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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) peristaltor | |
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Are the intestinal flora that have evolved to symbiotically keep us healthy going extinct? The human body has some 10 trillion human cells — but 10 times that number of microbial cells. So what happens when such an important part of our bodies goes missing?
With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction. In many of the world's larger ecosystems, scientists can predict what might happen when one of the central species is lost, but in the human microbial environment — which is still largely uncharacterized — most of these rapid changes are not yet understood. "This is the next frontier and has real significance for human health, public health and medicine," says Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan (U.M.) School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. Yes, this is the hygiene hypothesis yet again. Love the hundred trillion happy campers in your body. Put down the stinky hand sanitizer. Get dirty. Live, and live longer. Tags: life! wallow in it!, worms
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nebris | |
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~There, bet that got your attention, you fucking perverts! [Trolls, too lol]
But it comes from part of a comment I just made;
My own personal socio-political position is that 16 should be the legal Age of Consent across the board; emancipation, contract law, voting, drinking, sex, etc. But I'm in a minority. "Gotta keep you kids in line!"
That was made to an actual 'underage' Sister, one who found me here.
As a someone who has a degree in Information Enhancement Technology from the Joseph Stalin School of Behavioral Sciences, I am still...'observant' in regard to this young lady. Nothing personal, my dear, but I really do have enemies who would be willing to create a truly sophisticated Entrapment Sock just to fuck me up. That's just a part of my Work that I get to deal with.
But even if that was not an issue, I am constrained by Law and Custom in the manner in which I can assist said 'underage' Sister, who clearly needs some serious support. However, that I am in fact Authentic in my Goals and Outcomes makes it fairly easy to be Appropriate in how we interact.
And yet, as I said, I am presently 'constrained by Law and Custom'. I have thought on this before. She is not the first Lost Girl for find her way to my door and Goddess Knows, she shall not be the last. Many Sisters in the future will seek out The Temple and not all of them will be 'legal adults' when they do so.
As they will most likely be coming from an abusive and possibly [probably] life threatening environment, we cannot turn them away. So how do we deal with that? Well, we create a program for 'underage' Sisters...and it will have to have these elements:
~First, some kind of 'safe house' for runaways, one legally set up to handle such, a place where they can 'crash land', catch their breath, and be connected to the social services they need, probably psycho-emotional counseling.
~Next, we'll need a foster care network, both Temple run group homes and Sisters who are qualified, personally and legally, to become foster mothers.
~We will need schools where these girls can get a real education, but have some insulation from the society that created the situation that made them Lost Girls in the first place.
~And then we will have a 'training scenario' that can direct them back into that mechanism so they can help and support the Lost Girls who will inevitable be following them. Honestly, who better do so? [Full Disclosure: that's one of the paradigms we'll steal whole from the 12 Steps.]
So, those are my preliminary thoughts upon the subject....Current Mood:  contemplative
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) the_recession
darksumomo | |
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Things could be much worse. Financial Times: Call this a recession? At least it isn’t the Dark Ages By Bryan Ward-Perkins As we face an uncertain and worrying New Year, we can at least console ourselves with the fact that we are not living 1,600 years ago, and about to begin the year 410. In this year Rome was sacked, and the empire gave up trying to defend Britain. While this marks the glorious beginnings of “English history”, as Anglo-Saxon barbarians began their inexorable conquest of lowland Britain, it was also the start of a recession that puts all recent crises in the shade.
The economic indicators for fifth-century Britain are scanty, and derive exclusively from archaeology, but they are consistent and extremely bleak. Under the Roman empire, the province had benefited from the use of a sophisticated coinage in three metals – gold, silver and copper – lubricating the economy with a guaranteed and abundant medium of exchange. In the first decade of the fifth century new coins ceased to reach Britain from the imperial mints on the continent, and while some attempts were made to produce local substitutes, these efforts were soon abandoned. For about 300 years, from around AD 420, Britain’s economy functioned without coin.
Core manufacturing declined in a similar way. There was some continuity of production of the high-class metalwork needed by a warrior aristocracy to mark its wealth and status; but at the level of purely functional products there was startling change, all of it for the worse. I also have a News from Detroit post, which I'll get to after midnight EST. Current Mood: geeky
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heron61 | |
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For the last four years, teaotter has taken part in the Yuletide fanfiction exchange, which focuses on rare (or in many cases otherwise completely non-existent) fandoms. This year, there was for some reason a fad for people requesting stories based on songs. Becca requested, and received an amazingly excellent story Will You Bloom Bright And Fierce, based on the well done folks song Disappearing Man written and performed by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. The song has a slightly Arthurian vibe, common to much of their music and a somewhat mythic feel. I’ve seen both fairly frequently in pagan influenced music and fiction, and from a feminist perspective, almost all of both fall into one of two categories – they are either appallingly and unconsciously sexist in some sort of deeply horrid essentialist sense, or at best, the song or story is clearly attempting to be feminist, and mostly does OK, but with some moderate and often annoying problems – the stories of Charles De Lint are an excellent example of this sort of thing. The song > Disappearing Man is better than most in this regard, but not perfect (at least from my PoV). However, the story is a wonder, not just because it’s excellent, but because it feels like it dropped in from an alternate world where sexism has largely vanished from storytelling. It’s both a very female-focused story, and one which is devoid of sexism. Reading it was much like noticing how light you feel when you suddenly stop carrying a heavy weight. I am again struck by both this, and to an only slightly lesser extent, the excellent film and impressively non-sexist George Clooney film Up in the Air, that we finally live in a time when people can create stories free from sexism, but that doing so is also shockingly & depressingly rare. The rarest thing is finding a story with a strongly mythic feel that nevertheless manages to avoid recapitulating that sexism that lies so deep in all pre-moderns myths. Most modern stories are not as bad as the musical Young_Frankenstein that my parents spent far too much money to take us all to (which featured among other vileness, a humorous rape scene where the victim falls for her attacker), but for every story, TV show or (rarest of all, US movie) that is most free of sexism or at least of the worst elements of sexism, there are more than fills me with rage or sadness (or both). In any case this very short story is a touch of wonder and hope of the sort that is too rare, but will hopefully become less so. This sort of thing needs to become far more common. Current Mood:  impressed
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fabiola!
calm
relieved
creative
w00t
whew
happy
drunk
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