by contrast...

... i don't always have a lot of faith in myself. it's not my abilities (in the abstract sense) that i question, but my trustworthiness with deadlines. i don't know if it's laziness or fear or sheer overwhelmedness... probably a combination of all three.

someone - maybe dr. phil - said that just as you stop trusting people when they keep failing you, you also lose trust in yourself if you keep making promises you don't keep. i'm very bad at being disciplined. i shouldn't even be blogging right now.

but, come hell or high water, my first complete draft is due in ten days. i always say things will get done on time "because they have to." but, really, *i* should get them done because *i* have to. this isn't my thesis' responsibility, but mine. and it's a really daunting responsibility, in terms of its scope and volume and significance.

i'm at the 36,000 word mark.
i know all things are possible.
i know that i have the data.
i know that i can write.
i know that this is important.
and i know that no one is going to do it for me.

i want to have reason to trust myself again.

education causes cancer, but only in women

tonight i attended greg mortenson's lecture at the the toronto reference library. for an hour or so, he talked about how he started his pennies for peace initiative, which builds schools in afghanistan and pakistan. (here's an article about his ongoing work!) he emphasized the impact educating children can have on a community, and came back again and again to the importance of giving girls in particular access to schooling.

this wasn't brand new to me. campaigns like because i am a girl also make the argument that "when you educate a boy, you educate an individual; when you educate a girl, you educate a community" (african proverb cited by mortenson tonight).

in the part of the world in which mortenson is investing, this plays out in at least one amazing way: educated women are less likely to grant their sons permission to join tribal gangs or terrorist cells. because their culture is built around the importance of a mother's blessing, educating girls will have a marked impact on the recruitment of young men into such enterprises. yay!

but here's what really grabbed me by the (proverbial) collar and shook me: mortenson said that the education of girls in bangladesh coincided with a drop from 8 births per woman to 2.8 births per woman, over her lifetime. actually, he claimed that it caused the drop.

again, this wasn't earth-shattering by itself. there are a couple of options here: either this education includes some information about birth control, or educated women get married later (if at all) and pursue careers alongside child-rearing, or a (liberalized) community that values the education of girls doesn't tend to treat women like baby-makers... or (my guess) some combination thereof. education and industrialization/ urbanization go hand in hand and i suspect that the latter always lead to smaller families.

the thing is... cancer. i've been reading malcolm gladwell's what the dog saw, which is a collection of his best essays (according to him) from the new yorker. between insights into the clairol/l'oreal hair-dye market and an investigation into dog whispering (the title of the book came from the latter) is john rock's error,which describes the limitations of the birth control pill, the impact of modern medicine and lifestyles on female physiology, and the danger of too many periods.

yes, dangers. see, because today's woman starts menstruating earlier than ever before and spends fewer years of their lives pregnant or breastfeeding than ever before, she ends up ovulating many, many more times than her ancestors did. like 400 times, compared to 100. one result seems to be an increased risk of ovarian cancer, endometriosis, endometrial cancer, and other "below the belt" diseases.

simply put, both ovulation and the preparation of the uterus for pregnancy are processes which involve cell division. the more division, the higher the statistical probability of something going wrong... and cell division gone wrong is a loose definition of cancer. studies suggest that each full-term pregnancy reduces a woman's chance of ovarian cancer by 10%. when taken over a long period of time, birth control pills also go a long way to protecting against some of the perils of modern life.*

there's a lot behind this argument, and i encourage you to read gladwell's piece on this, if you have a chance. (the whole thing is available at the link above!) but the bottom line is this: a society in which women are educated is one in which they tend to menstruate much more often... and in which they will therefore be at far greater risk of developing cancer.

all things being the same, that average bangladeshi woman was about 41% less likely to develop ovarian cancer when she was having eight kids.

so this is the inconvenient truth: our biology is not only confused, but also endangered, by our self-made destiny.


* because the birth control pill suppresses ovulation but still leads to a period, the risk of endometrial cancer is not much diminished. read gladwell's fascinating piece to find out why the stupid 28-day cycle was maintained by the co-inventor of the pill, john rock.

[implicit]

during our very productive and entertaining meeting today, my thesis supervisor gave me a copy of the reference letter he had contributed to my law school application.

it was so very generous. not that it contained anything embroidered or necessarily untrue, but in the sense that... it told me that he's been looking to see the best in me from the beginning. and, because he's a man of integrity, i know he would only write such lovely things if he believed them to be true. and i also know that the words he used are meaningful for him, rather than empty compliments. as an academic reference he was not called on to do this, but he went out of his way to highlight aspects of my character that he admired. "i trust her implicitly," he wrote.

this note was so moving and so timely: i'm preparing to submit my first complete draft at the end of the month, and there's a lot to do. by mid-april, i will have defended my thesis. a few weeks later, i'll graduate again. the work has been tedious, thrilling, heartbreaking, provocative, inspiring, infuriating, and edifying. but what i am most convinced of is that the work has been important, not by virtue of my brilliant treatment of untapped primary sources, but by virtue of the subject matter. the stakes of this work go far beyond the boundaries of the academic world.

so... it's nice to know that he trusts me.

the funniest thing so far today

parental guidance - or a sense of humour that allows for gratuitous swearing - required. but seriously. awesome stuff: the author of f u, penguin furiously responds to the paralyzing cuteness of the animal kingdom... one species at a time.

i'm serious about the degree of swearing, btw: it's quite something. you really won't find this funny if that's a problem for you. don't say i didn't warn you.

update: if you're not into swearing at cute animals, but enjoy a little snark, cake wrecks
may be right up your alley. it features hilarious baked creations five days a week and actual works of cake art on sundays. enjoy!

just a dribblin' fool...

after tasting anna's pavlova at the big family christmas party in london, and seeing it on so many british dessert menus, i decided to give it a try for christmas dinner.

for those who didn't know (like me, a few weeks ago), pavlova is a dessert from new zealand. apparently it was named after russian ballerina anna pavlova. but i think its name is an allusion to the fact that whenever i think of it, i drool.

basically, it's a meringue that is chewy in the middle. this is not due to undercooking, as far as i can figure, but to the addition of corn starch or lemon or something. i mean, it bakes for quite a while. ANYway. it's typically baked as a circle 9" wide, allowed to cool overnight, and then topped with barely-sweetened whipped cream and fruit. if you want to go traditional, with kiwis!

i opted for individual portions of pavlova, which makes everything look prettier longer. plus, there were only three of us for christmas dinner. unfortunately, i used the recipe for a typical 9" round. if you're going to make these minis, you can safely half the recipe and still tempt four people.

my recipe, based on this one i found at allrecipes.com:
4 egg whites
1.5 cup white sugar (some comments on allrecipes recommended cutting this down to 1 cup. the original recipe does yield a very sweet dessert.)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice (i used clementine juice, which was inadvisable due to its relatively low acid content. it still worked, i'd like to point out... plus, i didn't know i had an alternative. vinegar will also work - the point is to add an acid.)
2 tsp cornstarch (i subbed in 1.2 tsp arrowroot because that's what we had on hand - the point is to add a thickener.)

- preheat oven to 300 and get parchment paper ready on a cookie sheet. it may be helpful to draw the shape of the pavlova you intend to create (one 9" round or many 3" rounds or what have you) onto the paper and then flip the paper over.
- start out by beating the egg whites into stiff peaks, then gradually add the sugar, 1 tbsp at a time. you're done beating when it looks thick and glossy.
- the recipe emphasizes the importance of keeping yolk and grease away from the egg whites. this appears to be crucial. also, for the love of all that is yummy and delectable, don't overbeat the whites!
- gently fold in the vanilla, acid, and thickener.
- i separated the batter (so to speak) into three groups and added green food colouring to one and red to another, but the natural colour of the pavlova is actually quite lovely and this sort of meddling is utterly unnecessary. perhaps even counterproductive! ok, i'll stop now.
- spoon or pipe onto the circles you've drawn on the parchment paper, making the perimeter of the circle slightly higher than the middle. (i may have ignored that last part.)
- pop in the oven for an hour.
- some recipes recommend letting them cool in the oven with the door ajar, some say remove to a cooling rack. i did the former.
- before serving top with lightly sweetened whipped cream and fruit.

the pics:

your ingredients!

yummm...

now, give them some privacy.

pretty in pink!

the verdict: these pavlovas were chewy, crispy, sweet, and satisfying. definitely worth repeating!

don't look back in anger

when i filled out my law school application, i had to spend a little time on my first attempt at an undergrad degree. i dropped all but one of my classes in second year, then did a summer course, then failed all four of my third-year courses. this required some words. as a result, i thought a lot about the crisis of 2001 - how my family imploded, how my younger sister and i faced new and daunting financial responsibilities, how we both felt abandoned and hopeless, and how no one seemed to understand.

i remember walking around chinatown one day and suddenly realizing what had happened. it was more than three months later.

despite the religious aspects of this event, christian friends didn't seem to get it. there was a lot of material support, but people didn't seem to have any sort of lens through which they could clearly see what we were going through. despite knowing me for many years, my high school friends didn't get it, either. and they seemed to disappear. after my sister and i found an apartment, most of my friends didn't come to the housewarming. people from university came, but they mostly didn't know why we were in a new place. in fact, i don't think anyone has ever responded to this part of my life in a way that implies "getting it." my sister and i feel very differently about that moment of decision, so not even she understands it the way i do.

it's very hard for me not to be angry, even eight years later. and it's hard for me not to read that same pain into contemporary instances of feeling alone. we all have our own lives to lead, and we rarely spend too much time thinking about what the "minor characters" in our stories are doing when they're not in the same scenes as us. back then, we were busy with complicated romantic relationships, we were coming out of the closet, we were trying to figure out what our studies had to do with the rest of our lives, we had our own part-time jobs to deal with, we had other friends... and now we have relatives who are lonely or in poor health, jet lag, spouses, work and financial stresses, and other friends.

i guess i just always hoped that we would also have each other. and that, somehow, that would be enough to help us "get it."