Getting myself all riled up

I go on Yahoo Answers, and some idiot posts his ignorant, inflammatory, and bigoted remarks about homosexuality, and links to a Traditional Values Coalition site “exposing” various “myths” about homosexuality. “Myths” such as the number of gay teen suicides, that gays really want the right to marry (and not to destroy society), and that gays are targeted for hate crimes.

See, now I want to go punch something/someone. I want to slap each of the members of the TVC in the face and say, “What the HELL are you thinking!” What needs to be done is that they need to be called out on the real motivation behind all of their statements, be it on child molestation or the fear of a “thought police” on hate crimes (how ironic that they can repress gays’ thoughts but let’s not deal with homophobic thoughts). Their revulsion at gay people. They can act all respectful, and talk about facts and figures and societal consequences, but the underlying issue — it makes them retch to think of non-hetero affection between people. And they want to get rid of it. If mass extermination were socially acceptable, that’s what they would want.

But it’s not acceptable to hate a person, and it’s not Christian to say something like that, so they make up lies about why the problem is homosexuality, and all of its negative consequences. All an elaborate pretext to convince themselves that their reaction is okay. Cognitive dissonance at its worst.

Don’t bother visiting the site. I’m not linking to it. It’s a big waste of time and gets you all mad for nothing. I don’t know why I do this to myself, going to these sites and getting myself all riled up over some idiots somewhere.

Ah! It all makes sense now…

Halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban, I stumbled on this happy coincidence:

“Please, sir,” said Hermione, whose hand was still in the air, “the werewolf differs from the true wolf in several small ways. The snout of the werewolf–”

“That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger,” said Snape cooly. “Five more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all.”

Now I can claim that my blog title is a literary allusion, and not just some phrase I pulled out of a hat. But really, I’ve always felt a connection to Hermione. I know exactly how she feels when she gets mad at her classmates for getting into trouble, or for not taking classes seriously, or for believing in irrational woo (like Professor Trelawney’s divination). So, yes, I did have that in mind when I titled my blog.

Finals week, part II

I worked out again today, and I’m glad that it’s becoming more of a habit. I pretty much have a set routine, and I’ve got a combination lock in my backpack that I can use whenever I go to the gym. On top of that, I’ve been reading up on diet and exercise, both from my course materials (super helpful) and from this site, Straight Health (insert joke here). According to that site, I should be dieting and exercising for 12 weeks to reach my target of 165 lbs. That’s until July — I think I can hold out for that long, if a hotter body is at stake.

I might get my wisdom teeth taken out this weekend, just before Spring Break starts. I’ll call my parents about it, but I have to figure out how much it will cost and everything first.

But also, this Friday I’m going to dinner with an old roommate and some of his friends (a couple mutual friends, but mostly his friends) for his birthday. We’re going to Genghis Cohen in West Hollywood — I’ll tell you all about that.

12 hours until I’m done with this quarter!

Beginning of finals week

I’m somewhat alarmed that, in my blog so far, I haven’t posted much about my day-to-day life — at least not recently. What does that say about me, eh? Anyway, to make up for it, here’s what went on this past week.

Sunday: I slept in (11 AM), and then tried to study as much as I could for my Histology final, which was Monday. I went over respiratory histology. I really don’t give a crap about most of this stuff (will I ever need to know the types of collagen contained in respiratory epithelia?), but I just study it for the test.

My parents came by at dinnertime and brought me food for the week, and some fried rice for dinner, which we ate outside.

Later that night I got a call from B., and we chatted about his job interview and my parents’ visit. I always like talking to him.

Monday:

Jasmine N asks:

What are health psychologists? What do they do and how can I become one?

Health psychology deals with psychological factors that influence good and bad health, and the psychological consequences of bad health.

It can be applied to community-wide prevention, individual counseling, or management of chronically or terminally ill patients. Health psychologists can work with health caregivers to develop ways to help patients modify their habits or prepare them for stressful medical procedures and illnesses. They can also perform research on different interventions to see which are the most effective, for example, to help a patient quit smoking. They can also work in the public health sector, to encourage healthy habits and preventive care (such as breast self-examination and mammograms) in the general public.

Source: Health Psychology, Shelley E. Taylor, 5th ed.

(link)

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I took a course in Health Psychology in my senior year of undergrad, and the book is my old textbook. It was a really interesting class, although it was more of a broad overview of the field than anything in-depth. Still, I learned a lot about habit modification and other health issues, such as the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change, or the Protection-Motivation Model. And my favorite was an article by Philip Brickman (”Models of helping and coping.” American Psychologist. Vol 37(4), Apr 1982, pp. 368-384), that verbalized and provided a model for what I had long felt about religion. I’ll save this for its own post.

Realize that at the same time I was also taking Social Psychology (with Lee Ross, who coined the term “Fundamental Attribution Error”), and Sex and Marriage in Anthropology. It was amazing — it was like every class I took related back to the issues I wanted to know about, and had interesting things to say about human nature.

That’s what I want to do with my life, basically. Have a career where I am continually learning about and applying principles of human nature and behavior, and understanding our constraints and inner drives the best that I can. Does this mean I do work in the community, developing programs for improving eating habits among school-age kids? Does this mean I do research in neuroscience and psychology, tackling a subject like the molecular basis of memory formation? Should I pursue a career in psychiatry? Thoughts, anyone?

Hopelessly long list of books I foolishly intend to read

1. Iserson’s Getting Into A Residency - Kenneth V. Iserson
   Probably the number one priority for me right now. Yes I am freaking out about this. No, this is not unusual among med students (at least not among the ones I know)
2. Evolution’s Rainbow - Joan Roughgarden
   Between reading this book and re-reading a couple of books from undergrad classes, I really hope to have a better understanding of a lot of gender and sexuality-related issues. Because, seriously, science is relevant to everything.
3. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
   Because I might enjoy it a lot, and because I like the idea of having read a classic work (there, I said it). But then again this may be one of those books where I end up picking it up, reading a page, and then putting it down because it’s so tedious (yes, I’m talking to you, Silas Marner by George Eliot). After a while, you have to admit defeat and say that you just cannot finish this book.
4. Harry Potter (books 3-7) - J. K. Rowling
   What I really want to do is to at least read Order of the Phoenix before watching the movie. That’s three (well, two-and-a-half) books by July. But I know people who read Half-Blood Prince in one evening.
5. Why We Get Sick - Randolph Nesse and George Williams
   I heard Nesse speak at my school, and I think he has a lot of interesting and important things to say, especially for the health profession. We’re so caught up with wanting to restore “optimum health,” when really, life is always changing, and there really has never been such a thing as optimum health in the history of our species. Evolution is about making us good enough to reproduce more than the other guy. Not about maximizing our enjoyment of life. The question is, how does this change the way we do medicine?
6. Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
   Everyone keeps talking about this book, and Diamond has done amazingly diverse work, including discoveries we have learned about in class.
7. Medical Nutrition and Disease - Lisa Hark and Gail Morrison; and
   ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription - American College of Sports Medicine
   Two books that I should really use to supplement my education. Nutrition and exercise, what could be more basic than that? And what easier (and cheaper) way to improve health in a lot of people. Including myself.
8. Awakenings - Oliver Sacks
   I always find his stories inspiring, like when I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. I’ve already seen the movie, so I know how it ends: De Niro doesn’t get the Oscar. Such a sad story.

Wow, Avril Lavigne

Wow, Avril Lavigne, wow. To not only put out a song like “Girlfriend,” with its terrible lyrics, but to sing it in seven other poorly-pronounced languages. I think my fave is either the Mandarin (surprisingly good tolerable) or the French (um, isn’t she Canadian?). I guess the Spanish version has the “novia”/”nueva” half-rhyme going on, that’s pretty sweet.

After a few listens it’s a pretty funny song. It has a certain Gwen Stefani-ish appeal to it.

If you must listen to all of them, here they are all together.

Hot/Not

What’s hot:

Yahoo Music. I loves it, it is amazing. I can find and listen to any song or album that I can think of. For example, I just discovered Sufjan Stevens for the first time (*heart*) — just added his “Illinois” album to my music library. Oh, and what’s this, the new debut album by Elliott Yamin? Downloaded.

It is such a deal. (I went with the basic $5.99 a month plan because I’m not a big ipod kind of guy). One other thing that’s cool is that as you rate songs (or artists or entire albums) you like, you get a better and better playlist on your Yahoo music radio station. This is how I discover a lot of cool music I would not have known about otherwise. This part you can do for free, even.

What’s not:

Grey’s Anatomy. Lord knows I’m trying to be sympathetic, but I have just about had it with all of these characters. Izzie cutting the LVAD wire? Meredith dumping McVet for McScraggly? George and Callie getting married in Vegas? The attendings being immature about the chief position? Meredith constantly being the damsel in distress? You know, there are competent people in medicine in the real world. You just wouldn’t know it from watching this show.

And Mark Sloan — the writers seem to be trying so hard to make us like him. But unfortunately he’s a jerk and a womanizer, so he always feels weird. And Addison Montgomery — she used to be such a kickass doctor, someone who tolerated zero BS. But some time during her divorce they took away her mojo. How disappointing. Let’s hope her spinoff series is better.

Music on YouTube

I love these people. They’re both performers on YouTube, and both of them have amazing talent, but their styles are very different. I recommend checking out all of their songs, but here they are performing the same song, Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

Here’s ysabellabrave:

And here’s fargenbastich:

Drinks to avoid

Zam Zam soda. I’ve heard there is a cola of the same name, but I’m referring to the milky-white yogurt soda. Now, I am just about the least picky eater you’ll ever meet. If it’s considered food somewhere in the world, I’ll eat it, and probably like it.  If you find a restaurant that cooks and serves spiders, I would say, “Oh wow let’s give it a try!”

So that’s part of why I tried it. My roommate and I often go to Wholesome Choice, a middle eastern supermarket with an amazing selection of takeout foods. We normally get the Chinese food, because they have great orange peel chicken, and you get a ton of food for $4.99. Anyway, usually if we eat there we also each select a beverage to go with our meal. I’ve had so-so vitamin water, a pretty good Godiva coffee drink, and today I was going to get an Arizona Iced Tea when I saw in the freezer a bunch of tiny bottles of milky-white liquid. And naturally I wanted to give it a try. And it was only $.99 a bottle (a bit cheaper than the iced tea). So I grabbed the “Mint” flavor.

I guess I expected it to taste like Yogloo or Calpis Water, some of the delicious and sweet “yogurt-flavored” drinks from Asia. Seriously, if you ever find a store that sells either of those, you should try it because it’s delicious.

But Zam Zam is neither delicious nor sweet. I would describe the taste as salty and tangy, and fizzy, and somewhat warm. There is a yogurty creaminess, but it’s the flavor of plain, unflavored yogurt; and of course a mint aftertaste. No, this will not do at all. Not even the thought that I had paid good money for it would persuade me to finish the bottle — I went back and bought a Diet Coke instead. There’s a reason why people stick with the tried and true.

Oh, and I was going to find a link to Wholesome Choice for you guys, but apparently Google says their site installs harmful software. Nice save, Google!