bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Beets.

    A tasty-looking recipe of roasted beets with pecans and local blue cheese is here.  

    I think the salad I had on Sunday beats it, though.  Somebody at Mark's office couldn't pick up their CSA box for some reason and offered it to Mark.  We had a bag of salad greens (with nasturtium blossoms!), assorted vegetables, a few tiny beets and a fennel bulb.  I tossed the greens with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, shredded the beets, thinly sliced the fennel, and topped the salad with pecans and Faribault blue cheese.  One giant salad all for me!

    I love beets, raw, cooked, or kvassed.  I don't eat them as often as I would like because they tend to be expensive, though if you eat the tops they count as two vegetables which offsets the cost some.  Unfortunately we have to go to the co-op (and pay more) to get beets with really nice tops — the ones at the grocery store are always very ragged and poor-looking.

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  • Breech birth study.

    "If you gave birth to a breech baby, or if your baby was breech at some point during pregnancy," your participation is requested in a study.

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    3 comments on Breech birth study.

  • Flip-flop?

    According to a post at Science and Sensibility, a blog that's new to me, Canada's Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada — like ACOG, but up north — no longer recommends routine cesarean when the baby is presenting breech at term.

    Automatic cesarean for breech has been the international standard of care since the results of the Term Breech Trial (TBT), a multicenter, randomized controlled trial of over 2,000 women that was designed to “give the option of vaginal breech delivery its best, and perhaps last, chance to be proven a reasonable method of delivery.” That chance appeared to be dashed with the release of the trial’s findings, which seemed to suggest that vaginal breech birth posed unacceptable risks to the baby. 

    …Then, after two years, the TBT research team tracked down the trial participants and reported long-term health outcomes. This new data revealed that almost all of the babies with severe morbidity after birth in both trial groups survived without any long-term neurological compromise, and differences in combined mortality and morbidity between the cesarean and vaginal groups had disappeared. 

    …Meanwhile, several large non-randomized studies were released, consistently reporting excellent outcomes of planned vaginal breech birth.

    Good news — let's hope some of it trickles down to the US.  

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  • Smart snacking.

    The August 2009 issue of Real Simple magazine has an article I heartily endorse, called "How to Snack Smarter."   It's on page 148 of the dead-tree version and isn't yet online, but will probably appear on the website in a few weeks.

    Among the reasons suggested for distributing your daily food intake among a few snacks are that it helps you eat less at mealtimes (I have definitely experienced this), it ensures you get all your vitamins (I certainly eat more fruit than I would otherwise), it puts you in a good mood, and it foils cravings. 

    (The author also says that snacking "keeps your metabolism going" and "can help your body burn a few calories;" a lot of what I've read elsewhere indicates that people tend to eat enough extra calories when they snack to make up for that one, so I would take that with a grain of salt.)

    Regular snacking — and by "regular" I mean "at the same time every day," not "constantly putting food in my mouth" — was definitely part of my strategy while I was losing 40 pounds last year, and it continues to be part of my strategy in this newest pregnancy.    It isn't the solution for everyone — the "anti-snacking" No-S diet has worked well for at least one friend of mine.  But if you do choose to harness the power of snacks to enhance your health and happiness, some suggestions from the article and from me:

    • "Experts suggest choosing a snack that has roughly 100 to 200 calories (a meal should start at about 300)."  I agree.  That's about the right size.  Anything more and you've added a meal.  
    • Not sure how many calories are in that stuff you want to eat?  My rule of thumb has always been to limit the size of the snack to about an ounce.   Look, the worst possible case — an ounce of pure fat — is 260 calories or so, and you aren't going to eat an ounce of pure fat for a snack. 
    • Calcium's hard to get, so "[seek]" out snacks rich in the mineral—for example, … yogurt or almonds."  Both are staples for me. 
    • "[A] fruit or vegetable in every meal and snack."  I do this when I can.
    • "[W]hen cravings attack, have a plan for giving in intelligently."  I have learned pretty well to put off my cravings until my next scheduled snack, which is never that far away.  Because my overall diet is so healthful, there's room for some of almost anything.  
    •   If you choose protein bars or granola bars:  "Look for a bar that has 150 to 200 calories, at least four grams of protein, and four or more grams of fiber."  I swear by Kashi TLC Crunchy Granola Bars, Chewy Granola Bars, and Fruit & Grain Bars.  The Roasted Almond Crunch variety, for example, has 180 calories, 6 grams of protein, and 4 grams of fiber.  The Dark Chocolate Coconut variety is awesome.  Another nice thing about these smaller bars is they're about the right size for a toddler's breakfast on the go.
    • Make your snack a balance of carbs, fats, and protein.   
    • "Make it feel like a small meal, with multiple components."   I cannot stress the importance of this one enough, and I'd also add:  take the time to prepare it attractively and put it on a plate (or a portable container) and have it sitting down, in a moment of relative peace if you can manage it.  If you're eating one kind of food out of the package it came in, you're grazing, not snacking.  NO CHIPS OUT OF THE BAG.  If you're going to eat some chips, put some on a plate and give yourself a little dollop of dip or something, or make a little plate of nachos.    
    •   I suggest scheduling your snacks and, once you figure out a schedule that works, sticking to it.  I have a snack at 10:30 and another at 3:30 or so.  That's what I need.
    • Oh yeah — remember that when you add a snack somewhere, you have to subtract food from a meal somewhere else, or you're not doing yourself any favors.   

      

    A couple of dozen snack suggestions are sprinkled throughout the article, things like "One whole-wheat English muffin with peanut butter," "Greek yogurt with chopped walnuts and honey,"  "Two slices of deli turkey and a handful of grapes."  They are good suggestions, except that they are all low-fat, and I don't believe in low-fat eating, especially for snacks, when cheese, chocolate, lattes, and nuts are so handy and delicious.  Fortunately it is not hard to add fat to most of the suggestions.

    One of my favorite snacks is hard cheese cut into tiny cubes with sliced fruit and a few pecans — finger food, but a really nice combo.  I just now had a Wasa cracker (another staple of mine) spread with cream cheese and topped with sliced tomato and melted Muenster.  A full-fat latte is another snack indulgence I love.

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  • Veterinary spending is rising along with human medical spending. Why?

    "Veterinary spending is subject to few of the perversities that either left or right suppose to be the main problems afflicting health care spending.  Consumers pay full frieght most of the time.  They are price sensitive, and will let the patient die if keeping him alive costs too much.  There is no adverse selection.  There is no free riding on mandatory care.  Government regulation is minimal.  Malpractice suits are minimal, and have low payouts.  So why is vet spending rising along with human spending?"


    Check out the graph at the link.

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  • Good discussion about NFP.

    MrsDarwin put up a post on Friday, in response to a debate about whether NFP is "misogynous," that attracted many interesting comments.  Worth reading through, and I daresay the discussion may not be over yet.

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  • Ogling.

    President Obama is exonerated, but Nicolas Sarkozy is busted.

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  • Night weaning commences?

    Sort of.   Mark finally returned from a business trip, a day late.  I'm exhausted.  We had said we would start working on the night weaning as soon as he got back, but I wasn't sure I had the stamina to start tonight.

    (I mentioned a while back I was going to night-wean MJ, who will be 3 next month, sometime during the pregnancy.  I don't do nighttime tandem nursing.)

    I nursed MJ to sleep — that's part of the plan, I am not planning to cut out this nursing session — and fell asleep next to her (instead of switching places with Mark next to her, per the night-weaning plan).  About 3 in the morning she tossed and turned and I woke Mark up and asked him to take her to the toilet, something we have to do once a night to prevent bedwetting.  

    He brought her back to me.  I wasn't going to refuse to nurse her, but I admit I was a little slow to deploy the breast.  That's when she started pummeling me.  Kicking and squealing.  "Hey!  Hey!" I muttered, putting my hands up to block the little drumming feet.  "What's wrong?"

    She sat up to a kneeling position, balled her little hands into fists, and began to pound on my back.  "I hate you!" she informed me.

    "Mark, she's beating me up," I muttered, and rolled myself into a ball and went back to sleep as Mark picked her up.  This is the first-trimester privilege:  Dealing with pummeling, squealing children in the middle of the night is Not My Job.  I didn't bother to listen to find out whether Mark carried her downstairs or cuddled her in the other bed or what.  The pummeling stopped and that meant I could go back to sleep.

    She didn't ask to nurse again, but slept through (and is still sleeping at quarter to nine in the morning).  I wonder if she wasn't awake, but was dreaming?  Anyway, that was the first night.  I suppose you'll think I'm silly if I exclaim that it went much better than I expected?

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  • Bad directions.

    So when a chunk of local infrastructure is so poorly designed that it annoys thousands of people every year, but it's been that way for so long that many locals are used to it, is it a waste of taxpayer money to improve the design, or not?

    It depends on whether the design improvement actually solves the problem. 

    Based on the number of comments on the Star Tribune story, apparently the hottest topic in the Twin Cities isn't the Minnesota Senate race, but airport signage.  And apparently most of my fellow citizens are of the opinion that if you get lost on the way to the airport because of confusing signs, it's your own damn fault. 

    A little background for the out-of-towners.

    We have one major airport here in the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, with one three-letter airport code, MSP.   That airport has two terminals.

    1. What everyone calls the "Main Terminal," but which is really named the Charles A. Lindbergh Terminal, and which is served by all but a few airlines.
    2. The "Humphrey Terminal," i.e., the Hubert H. Humphrey Terminal, which is served by AirTran, JetAmerica, IcelandAir, Southwest, Sun Country, and several charter lines including Aeroméxico.

    So far this is not unusual for a mid-sized American city:  one airport, two terminals, check.  Here is the unusual part.  The two terminals are not accessed by the same exit on the highway.   You can take the train from one terminal to the other, but it isn't a trivial operation — we're not talking about a little airport peoplemover, I mean you can take the light-rail line from one stop to the next.  Let's just say that if you arrived at the wrong terminal with not much time to spare, you might well miss your plane.   (Below:  Google Map taking you from Humphrey to Lindbergh in nine minutes, not counting time spent in parking garages or figuring out you're in the wrong terminal.)

    View Larger Map

    Okay, so, here's where the signage comes into play.  Most cities I've been to with multiple terminals work like this.  You take the (only) exit from the highway that goes to the airport.  Once you're on the airport grounds, airport signs direct you to the correct terminal, usually by the airline you're flying.  Northwest flies out of here, USAirways out of here, etc. etc. etc.  Most cities, the key piece of information you need as you drive to the airport is what airline.  You can just sort of assume that this will get you to the right building.

    Not so here.  As you're driving to the airport you are greeted with signs that tell you to take this exit for the Humphrey Terminal and that exit for the Lindbergh terminal.  No mention of airlines, charter vs. scheduled flights, domestic vs. international, or any such useful information.  Leaving you, perhaps a hapless non-Minnesotan, to guess whom Minnesotans hold in high enough regard to honor with the MAIN terminal name, and whom Minnesotans hold in, oh,  a sort of small auxiliary regard.  The erstwhile politician, or the famous aviator?   And wait a minute, if you're on a kind of a small airline anyway, are you even sure you belong in the main terminal?

    OK, so the airports commission just voted $2.2 million to improve the signs by referring to the terminals as "1" and "2" (maybe that's a little laughable, but I think this is an improvement, at least if Lindbergh "Main" becomes "1" since at least the ordinal numbers imply a primary and a secondary terminal) and, more importantly, signs that tell drivers where to go for which airline.

    Let's leave aside the possibility that the sum is exorbitant.  I do not have enough information to know whether $2.2 million is a good deal for the signage.  I haven't the foggiest idea how much highway signs cost, and none of the news articles have offered any useful context (how much does MNDOT spend on signage per year statewide, for instance?) I'll just take them at their word here.

    So… the hostility in the comments on the article towards the improved signage is mind-blowing to me.  "If you're too stupid to find your way to the airport, you're too stupid to fly."  (Hey, maybe we should just eliminate all road signage while we're at it.)  Or "They should just put up one sign for international, one fo""r domestic."  (Huh?  International and domestic flights take off and land from both terminals.)  Or "Everybody knows you should find out which terminal you're going to ahead of time." (Not necessary in most American cities.)  Or, my favorite, "We don't need signs –how hard is it to read what's written on your ticket?"  (What is this artifact, this ticket you speak of?)

    Anyway, I for one am glad they're fixing it, if only because it annoys me every time I drive by the signs.  I do hope they don't spend more on the signs than they need to, but matching the exits to the airlines strikes me as the minimum adequate signage.  Look, it would have been nice if they had done it right in the first place and not had to spend the money this year, but when government screws up I think we should expect them to fix it.   I'm glad there are so many people annoyed by government money-wasting, but the money-wasting happened long ago when they made the spectacularly bad signage from the highway.

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  • Cautionary words on the new encyclical.

    Until you get around to reading it — I know I don't have time for at least a couple more days — bear in mind what Jimmy Akin has to say.  Especially this part:

    1) Do not put weight on anything you read in the newspaper or on secular talk radio regarding the encyclical. The mainstream media simply does not "get" religion, and they are too incompetent on matters of religion to report accurately anything that the pope says or does. Sorry, but it's the truth.

    Yup.  I saw a couple of headlines yesterday as I read the news, one of which went something like "POPE CALLS FOR ALL-WORLD GOVERNMENT TO CONTROL THE GLOBAL ECONOMY."  The proper response to something like this is eye-rolling and a muttered "Yeah, can't wait to see where they got that from."

     

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  • “In Search of Dignity.”

    An interesting, if flawed, little op-ed in the NYT (h/t Instapundit) that begins with an anecdote about George Washington.  

    First, a comment on Washington's well-known copybook — okay, it's well-known to classical/traditional/Charlotte Mason homeschoolers anyway.  I can't count how many times I've seen people suggest using pieces of this as copywork for children of the right ages, for history, handwriting, or grammar practice, and maybe they'll absorb some of the rules while they're at it:

    When George Washington was a young man, he copied out a list of 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Some of the rules in his list dealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meeting somebody on the street.

    “Lean not upon anyone,” was one of the rules. “Read no letter, books or papers in company,” was another. “If any one come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,” was a third.

    But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted, these rules, which Washington derived from a 16th-century guidebook, were not just etiquette tips. They were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.
    In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

    Washington absorbed, and later came to personify what you might call the dignity code. The code was based on the same premise as the nation’s Constitution — that human beings are flawed creatures who live in constant peril of falling into disasters caused by their own passions. Artificial systems have to be created to balance and restrain their desires.


    I like this characterization of Washington, and of the premise mentioned in the last paragraph.

    Is it a bit precious to draw a connection between the first president and the latest based on this? Particularly since there is no obvious evidence that President Obama shares the philosophical premise implicitly imputed to President Washington in that paragraph.  It's more about… bearing:

    Americans still admire dignity. But the word has become unmoored from any larger set of rules or ethical system.

    But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.


    I think the writer is correct that President Obama has a dignified bearing, and I think that is part of his popular appeal because it is refreshing.  It isn't clear, though, whether President Obama's bearing is an outward expression of an inner conviction, like the one almost universally depicted by Washington's biographers, or if it's the result of something else.  It would be nice if the country got used to a little dignity and started expecting it of its leaders — more on the outside might raise the probability that we'd get more on the inside.

    Readers know that I am a policy voter, not a personality voter, so bearing (a personality trait, and one that can be used to soothe opponents into complacency) isn't something I take much into account at the ballot box.   But it is something I appreciate.   As anyone might guess.

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  • Herbs.

    Kind of a neat article, with photos, about local farmer Bonnie Dehn and her herb/salad/flower/houseplant operation.  I recognized the Dehn name immediately as the one on the little plastic boxes of dill, mint, or basil we buy at the supermarket.  I don't wish to be a farmer, but I wish I had volunteer dill growing all over my yard.

    (Amber in the comments to the post below about fried eggs suggested I try growing pot greens — We attempted to have a vegetable garden exactly once, using the Square Foot Gardening method, and the only thing that I  could coax out of the ground was the chard, which produced prodigiously.  If I ever garden again — and I am thinking about putting a raised bed or two in my front yard — I swore the only thing I would attempt next time would be things like chard, kale, and arugula.  I eat tons of the stuff anyway, it doesn't mind much neglect, and it likes Minnesota weather.)

    (Don't hold it against the Square Foot Gardening method.  I am just a major slacker.  SFG is awesome for the small back yard.)

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