Brains, Sluggish With Tryptophan

[elfs]

Krauthammer: In The Old Days, Politics and the Market Weren't Entwined!

In what has to be the strangest article I've seen yet in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer writes:

In the old days -- from the Venetian Republic to, oh, the Bear Stearns rescue -- if you wanted to get rich, you did it the Warren Buffett way: You learned to read balance sheets. Today you learn to read political tea leaves. If you want to make money on Wall Street (or keep from losing your shirt), you do it not by anticipating Intel's third-quarter earnings but by guessing instead what side of the bed Henry Paulson will wake up on tomorrow.

Because, as we all know, the Medicis had nothing do to with the financial system. They were all about power. Money they could care less, right? The article makes all the obvious points about the wealthy currying political favor to keep their money or make more, so it's hardly interesting, but really, does Krauthammer really think Americans have forgotten the lessons of the rail barons?

Kristol: Bush ought to give Medals of Freedom to America's Torturers!

As any interrogator who has examined the record will tell you, torture does not work, does not give good results, and creates an environment in which our enemies have no moral qualms about torturing our own guys. The US's incessant middle finger at the UN Convention Against Torture has made us a moral pariah even among the West.

So Bill Kristol's utterly insane "not only should our torturers be pardoned, they should be given Medals of Freedom," is all the more damning for the far right's culture. Kristol worries about "demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points." How about legal prosecutions seeking justice, Bill, or isn't that part of your vocabulary?

Whatever happened to justice in this country?

What Girls Want

In an explanation of the Twilight phenomenon, this little review scares the bejeezus out of me:

One of the signal differences between adolescent girls and boys is that while a boy quickly puts away childish things in his race to initiate a sexual life for himself, a girl will continue to cherish, almost to fetishize, the tokens of her little-girlhood. She wants to be both places at once–in the safety of girl land, with the pandas and jump ropes, and in the arms of a lover, whose sole desire is to take her completely. And most of all, as girls work all of this out with considerable anguish, they want to be in their rooms, with the doors closed and the declarations posted. The biggest problem for parents of teenage girls is that they never know who is going to come barreling out of that sacred space: the adorable little girl who wants to cuddle, or the hard-eyed young woman who has left it all behind.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

that comment about what girls want is absolutely right-on! be VERY afraid.

[mikstera.livejournal.com]

Do you have any actual facts or reasoning with which to back up your "absolutely right-on!" ?

If you do, I hope you'll share them.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Wow. "Medals of freedom" to torturers. He even uses that word. Someone ought to waterboard him. Revolting.

The rest of that article's on crack, too. Great big rocks of it, cooked up with meth for extra flavor.

Dumb stories, it's true...

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

But so is the remarkably persistent tryptophan myth. I've seen debunkings of it for years, but it's nearly as sturdy as the "8 glasses of water" myth.

I guess it's another one of the "Mom stories" that everyone wants to believe.

[taerin.livejournal.com]

I'd agree that the assessment sounds pretty accurate.

Girls and boys obviously mature differently, and societal pressures have a fairly heavy hand in how it goes. What kids see teaches them what's "normal," and molds their attitudes and behaviors. Everything is included, from how other people around them behave to what they see in the media to things that only come through subconsciously.

Just look at how something as pervasive as advertising treats age. There are any number of ads designed to be sexually appealing that feature girls who are dressed, made up and posed in ways that make you wonder if they're 'legal.' However, you'll almost never see the same with teenage boys. They must display adult characteristics, which in most cases do not appear on the same body as ones that communicate 'child'.

Even our language helps with the programming that younger is acceptable or even better with girls. For example: "mama's boy" has fairly negative connotations, and "daddy's girl" does not.

And of course, there's plenty of porn that puts girls in school uniforms and uses other elements to make them look younger.

There seems to be a bottom age limit for boys, which straddles the line between teenager and adult. And while it's there for girls too, my experience is that it's much lower, perhaps the line between child and teenager.

Not being a parent myself, I'd guess that the hardest part is knowing you can't really help your daughter once she's gotten to this point. You have to stand aside and watch her get through this stage as best she can, and only offer advice if she asks for it.

It's unlikely she will, though, because either you never spoke this language in the first place, or you've aged so far beyond it that she'd be completely right to say you don't understand what she's going through.

I'm in my mid-30's now, and much of what daily life as a teenager was like has faded, as I learned to deal with daily life as an adult.

I imagine parents have moved even further beyond their own younger years than I have, as the daily life of a parent came to the fore.


Sorry if that turned out tl;dr.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Hey, c'mon, who else has he given the medal to? Gonzalez, Podheretz, Brown? The Medal of Freedom has become a symbol of ineptitude, so maybe it's legit to give it to those who have most debased the moral foundation of our nation.

[maellenkleth]

yes, in point of fact I do, well beyond my own chequered adolescent maunderings:

my reference source was two step-daughters from one of my past marriages, whose rearing I shared from late pre-teens into late teens. Got the full meal deal of adolescent angst from both of them, starting with an infatuation with horses and passing through non-communicativeness to wild rebellion to (thankfully, actually) their own discovery of their sexuality (complete, I might add with certain relief, their having grokked contraception as well as precautions against STDs), and eventual glorious maturity as solid, sensible, reliable adults.

they turned out okay, but there were many sleepless nights.

so, I suppose having had two angsty teenage daughters does qualify as "actual facts", but I must fairly confess that there was very little in the way of "reasoning" ever involved. ^_^

and, to be fair, I was scarcely a reasonable adolescent myself....

[urox.livejournal.com]

The idea behind being "taken completely" goes further than most people think about (or at least what I see people take from it). It's about being overpoweringly attractive to that lover. It's about self-esteem validation through another person. I mean, I don't know anyone who wants to be taken completely *against* their will, but there are plenty who want it (and the feeling of being desirable) when they want that person as well.

[bellebonnesage.livejournal.com]

The Medici were in Florence, but other than that you're right: they were bankers before they were powerful, that's how they became powerful!

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

She wants to be both places at once–in the safety of girl land, with the pandas and jump ropes, and in the arms of a lover, whose sole desire is to take her completely.

Egad, I think we just explained furry fandom...

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

All things considered it might soon be time to rethink the separate bedrooms for the girls idea again.

Re: Dumb stories, it's true...

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I remember a long time ago running across an article on tryptophan and its soporific properties, and the conclusion was that it could be used as a sleeping pill... as long as you could swallow it... with a picture of the size of pill that was needed to contain enough tryptophan to put an average human to sleep, which was considerably bigger in diameter than the wrist of the person holding it (just tryptophan, a binder, and preservatives; trying to get that much from eating turkey would require you to eat about fifty pounds of turkey meat, IIRC).

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Grief, I don't need that image. I just don't.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Lesbian Pandas in Bondage

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That I can handle. Especially if they're Abby Winters Lesbians™.

[fallenpegasus]

Right up there with the Nobel Peace Prize

Re: Dumb stories, it's true...

[fallenpegasus]

I know that 8 glasses of water is a myth.

On the other hand, I feel better when I'm that hydrated, especially when I'm working out hard.

It's HARD to drink so much water as to injure yourself, it's easy to drink too little, and being a little bit too hydrated is better than being a little bit low.

I used to work for a bone marrow transplant program....

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

We had patients on all kinds of meds for various conditions in addition to their cancer meds, and at least twice we had to admit folks because they'd drunk too much water. Marathon runners have also had problems with it.

A healthy person doing normal exercise should be fine, but the sedentary cubicle potatoes I've seen with signs at their desks reminding them to drink their 8 glasses or even using enormous, specially marked water bottles, are really taking things to extremes unnecessarily.