and to bless our parents, without the delusion that reading to our kids early makes them do better on IQ tests. (I have a picture now of Dot at the end of the "I'm Cute" song, after she said "I AM ANGRY, I AM FURIOUS, I HAVE HAD IT!", huffing, and puffing....that's what my brain is like right now :) ) YAY JANUARY FIRST 2010! Soon you will free me from this ranting...I hope. I need more people to make bets with me. |
| Saturday, December 26th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
9:29p |
Hyderabadi women are dumpy
Now, I don't really mind this, because I'm easily distractible by hotties and when I see cute girls lights flash in my head and bells ring and I lose my train of thought. It's kinda relaxing - the only distracting women are those in burqas, which leaves room for the imagination (sometimes). But still, it's surprising - what is it with all women in Hyderabad, of all ages, being dumpy and out of shape? I haven't seen a single good set of abs on a woman outside a billboard since we got here. And that includes the high school/colllege age upper class girls in fancy clothes and makeup who came into the fancy restaurant we were eating in. Even they were dumpy! I don't think it's the poverty, b/c there were hot women in Panama & Costa Rica, plus the aforementioned upper class girls here were the same. I don't think it's an Indian racial thing (or at least not primarily), b/c avani and martian687 both have hot bods - way hotter than anyone I've seen here. I'm going to go with my prejudices and blame it on the high-carb diet. I hear rumors of unusually high rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease here, which fits with the theory of widespread insulin resistance due to the naan + rice + little bits of other things diet. p.s. partway through writing this, we went to dinner, and I saw the first vaguely cute girl in 2 weeks. Somewhere in the 15-22 age range. She'd be about a 5 on the 1-10 scale at home, so the fact that she jumped out at me as "holy crap the cutest girl I've seen here" shows you just what it's like. p.p.s. if anyone finds this post offensive, I'd be curious to hear you articulate why. |
patrissimo
|
6:57p |
More Glee Squee
(We're halfway through Season 1.) One of the big things I love about the show is how good the choreography is. They could have let it take second stage to the singing and slacked off on it, and I bet a lot of people focus on the singing more because it's more noticeable and easier to get. But as someone into dance, I watch the moves a lot, and I think the dance choreography is consistently phenomenal. It's a real pleasure to watch. Current Music: Something from Glee |
patrissimo
|
2:42p |
Author = hermit
Today's obvious lesson: Writing requires solitude. It's distracting to my writing just to have Shannon in the room with me reading and not talking to me at all. WTF was I doing trying to write a book in an office? Current Music: Deep Dance 89 |
patrissimo
|
10:07a |
India-ed out
Ok, I'm tired of being here. I'm tired of India, and of holidays. It's really sweet that they're rioting for independence during my visit, but I'm ready for normal life. I'm ready for a gym with Oly weights, for dinner from Whole Foods, for an office and a schedule, for a city where the sidewalks aren't public urinals. I'm tired of Indian food, especially the buffet here at the hotel where we eat most nights. Oh well. One more week. I do like the time zone thing - I basically only get email during the morning & evening, since daytime here is nighttime in the states, which makes for less distraction. Same goes for LJ & Twitter - once I've read them, there is little temptation to read them again b/c I know there is unlikely to be anything new. Ok, book-writing time... |
patrissimo
|
8:42a |
AMP for couples
If you're interested in intense personal growth work as it applies to your relationship, the Authentic Man Program that I did this summer will be holding their first workshop for couples, taught by the instructors of AMP and AWE (the female version). It's Feb 12-14 in SF (Valentine's Day). Here's the general AMP courses page. The couples course description I got by email includes: Though it can be infinitely more confronting to take a sober look at your blindspots, In Real Time, with someone in your day-to-day life, it can also lead to infinitely more beneficial breakthroughs...
1. It's not all on you this time (she will be realizing the places where she drops the ball as well)
2. You will both experience profound new depths of attraction and connection that you can bring directly back to your life |
| Friday, December 25th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
10:07p |
Merry Christmas, Jew Style!
I've compiled this fine selection of Jew/Xmas celebratory/parody songs for everyone, but they're especially dedicated to my sweeties S & N: You'd think there would be a lot more, but that's all the good ones I could find. |
patrissimo
|
10:47a |
fight the urge
I wrote up a post on climategate b/c I saw some posts on it that reinforced my prejudices, but then I deleted it. Yay! (tentative new years resolution: don't post about climate or genetics in 2010) |
| Thursday, December 24th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
9:56p |
The failure of biotech to produce cures
Article in Fast Company, via Seth Roberts. I ask former researcher Manuel López-Figueroa, a rock-star-looking vice president at prominent biotech VC firm Bay City Capital and a manager of a major academic research consortium, to tell me what genome-related treatments or tests are emerging in the field. He thinks for a minute. "As far as I know, nothing," he says, finally. "People were very optimistic about DNA studies, but I can't recall anything that has come out of them. Time will tell whether we'll eventually get there or not, but would I put money into them? Philanthropic and government money, yes; investor money, no."
I also look up all of the gene-focused companies mentioned in nine longish miracle-of-the-genome articles that ran in The New York Times and Boston Globe between 1998 and 2002: Of the 14 companies described as leading the way to remarkable new drugs and tests, all but one are out of business by virtue of having either folded, melted away in an acquisition, shifted to third-party gene-testing services, refocused on conventional drug development, or stooped to selling controversial direct-to-consumer products.
...
The simple fact is we still just don't know very much about genes, says Craig Venter, who famously spearheaded the push to sequence the human genome, founded Celera, and remains a driving force in genetics research. "We don't know what most genes do, and we certainly don't know what the variations are in most people. The idea that we can design custom drugs around genes, or change genes, is just silliness and science fiction."
...
The gene most strongly linked to intelligence accounts for less than 0.4% of the observed variation, while the top six intelligence genes together predict 1% of the variation. A 2009 study of about 6,000 people came up with a technique for predicting a person's height by looking at the 54 height-related genes; the results turned out to be one-tenth as accurate as averaging the heights of both parents and adjusting for sex, a technique introduced in 1886 by statistician Sir Francis Galton.
...
The one corner of the genome-focused biotech industry that's thriving is the one churning out equipment and services to support researchers in their endless hunt for gene links.
...
None of this is to say we shouldn't have bothered with the genome, or that we should stop working on it now. But we shouldn't base our decisions to invest in the science or in the biotech that comes out of it on an incomplete understanding of how long a task we're facing. |
patrissimo
|
6:32p |
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patrissimo
|
3:58p |
Glee!
Someone out there on the internet convinced me to try Glee, and I just watched the pilot episode, it was awesome!!! Cheesy, dramatic, soulful, musical...everything a high school show glee club TV show should be. I see why Joss Whedon listed it on his top 10 things he's grateful for in 2010. I think many of you will like it, but xleste for sure! |
| Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
3:22p |
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