drugs then and now June 19, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Better living through chemistry, My 2 cents.2 comments
I can only hope today’s cancer drugs will one day seem as barbaric as treating children’s coughs with morphine .
An amphetamine to treat housewives who are depressed from being “crushed under a load of dull, routine duties.” Would we think twice today before offering an unhappy stay at home mom the chance to enter the paid work force? Unfortunately, little has changed on this front. While many people who benefit from drugs designed to treat psychiatric disorders, they are vastly over-prescribed as a quick fix to an underlying problem, especially in children. (Think Ritalin.)
What would the world look like if we addressed the social structures that contribute to mental disorders?
The only change I’m aware of when in the weight loss drug arena is that the more dangerous ones have been taken off the market. I’ve met many people who gladly and knowingly risk kidney and liver damage in order to lose weight quickly.
If you’d like to see more of these ads, click here.
made with molecules June 3, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Better living through chemistry, Geekiness, jewelry.add a comment
I missed this booth at the Make Faire, but fortunately a friend tweeted about it. I like.
Maker Faire June 2, 2009
Posted by Sarah in bicycles, Bicycling, Bike advocacy, bikes, fire art, Geekiness, the arts.add a comment
On Sunday, I met up with a couple of friends to bike over to the Maker Faire, a DIY festival of very cool proportions. Bike valet parking courtesy of the SVBC - they’d parked almost 1600 bikes when we picked ours up!
Here are some highlights of the festival:
I’m generally a fan of anything dangerous enough to warrant a sign like this!
Miscellaneous fire art from the Flaming Lotus Girls. The Burning Man crowd was well represented.
There were lots and lots of bicycle inspired contraptions, but we went for the biggest and the best and they actually let us drive the mother ship! (The stylishly rolled pants? A must for any cyclist, especially those who forget to unroll their pants after arriving.)
Hula hooping! I cannot remember the last time I laughed so much. The video clip.
New trend, new pet peeve March 24, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Better living through chemistry, obesity.add a comment
High fructose corn syrup has recently, and rightfully imho, earned its place on the list of things that are really, really bad for you. Unfortunately, marketing gurus have sprung into action to promote other sweeteners as “good” when in reality they are merely “less bad.”
So now when I turn down sugar at hip places like Samovar, I’m inevitably offered honey or cane sugar as a healthy alternative. I’m like, wtf, that shit’s still bad for me!* And then I have to restrain myself from educating the server on the metabolism of simple sugars or about the reality behind marketing claims versus actual science. Maybe I should just carry copies of this article around and inflict them on the overly solicitous.
*I am SUPER sensitive to sugar and avoid it like the plague. Shaking, passing out, drooling, etc, are not my idea of a good end to a meal!
What’s pink and blue and black and orange and white all over? March 7, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Better living through chemistry, Geekiness, home decor, Visual stuff.add a comment
I’m not so thrilled with my bathroom’s pink, silver and gold color scheme, but when it comes to gawd awful, my bathroom has nothing on the one pictured above. When you’re a renter, sometimes you just have to throw the towel and make it worse in order to make it better. And that’s exactly what this woman did.
I love that the solution here is the periodic table of elements shower curtain, which somehow actually ties everything together. If your eyes aren’t bleeding, click here for more pictures.
(For those of who you caught the puns in this post and are still reading, here’s a huge shout out. You’re awesome, you really are.)
Why the arts March 6, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Better living through chemistry, Books, Geekiness, Inspiration, My 2 cents, the arts, Visual stuff.2 comments
Neurons by Cheryl Safren, an artist who uses chemistry to create her work.
I’ve been thinking about the arts lately – how they impact my life, how society often fails to assign value to things that enrich our lives. This article gave voice to those musings by simply and boldly stating that geeky, techy, nuts and bolts type innovation cannot exist without the arts, that the creative mind is not a compartmentalized mind.
I’ve had recent conversations with friends where we fret that our productivity, as measured by the sheer measure of things we do in a given day, has fallen as we’ve aged. But the realization that quickly follows is that we are now doing much more creative work, and the down time necessary for that can easily masquerade as non-productivity. As your work moves away from an assembly line mentality, the further afield your mind needs to wander. This is not a linear process that answers to work flows, spreadsheets, and time cards, but a meandering that is absolutely vital to the creative process. And yes, sometimes the most effective way for me to solve a problem is to spend half an hour not thinking about it.
Take that meandering a bit further, out of official work hours, and just off the top of my head, I know a chemist who paints and plays guitar, the biotech VP who rocks out in a band, a computational biologist who writes, and an astrophysics grad student who does photography. Even if none of them directly translate an insight from their hobbies into the next scientific break through, those hobbies enrich their lives so that when they do return to the lab, the office, the laptop, or the telescope array, they do it with renewed energy and enthusiasm. In that sense, art truly does fuel science.
As a post script, check out James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science, Chandler Burr’s The Emperor of Scent, and any biography of Darwin for accounts of scientific discovery that sprang out of long periods of what everyone else wrote off as aimlessness and irresponsibility. Indeed, not all who wander are lost!
Phi February 18, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Geekiness, Humor.4 comments
It’s sometimes a scary thing when you get too many geeks together…especially when they start telling jokes that aren’t funny to anyone else. Consider yourself warned: the image above is a phi shirt available from thinkgeek. Doesn’t ring a bell? Well, let thinkgeek explain:
We think this is the most beautiful shirt we’ve ever made, but you might say that’s irrational.
*rimshot*
Ha!
Umm, no? Oh well, here’s something* for hanging in there:
Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Little old lady.
Little old lady who?
Wow! I didn’t know you could yodel.
Okay, I’m done now. Come back tomorrow – no more jokes, I promise. :)
* Shamelessly stolen from A Majority of Two.
Cycling and transit February 7, 2009
Posted by Sarah in Bicycling, Bike advocacy, environmentalism, Geekiness, Humor, sustainability.add a comment
If you’re trying to effect social change, you must appeal to all levels of society. The appreciation of a great ass transcends all political lines.
Since I’m on the topic of sustainability, BART just added a new feature on its website:
Whenever you use the BART QuickPlanner, the lower right corner of the results page will show the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) you save when you take BART instead of driving. CO2 is produced by the burning of fossil fuels, like the gasoline in your car, and it is one of the greenhouse gases related to global warming. Here’s the formula we use to calculate the CO2 savings generated by your BART trip:
(Distance / MPG) * (Pounds of CO2 emitted per gallon of gas)
Distance = track distance between stations. (Source: BART)
Miles per gallon (MPG) = 20.3. Based on fuel economy of passenger cars and light trucks, weighted by vehicle miles traveled for passenger cars and light trucks. (Source: US Environmental Protection Agency)
Pounds of CO2 emitted per gallon of gas = 19.4 (Source: US Environmental Protection Agency)
Note: BART CO2 emissions are not included in this formula since no measurable emissions
result from adding one trip. BART train operation is 100% electric, and
67% of BART’s power comes from clean hydro and renewable sources.
I’m grateful for… November 29, 2008
Posted by Sarah in Better living through chemistry.add a comment
Hydrocodone, aka Vicodin when combined with the substance below
Acetaminophen
They also gave me darvocet in the ER, but the only thing this drug made me grateful for was antinausea medication. I wasn’t asking questions when they dripped it into my IV, so I don’t know which drug I received.
Finally, I’m grateful for ice packs on sore muscles.
new levels of thinking September 22, 2008
Posted by Sarah in Einstein, My 2 cents.1 comment so far
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
This Einstein quote really captured something that I’ve been working on for myself lately. We glibly define insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but spouting off this definition doesn’t immunize us in the least. In fact, we are so ingrained in our own patterns that I’ve blogged in amazement at one particular counter example.
It also reminds me of a favorite quote from my old Zen teacher back in Louisiana, the line about how the crawfish gets into heaven by backing out of hell. As hard as it is to recognize when we’ve gotten ourselves stuck, it can be even harder to see the way out. And that is where Einstein’s exhortation gives me a little glimmer of encouragement.
