http://sassyass.net/ i really have nothing to say. but i want to say it all the same.]]> en-us 2008-07-01T09:02:44-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/07/01/giant_piles.html from the associated press: In the latest bout of food inflation, beef, pork, poultry and even eggs, cheese and milk are expected to get more expensive as livestock owners go out of business or are forced to slaughter more cattle, hogs, turkeys and chickens to cope with rocketing costs for corn-based animal feed. ... Rod Brenneman, president and chief executive of Seaboard Foods, a pork supplier in Sawnee Mission, Kan. that produces 4 million hogs a year, said high corn costs were already forcing producers in his industry to cut back on the number of animals they raise. ... Brenneman's cost for feeding a single hog has shot up $30 in the past year because of record-high prices for corn and soybeans, the main ingredients in animal feed. Passing that increase on to consumers would tack an extra 15 cents per pound onto a pork chop. It's a similar story for U.S. beef producers, who now spend a whopping 60-70 percent of their production costs on animal feed and are seeing that number rise daily as corn prices hover near an unprecedented $8 a bushel, up from about $4 a year ago. i've been reading (listening to) michael pollan's the omnivore's dilemma (it's both fascinating and horrifying in the same way that "super size me" and "an inconvenient truth" were) and it's helped me to understand the subtext behind why we've historically had these huge surpluses of grain, why the small farmers are going out of business, and why processed foods are so evil and making americans obese: the giant pile of corn. the giant pile of corn (which is different from the giant pool of money, which if you haven't listened to it, is brilliantly explained by this american life and shows how the housing crunch in america turned into a huge international credit crisis. highly recommended) is the huge surplus of grain produced by our current incredibly productive variant of maize that is propped up by cheap petroleum used for fertilizer by industrial farming. this has led to curious side effects like the flood of both processed foods and zillions of crazy corn by-products in said processed foods, and in turn rise of things like american obesity and type II diabetes from the spread of more corn by-products like high-fructose corn syrup. yet this has all been predicated by the cheap petroleum and in turn corn, which has been dropping from $2 a bushel down to $1.25 a bushel in recent years. yet now with corn up to $8 a bushel, you wonder how this will ripple through the industry. certainly our food chain built on unnaturally grain-fed beef is already seeing the effects, but how much further could this fundamentally change how our society feeds itself? could this turn people back to grass-fed cattle and poultry? local more sustainable farming and shopping? or is this just the first step towards soylent green? "This is not sustainable. The cattle industry is going to have to get smaller," said James Herring, president and CEO of Amarillo, Tex.-based Friona Industries, which buys 20 million bushels of corn each year to feed 550,000 cattle. Corn's prices were already rising before the floods, driven up 80 percent over the past year as developing countries like China and India scramble for grains to feed people and livestock. U.S. production of ethanol, an alternative fuel that can be made with corn, has also pushed prices higher, prompting livestock owners to lobby Washington to roll back ethanol mandates. ... If corn were to rise to $10 a bushel, Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, said recouping costs through higher retail prices may not be possible. speaking of which, i do have to say that's one thing that troubles me about obama-- his support for corn ethanol subsidies. compare this with mccain's recent proposal for a new automobile battery prize and support for more efficient sugar cane-based ethanol (from cnet): Presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Monday proposed a $300 million prize to develop a car battery that will "leapfrog" today's plug-in hybrids. ... His $300 million car battery prize is meant to spur creativity among automakers to make energy-efficient products. "This is one dollar for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.--a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency--and should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs," he said. ... In the same speech, McCain repeated his opposition to policies that encourage corn-ethanol and said the U.S. should eliminate a tariff on ethanol from Brazil because it hinders free trade. He said he would provide incentives to automakers to manufacture flex-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol or gasoline. He said Brazil, which gets about half of its auto fuel from sugar cane ethanol, has shown that a country can change its fuel mix in just a few years. of COURSE i'm not saying it's enough to make me vote for him, but i'm just saying. ]]> giantrobot 2008-07-01T09:02:44-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/06/24/fractal_ultrama.html awesome: at the tokyo toy show, an ultrman made out of 10,000 ultramen. ]]> giantrobot 2008-06-24T15:04:54-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/06/22/wellroundedbaby.html one of the things i really struggle with as a new parent is exactly how much of my life to sacrifice to raising a kid. don't get me wrong: i'm not someone who doesn't expect or want my life to change as a result of having a child, in fact i welcome it and enjoy it. yet it's hard for me to figure out exactly how much of my life to sacrifice for the sake of parenting, especially when i'm ready and willing to give anything and everything up for the sake of my daughter. yet this can't be good or healthy in the long run. i have to remind myself that i'm not shirking my duties by wanting to go out once in a while and see a movie or a show, or even going out to buy some records or whatever. yet when there's any sort of time conflict, i feel bad choosing myself when snapper or hmc could use my time, whether it's just staying at home and watching her or being around to take a walk or give her a bath, or being able to watch her to allow hmc to get out of the house and experience a little freedom from child house arrest. there's an article in the nytimes about the novel and exciting idea of sharing parenting duties 50-50: Gender should not determine the division of labor at home. It's a message consistent with nearly every major social trend of the past three decades -- women entering the work force, equality between the sexes, the need for two incomes to pay the bills, even courts that favor shared custody after divorce. And it is what many would agree is fair, even ideal. Yet it is anything but the norm. i'm sure hmc will disagree, but at least in my mind this really isn't the issue. i'm lucky that i've got a job that's relatively flexible in that i can move my hours around and be at home for lots of times during the week, and i'm happy to do as much as i can around raising snapper and watching her grow up. but on the other hand i realize that often i swing too far in choosing noble parenthood, and needlessly sacrificing everything in the name of parenthood doesn't win anyone any prizes. at worst this would burn me out and perhaps cause feelings of resentment, and at the very least snapper gets a father who hasn't grown or changed since 2007. the tiny step towards this was going to yoga last week for father's day. which was the first time in a year. surprisingly, the world hadn't fallen apart while i was gone.]]> giantrobot 2008-06-22T13:52:56-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/06/17/again_japan_is.html from time magazine: Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 73-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job -- as a porn star. ... Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he's just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime. Tokuda's exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an "old-man" series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. "The adult video industry is very competitive," says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. "If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers' hearts." Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of their elders is captivating to younger viewers. "I think that as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them," says Kono passionately. But Tokuda stresses the appeal of his work to an audience of his peers: "Elderly people don't identify with school dramas," he says. "It's easier for them to relate to older men and daughters-in-law series, so they tend to watch adult videos with older people in them." The veteran porn star plans to keep working until he's 80, or older, as long as the industry will cast him -- and given the bullish market for his work, he's unlikely to go without work.]]> giantrobot 2008-06-17T23:45:15-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/06/15/the_first_fathe.html how was my first father's day as an actual father? quiet. quiet=great. all that i did today was to go to yoga for the first time in a year, take a nap, and then go out for sushi. and in between play with and feed snapper. what could be better? oh, and i got to watch the game, and much to my surprise, the lakers won and are alive for another day. (quick basketball aside: can i say that 1. i lied and i'm NOT fine with the celtics winning after watching them rip the heart out of my two favorite teams and 2. watching the lakers blow a 24 point lead in game 4 made me sick to my stomach. even watching them win their two games, you never really get the sense that they deserve to win or even earned it. no one on the lakers besides kobe seems to understand that they need to PLAY HARD to win and they need to earn it. instead they seem to have bought into the idea that they're the favorites, and once they jump out to a nice lead [which they do every game] the celtics will fold. which they don't. because this is the finals. and the celtics aren't quitting, and that's why they're up 3-2. is it time for wimbledon yet?) honestly, to me this has always been a bullshit holiday, a sort of "oh yeah" equivalent to mother's day. but i can't tell you how much i appreciate it now. not the actual holiday, but just that day that reminds me: i'm a father. and i love it. ]]> giantrobot 2008-06-15T22:46:50-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/06/07/its_oh_so_quiet.html our friend k.o. organized this brilliant "spontaneous" rendition of bjork's "it's oh so quiet" in union square today: there's also a better video here, but i didn't have multiple cameras, and i bet these people weren't holding a baby. ]]> giantrobot 2008-06-07T22:35:59-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/06/02/month_9.html dear snapper, you're nine months old now, and growing like a weed. a very very small weed, but a weed nevertheless. your mobility is now a fact of life; no longer can we just put you down somewhere and rely on you to be there when we get back. at first it was your scrabbling around on your belly, but now you GO places and when you get there, you're pulling yourself up onto things, even up to standing. and yet, this new dalliance with the z-axis presents a whole new set of challenges: finding you rolled over in your crib, now crawling around when you should be sleeping. daddy doesn't know what he was thinking when he taught you how to roll over in the first place. finding you kneeling in your crib when you should be sleeping. need i mention that this precipitated lowering of said crib? finding you standing up in your crib, hanging onto the bars, and baby-talking "ATTICA! ATTICA!" as you bang your sippy cup against the rails. (ok, this didn't actually happen. at least the sippy cup part. yet.) baby bath time is now much more difficult, because you no longer want to lay there but insist on sitting up. which makes washing your hair more complicated. and which also makes washing your bum MUCH more complicated. what's a been a little bit concerning are the asthma attacks. you've had five or six in the span of three weeks, enough for us to be worried and take you to the doctor a couple of times. we even have a baby-sized inhaler for you, but haven't used it yet. pray that we will never have to. a-mah reminded me that you daddy had asthma when he was young, but grew out of it. so hopefully you will too. speaking of growing, when mommy was out of town, you suddenly decided to start eating TWICE AS MUCH FOOD as before. suddenly you started packing in two ramekins of baby food in a meal, and became a yogurt eating machine. now i have to count my fingers after every meal. and it's not only yogurt, but it's a whole cornucopia of things that i would never imagined that you'd like, and i certainly didn't like until probably i was twenty times as old as you. things like: lentils, fava beans, yams, asparagus, and broccoli! i am continually astounded. it both makes me so incredibly proud and super mushy when i see how much you're growing every day. the other day in the bath, when you wanted not only to sit up but to stand up, and you determinedly grabbed onto the side of the baby tub, and then decided that wasn't enough and lifted yourself up by the edge of the bathtub, stood up, and looked out, you smiled a great big smile-- a smile not just of happiness, but of accomplishment. i almost wept. ]]> giantrobot 2008-06-02T05:30:51-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/30/the_littlest_ra.html Japanese scientists create microscopic noodle bowl TOKYO - Japanese scientists say they have used cutting-edge technology to create a noodle bowl so small it can be seen only through a microscope. Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao said Thursday he and his students at the University of Tokyo used a carbon-based material to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1/25,000 of an inch in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology. The Japanese-style ramen bowl was carved out of microscopic nanotubes, Nakao said. Nanotubes are tube-shaped pieces of carbon, measuring about one-ten-thousandth of the thickness of a human hair. Carbon nanotubes are being explored for a wide range of uses in electronics and medicine because their structure endows them with powerful physical properties such as a strength greater than steel. The ramen bowl experiment included a string of "noodles" that measured one-12,500th of an inch in length, with a thickness of one-1.25 millionth of an inch. "We believe it's the world's smallest ramen bowl, with the smallest portion of noodles inside, though they are not edible," Nakao said. The hardest part was to keep the noodles from rising upright from the bowl "like alfalfa sprouts," he said. "The achievement was mostly for fun." The microscopic bowl was first created in December 2006, but revealed only Thursday after it was entered for a microphotography competition last week. ]]> giantrobot 2008-05-30T08:51:14-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/28/grandparents_lo.html just to catch everyone up, hmc went to nyc/new haven for the week for her sister's law school graduation. originally we were all going to try and go, but snapper and i ended up staying home instead. i was going to try and figure out how to work in a visit to my parents during my time off but they decided to come up here instead. it was great: they got to spend a whole week with snapper, and then every night after snapper went to bed and we ate dinner, we'd watch basketball, either lakers/spurs or pistons/celtics depending on what day it was. we took some walks, went to the park, and tamed the agave overrunning the front garden. plus, the endless home-cooked food! out of this, i realized two things: 1. my dad is mostly fine. he seems to be more or less recovered from the stroke or whatever it was. he's sometimes still a little forgetful or says the wrong word, but you can't tell whether it's still side effects from the s.o.w.i.w. or just because he's getting old. what i do notice is that he is old all of a sudden; it's like he was able to hide it before and not show it so much, but the s.o.w.i.w. took so much out of him that he aged overnight. again, i don't know if anyone else really notices. but it's strange to see him going a little slower now, and looking a little more grey. 2. my parents will probably never understand tivo. the whole concept of not having to be wedded to when a certain show comes on and instead just watching whatever you want whenever you want to is just totally foreign to them. it took them several days to figure out what was going on when we'd watch the day's basketball game, and why suddenly we were watching the beginning when it was clearly later then that, but not yet over? in the end i didn't even really take the time to try and explain it to them because it was clear that they didn't need it or want it. yes, it can record stuff you want to watch, but you need to know what you want to watch beforehand so you can tell it to get it. and it can even suggest stuff, but i don't think they even want that or even care that much. it's not like they even really have favorite shows or anything. if it's interesting they'll watch it, usually golf or something during the day if they're not out or working in the garden. at night they probably just flipp around prime time until the news comes on. it's not really about finding good shows to watch or collecting things to see. it's about filling the time until you go to bed. so much for giving them that spare tivo. it makes me realize that at a certain point, there's some paradigm that you don't need to and won't buy into. whether it's just because it's too meta for you or you're just too ingrained in whatever you're used to; you just don't see the value in it and it's not worth the effort. i see tivo as being this for my parents. i just spent yesterday geeking out on the faviconize tab extension, and realized that this would not only make no sense to them, but i probably couldn't explain to them why they would need tabs in the first place. i look around and try to figure out what could be my equivalent. perhaps it's the news comes from newspapers idea that i can't seem to shake. i can't really take news from blogs and rss feeds that seriously; i can only follow sports news and tech news using those. everything else is either from a real newspaper (nytimes), or some online replica (sfgate) or amalgamation (my yahoo!). someday there will be a web 5.0 plugin where you get news piped directly into your brain, and i'll say, "eh, what do i need that for? i get the news right here every day on my doorstep!"]]> giantrobot 2008-05-28T22:01:27-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/26/the_search_for_1.html snapper and i decided at the last minute to dash over to the asian art museum to catch the zhan wang exhibit that was closing yesterday. the highlight was a topographic San Francisco cityscape--one of his "urban landscape" series- using steel rocks, mirrored surfaces, silverware, and stainless steel pots and pans, which was pretty cute, although given all the hoopla i thought his exhibit might have more than just one small room. it certainly was shiny, though. seeing as we were already out and had paid our admission, we cruised through the rest of the museum. i decided to let snapper lead the way, and would just go over and examine whatever she decided to look at. given that the entire third floor was dedicated to tracing buddhism's spread across asia, there were a LOT of buddha statues and carvings. it was interesting to see what aspects of buddhism resonated with each culture and how that was reflected in their depictions of him. speaking of which, i'm reminded that i'm desperate to see the hewlett/albarn opera monkey journey to the west, and i see that it's actually in the states, but i'd have to go to south carolina to go see it? uh, what? on the other hand, it did make me think of jill bolte taylor, who gave a great TED talk and just had a piece done about her in the nytimes today: On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe -- the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context -- began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great. The incessant chatter that normally filled her mind disappeared. Her everyday worries -- about a brother with schizophrenia and her high-powered job -- untethered themselves from her and slid away. Her perceptions changed, too. She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy. ... She brings a deep personal understanding to something she long studied: that the two lobes of the brain have very different personalities. Generally, the left brain gives us context, ego, time, logic. The right brain gives us creativity and empathy. For most English-speakers, the left brain, which processes language, is dominant. Dr. Taylor's insight is that it doesn't have to be so. Her message, that people can choose to live a more peaceful, spiritual life by sidestepping their left brain, has resonated widely. ... But many reaching out are spiritual seekers, particularly Buddhists and meditation practitioners, who say her experience confirms their belief that there is an attainable state of joy. ... Although her father is an Episcopal minister and she was raised in his church, she cannot be counted among the traditionally faithful. "Religion is a story that the left brain tells the right brain," she said. Still, Dr. Taylor says, "nirvana exists right now." "There is no doubt that it is a beautiful state and that we can get there," she said. i'm not sure that snapper felt any of this. she was pretty chilled out the whole time, but ended up getting a pretty bad diaper rash from the experience, so i don't know what that means. ]]> giantrobot 2008-05-26T22:03:59-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/25/whats_a_ninewor.html how about, "'we are the world' remade by japanese celebrity impersonators"? ]]> giantrobot 2008-05-25T08:21:47-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/23/this_bag_is_not.html you know you've seen all those warnings on plastic bags and those little inflatable plastic pillows amazon insists on sending you every time you order another Hummel figurine: Warning - This bag is not a toy. Plastic bags can be dangerous. To avoid danger of suffocation, keep this bag away from babies and children. well, of course, you think. who would be foolish enough to let their children play with plastic bags? and then, you have children. and you realize that BABIES LOVE PLASTIC BAGS. maybe it would help if they didn't make the exact same super interesting crinkly sound that so many baby toys already make (which i suspect, is the result of them having plastic bags hidden inside). and of course you're not going to let them put some shopping bag over their head and roll around in the crib. however, would it be possible that we've let her play with a closed ziplock bag with whatever rattly things inside it to keep her entertained while we're just trying to just get one thing done for just a minute or two? or that we've let her chew on a thick ziplock because it's probably less lethal than all the other things she's sitting next to? if you're from child services, then uh, NO, we haven't. that would be silly. i don't know what you're talking about.]]> giantrobot 2008-05-23T17:58:44-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/18/breathing_easy.html snapper had what appears to be her first asthma attack today. we're really not sure what triggered it, whether it was the looong crawl from the living room through the dining area to the kitchen picking up perhaps too much dust because we need to clean again, or whether it was some chasing and petting of mika and then fingers-to-mouth. although we've had carefully supervised mika petting before and it never resulted in any reactions before now. but today, all the signs were there. short repeated coughing, and audible wheezing. we did the steamy bathroom trick which did seem to help, and just sat with her in there reading some books. thankfully, she didn't seem to notice either way and at no point did she look anything but happy and jumpy (except at the end, where she was getting tired because the schvitz was delaying her nap). i had visions of dealing with this in the future; i can't decide what's worse: if she gets a bad attack now and she can't understand what's going on, or if it's later and we have an angry and scared 3 year old who throws a tantrum because they're being kept in a steamy bathroom for half an hour. the doctor did warn me that she might have asthma, since he heard the faintest traces of it when we last went in for the ear infection. plus, hmc has mild asthma so it could run in the family. she later woke up from her nap and was totally fine. and then proceeded to eat about 8 oz of baby food in various forms. holy bejeeezus!]]> giantrobot 2008-05-18T15:03:25-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/15/now_you_suckas.html snapper coming to get you! Originally uploaded by sassyass this is what happens when i get one of those flip cameras for my birthday. if you thought all i did was take pictures of snapper, now all i'm going to do is to take videos of snapper... ]]> giantrobot 2008-05-15T22:34:04-08:00 http://sassyass.net/2008/05/09/saving_the_eart.html oh great. just when i felt more or less at peace about driving my prius because of gas prices and saving the earth, this just in from the nytimes about how they might be killing us softly (greenly?): Testing with a TriField meter led Brian Collins of Encinitas, Calif., to sell his 2001 Honda Insight just six months after he bought it -- at a loss of $7,000. He said the driver was receiving "dangerously high" E.M.F. levels of up to 135 milligauss at the hip and up to 100 milligauss at the upper torso. These figures contrasted sharply with results from his Volkswagen van, which measured one to two milligauss. ... A spokesman for Honda, Chris Martin, points to the lack of a federally mandated standard for E.M.F.'s in cars. Despite this, he said, Honda takes the matter seriously. "All our tests had results that were well below the commission's standard," Mr. Martin said, referring to the European guidelines. And he cautions about the use of hand-held test equipment. "People have a valid concern, but they're measuring radiation using the wrong devices," he said. Kent Shadwick, controller of purchasing services for the York Catholic District School Board in York, Ontario, evaluated the Toyota Prius for fleet use. Mr. Shadwick said it was tested at various speeds, and under hard braking and rapid acceleration, using a professional-quality gauss meter. "The results that we saw were quite concerning," he said. "We saw high levels in the vehicle for both the driver and left rear passenger, which has prompted us to explore shielding options and to consider advocating testing of different makes and models of hybrid vehicles." In a statement, Toyota said: "The measured electromagnetic fields inside and outside of Toyota hybrid vehicles in the 50 to 60 hertz range are at the same low levels as conventional gasoline vehicles. Therefore there are no additional health risks to drivers, passengers or bystanders." The statement adds that the measured E.M.F. in a Prius is 1/300th of the European guideline. The tests conducted by hybrid owners rarely approach the level of thoroughness of those run by automakers. ... Lawrence Gust of Ventura, Calif., a consultant with a specialty in E.M.F.'s and electrical sensitivity, was one of the electrical engineers who tested Mr. Collins's Insight in 2001. He agreed that the readings were high but did not want to speculate on whether they were harmful. "There are big blocks of high-amp power being moved around in a hybrid, the equivalent of horsepower," he said. "I get a lot of clients who ask if they should buy hybrid electric cars, and I say the jury is still out." great. something else to worry about. how do i know this isn't some secret rumor put out by opec or by hummer? not that i really am afraid about nuking myself, but this is a family car! my baby is tender and delicious and i can't have her cooked prematurely! also, this just in: recycling causes cancer. and genital warts.]]> giantrobot 2008-05-09T18:16:28-08:00