Ten Reasons Why Robots are Better Partners than Men

This was written as a response to a similar article on Newsvine, claiming robots were better than women:

1 Not as much risk of hardware failure
2 Practicing safe sex won't involve major negotiation
3 Doesn't shed.
4 Doesn't wear underwear to leave lying around
5You could get it with all kinds of attachments.
* A built in GPS so it doesn't matter if it won't ever stop and ask directions
* Make your frozen pina coladas without ever leaving the comfort of your bed.
* Aroma therapy module that doesn't include "unwashed man" frangrance
* Heater so not only does it not steal covers, you can put your feet on it in the winter-and it won't scream at you.
* Watch it vacuum the room while you sip the pina colada, and if you have the Vacuum Vibrator attachment, get in a little more fun when it's done cleaning.
* Multiple AC/DC hookups so you can recharge your cell phone and gadgets (like OhMiBod NSFW) in one convenient location.
* Get Internet access to watch hentai.NSFW
6 It won't fall asleep after sex. In fact, you can program it to clean the house while you snooze and bring you Eggs Benedict in the morning.
7 It will never forget any important date and you can set it to remind YOU so you don't forget.
8 Football injuries will never interfere with it cleaning house or doing yard work.
9 You already know he doesn't have a heart, so you won't be surprised.
10 If you get tired of it you can trade it in.

Anniversary

Last night
the moon shown through the blinds
illuminating the vast emptiness
of our . . .
of my bed.
Since you left
I have clung to the safety of the edge
afraid of the emptiness
afraid to feel lost without you
afraid to not leave a space for your return . . .

Last night was one year
to the day
since you left
I do not think
you are returning . . .

Last night
I stretched across the emptiness
claiming it
filling it
anchoring myself, defiant, in the desert of my sorrow.

Now the only emptiness left
is in my heart.

Polyamory: A build-your-own-love kit

The winds of change are blowing, my darlings. Already our country is preparing for the 2008 Presidential Campaign, China's stock exchange is affecting Wall Street and North Korea has agreed to neuter their nuclear program in exchange for banking privileges and food.

On a more local level, the face of suburbia is changing. More couples than ever are concluding that monogamy doesn't work for them, and they are doing something about it. No, they aren't getting divorced. In fact, mom and dad are getting a new girlfriend or boyfriend. Now, mom, dad and girlfriend/boyfriend are called polyamorous.

Read more: media.www.studentprintz.com/medi...shtml

Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes

When it comes to the matter of desire, evolution leaves little to chance. Human sexual behavior is not a free-form performance, biologists are finding, but is guided at every turn by genetic programs.

Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term attachment.

So much fuss, so intricate a dance, all to achieve success on the simple scale that is all evolution cares about, that of raisingthe greatest number of children to adulthood. Desire may seem the core of human sexual behavior, but it is just the central act in a long drama whose script is written quite substantially in the genes.

Read more www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10...10gene.html

New Theory on Happiness

"For years the prevailing psychological view of happiness is that the feeling, termed subjective well-being, emanates from within and is largely independent of our life circumstances. The wealthy aren’t much happier than the middle class, married people aren’t much happier than single people, healthy people aren’t much happier than sick people, and so on. . . .

But new research, and reexamination of old research, is challenging some of the claims of set-point theory."

Read more at Psych Central psychcentral.com/news/2007...happiness/

The Big Fat Fix

Obesity is a problem that is chronic, stigmatised, costly to treat and rarely curable. Why? Because we are looking in the wrong places for a solution.

Open a newspaper and on any given day you can usually find a story about the growing number of overweight and obese people throughout the UK, and indeed the world. Obesity is now officially an ‘epidemic’. GPs are ‘alarmed’. The Department of Health is ‘concerned’. And dozens of local authorities are gearing up to ‘do something about it’.

The figures are shocking. Globally the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased steadily since 1970. In August of this year, it was reported that the number of overweight people in the world has topped one billion, considerably outnumbering the 800 million who are undernourished.

It’s not just an aesthetic problem. Obesity is a health risk associated with higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and cancer. In the UK, 43 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women are overweight and one in four adults, and one in 10 children under 15, are obese. The direct cost to the NHS is £480 million. The indirect costs are estimated to be in the region of £2.5 billion per year, including costs to the NHS and costs to industry through sickness and absence. In the US, medical expenses for overweight and obesity accounted for 9.1 percent of total US medical expenditures in 1998, costing around $78.5 billion (equivalent to $92 billion today).

Most reports in the media trot out the same causes – the gluttony and sloth of modern society – and the same old solutions – eat less and exercise more. And yet if weight loss was simply a matter of cutting calories and being more active then our population should be in pretty good shape. At any given time as much as 50 per cent of the population in the UK is on a diet and/or exercise regime.

But one recent report contained a signpost to a truth about obesity that was nonetheless missed by almost everyone who read it. In September of this year a ‘fat map’ of Britain was published by Dr Foster Intelligence, an independent health research organisation that works closely with the NHS, and Experian, a market research company.

The analysis was a complex synthesis of data from two surveys – the Health Survey for England and the British Market Research Bureau’s quarterly survey of 25,000 Britons – that provided details of lifestyle, body mass index (BMI, an indication of how overweight a person is) and geographical location. Its conclusion was that people living in northern industrial towns were fatter than those living in London and more rural areas of the UK.

Across the board the reportage was unremarkable. The results, after all, echoed those of a survey produced by Experian two years ago. Having heard it all before, the newspapers avoided original analysis and focused instead on the marvels of modern technology that allow us to pinpoint, down to a street, the places where the fattest people live.

A rent-a-quote from Dr Foster Intelligence about the threat of obesity, and the benefits of surveys like this one, made all the papers: “We need to reduce levels of obesity, and detailed health maps like these show where the risks of obesity are highest,” commented the organisation’s marketing development manager, Dr Marc Farr. “This will enable health authorities to target weight-loss drives in areas where this is a problem. Until now they have not had access to this accurate database; this should make a difference.”

At first it may be difficult to see how knowing where people are fattest will make a dramatic difference to the problem of obesity. Surely the real question that needs answering is why are we so fat? On this point, Farr fell back on mainstream thinking to conclude: “The reasons for obesity [in these northern towns] are not uncommon and shared by many areas: availability of cheap, high sugar food products, unemployment, age-related failure to engage in physical activity, understanding the nature and dangers of obesity and changes to more sedentary forms of employment.”

This oft-repeated explanation, of course, has some merit but misses the vital point; that the where and the why of being overweight are intricately linked.

Urban Fatties

The reductionist explanation for the increase in overweight and obese individuals is a simple equation: calories in/calories out. A more global view, however, would acknowledge the multifaceted effect of urbanisation and industrialisation, which have had a devastating impact on what we eat, when we eat, how much we eat, how often we eat
and the quality of the food we eat, as well as on our levels of daily physical exertion.

In the West these simple ‘whys’ of obesity are rarely questioned anymore and have become largely obscured by the solution-oriented focus of quick weight-loss schemes. But in developing nations the startling parallel between the rise in obesity and the rapid acceptance of urban/industrial lifestyles and diets is all too apparent.

Speaking in September at the International Congress on Obesity in Sydney Dr. Philip James, the British chairman of the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), noted that in China the rate of obesity has risen from almost zero in the 1980s to about 10 percent of the population in 2006, and that the rise can be pinned down to the growing problems of urbanisation and the infiltration of a generally nutritionally poor Western diet, which favours high-fat, high-energy products over basic fruits and vegetables. Similar increases have been noted among more affluent urban dwellers in India.

Diet failures

And so we diet to fight the flab. Yet over and over again surveys show that the majority of people who lose weight on a given diet will subsequently regain that lost weight, and more besides. There is even evidence to suggest that dietary regimes that severely restrict calories as well as types of foods (fats, carbohydrates etc) in the short-term, actually encourage rebound weight gain over the long-term.

This rebound effect, which is well known to dieters and well documented in the medical literature, may have deep roots in human evolution. In our hunter-gatherer stage, when the next meal was not predictable, we became programmed to overeat when food was
available. In times of food deprivation (including when we diet), our hard-wiring changes. Our bodies develop mechanisms, largely driven by hormones, to store calories by over-riding signals of satiety and increasing hunger signals, even when food becomes plentiful again. In essence, the body is storing up calories in anticipation of the next period of food deprivation, even if it never comes.

According to the data, this effect is more dramatic when food and drink is freely available, when the foods available are calorie dense – such as crisps, sodas, Big Macs etc – and energy expenditure is low due to reduced physical activity.

Medical science has determined a biological basis for this storage effect. When we lose weight, our basal metabolic rate (BMR) – the minimum amount of energy the body requires at rest, to keep itself alive and to maintain weight at a constant ‘set point’ – decreases. BMR is related to the actual amount of body tissue so it naturally decreases when the amount of body tissue is reduced through dieting. Constant yo-yoing of weight through dieting and bingeing plays havoc with the body’s BMR and set point, in some cases wiping it out altogether, leaving the body with no blueprint for maintaining a healthy weight.

A more complex equation

In spite of the failure of conventional diets, the comforting equation of calories in/calories out still informs most weightloss initiatives, possibly because it makes the job of ‘doing something about it’ so effortless. Weight management programmes centred on this simple equation are easy to devise – anyone with a calculator, a calorie reference guide and an exercise manual can do it – and they shift the responsibility for the success or failure of the regime squarely onto the individual.

It’s an all too familiar scenario when faced with difficult cultural problems, where challenging the status quo could raise uncomfortable questions. Consider the way that individuals are encouraged to switch off standby electronics and change to energy efficient lightbulbs in order to ‘do something about’ climate change, or to recycle to end waste. Focusing on individual efforts – and failures – in this way deflects attention that away from bigger, and arguably more powerful influences, such as the government subsidies that keep polluting airlines and industries in business.

Nevertheless, the ongoing failure of ‘gold standard’ solutions like calorie counting has motivated some scientists to suggest that we must be missing something, and to look beyond the usual explanations. This year, a paper in the International Journal Of Obesity, for instance, attempted to explore the ‘roads less travelled’ in obesity research and suggested at least 10 additional causes of obesity that have nothing to do with gluttony and sloth.

The authors, made up of a panel of doctors from across the US, concluded that medical science had a tendency to “focus overwhelmingly on food-marketing practices and technology and on institution-driven reductions in physical activity (the ‘Big Two’), eschewing the importance of other influences.”

The panel went on to say that the influence of the Big Two on the global obesity epidemic is “largely circumstantial”, relying as it does on broad surveys – not unlike the recent Dr Foster report – rather than epidemiological data focused on individuals, or large randomised studies.

They further noted that the acceptance of the idea that too much food and too little exercise is the sole cause of obesity “…has created a hegemony whereby the importance of the Big Two is accepted as established and other putative factors are not seriously explored. The results may be well-intentioned, but ill-founded proposals for reducing obesity.”

In an effort to broaden the debate the authors recommended that other influential aspects of modern life (see box opposite) are influential. Among these and of particular relevance to the results of the Dr Foster survey, was exposure to hormone-disrupting pollutants – the kind you might find in excess in any industrial town in the North of the UK, where once there were mines, refineries, factories and tall chimneys belching out smoke and where now there are chemical factories, incinerators and waste transfer facilities regularly releasing toxins into the air, water and soil.

Hormone havoc

Hormones play a major role in determining and maintaining metabolism and the body’s set point. When levels of these hormones (produced by the thyroid, sympathetic nervous system and reproductive organs) deviate from the norm, problems with weight can ensue.

Thus in January 2004, at a conference titled Obesity: Developmental Origins and Environmental Influences, the US National Institutes of Health made an urgent call for more research on the link between hormone-disrupting chemicals and obesity, noting that exposure during adulthood and, crucially, in the womb, can permanently disrupt the body’s weight control mechanisms.

But, according to at least one scientist, if you look hard enough, the research is already out there. In 2002 Dr Paula Baillie-Hamilton, a visiting Fellow at the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group, Stirling University, published a paper in which she proposed that chemical toxins were to blame for the global obesity epidemic.

Baillie-Hamilton’s hypothesis, the culmination of many years of forensic investigation into the way that pollution is changing us from the inside out, had its roots in an article she stumbled upon that explained how toxic chemicals in the environment were affecting the fertility of wildlife.

“I couldn’t understand how someone like myself, an academic with a load of scientific qualifications and papers behind me, had never heard of all these different chemicals that were out there. Yet if these chemicals were affecting the fertility of wildlife they must be affecting hormones significantly. And of course, hormones control a number of other functions in the body, including weight control.

“I spent a couple of years intensively identifying each major category of chemical and then working out how each individual substance affected the body’s weight control system. I looked at all the mechanisms involved, from the nerves and hormones to metabolism, and the levels of nutrients in the body, and found that the same chemicals that at high doses can cause weight loss, seemed to cause a fattening effect at very low levels – the same low levels that we are exposed to in everyday life.”

It was an arduous task made more difficult by the fact that weight gain is not always documented in trials of toxic chemicals. “For many years this data has been ignored or suppressed in the conclusions of scientific papers because there was no way to explain why it happened. And of course it wasn’t accepted at the time that weight gain in animals exposed to substances like DDT could be anything other than positive,” continues Baillie-Hamilton. “If weight gain was mentioned, it would be buried in the text of the paper, rather than the conclusion. Essentially what this meant was starting from scratch and reading through every single paper to find some mention of these effects.”

What else makes you fat?

Being overweight or obese is a modern problem and, as the results of a recent investigation in the International Journal Of Obesity show, many of the putative contributors to the problem have their roots in modern life. The authors suggest that even if some of these causes have only a small effect, they may interact with each other and with other factors in ways that greatly magnify their individual effects.

Sleep debt: Too many of us are getting too little sleep and the resulting ‘sleep debt’ can alter hormone levels and trigger an increase in body weight. Sleep debt is also associated with insulin resistance and diabetes, and with increased hunger and appetite.

Pollution: Hormones control body weight and many of today’s pollutants drastically alter levels of key hormones.

Air conditioning: We burn more calories when the environment is too hot or too cold for comfort. But more people than ever live and work in temperature-controlled homes and offices.

Decreased smoking: Smoking, because of its effects on circulation and the nervous system, reduces weight. In many developed countries people are smoking much less than they used to.

Prescription medications: Many different drugs – including contraceptives, steroid hormones, diabetes drugs, some antidepressants, and blood pressure drugs – can cause weight gain. Use of these drugs has risen exponentially in recent decades.

Population age and ethnicity: Middle-aged people and those of African and Hispanic origin have a tendency to be more obese than younger people of European descent. Throughout the world the population is getting older and more ethnically diverse.

Older mothers: There’s some evidence that the older a woman is when she gives birth, the higher her child’s risk of obesity. The average age at which a women has her first child is rising.

Ancestry and environment: Some health problems are passed down through the generations. A tendency towards gestational diabetes will produce a child prone to obesity (who are in turn more likely to produce obese children). Very high-fat diets during pregnancy have been shown, in animals, to skew the metabolism of offspring two generations down the line.

Obesity linked to fertility: Some evidence suggests that overweight and obese people are more fertile than lean ones. If obesity has a genetic component that makes it a dominant characteristic, the percentage of obese people in the population is likely to increase.

Unions of obese spouses: Obese women tend to marry obese men. If there are fewer thin people around – and if obesity is a dominant genetic characteristic – then these couples will produce obese children, who will then go on to produce more obese children.

A Chemical Cosh

Industrial chemicals – and specifically those that act like hormone disrupters – profoundly alter several aspects of human metabolism and appetite control. Research at the University of Laval in Quebec has added greatly to the understanding of just how wide-ranging the effects of an overpolluted body can be.

In the late 1990s Professor Angelo Tremblay and his team began to study, first in animals and then in people, the metabolic effects of organochlorines. Their interest was sparked by earlier Italian research which showed that overweight people who underwent gastric bypasses, to encourage weight loss, experienced dramatic increases in levels of the pesticide DDT and one of its breakdown products, DDE, in their blood as their bodyweight declined. The Laval studies of humans undergoing an average weight-loss programme also showed that concentrations of these chemicals rose as the pounds were shed.

Once in the body organochlorines and other industrial pollutants are generally stored in human fat cells. During weight loss the fat cells shrink and release these chemicals back into the bloodstream. The scientists at Laval found that as levels of these now freely circulating pollutants rose in dieters, levels of essential thyroid hormones – necessary for maintaining an efficient metabolism – fell dramatically.

A drop in basal metabolic rate (BMR) – the rate at which the body burns calories – is not uncommon in dieters. Studies into dieting show that as metabolism slows down during weight loss, levels of thyroid hormones also drop naturally. This slowdown is referred to as ‘adaptive thermogenesis’.

The worrying discovery of the Laval scientists was that higher levels of organochlorine compounds were associated with much lower levels of thyroid hormones than would be produced by weight loss alone. In dieters with these newly liberated toxins circulating throughout the body, BMR also slowed more dramatically, as did energy expenditure and levels of skeletal muscle oxidative enzymes (which determine how efficiently the muscles use energy – when levels are not optimum, energy gets stored as fat).

“If I were to put this in journalistic terms,” says Tremblay “I might say that the organochlorines essentially shut down the metabolic furnace that helps the body burn fat.”

Professor Tremblay’s research has focused on organochlorine compounds, for instance the pesticides DDT (and its breakdown product DDE), chlordane, aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor, as well as PCBs, dioxins and chlorophenols. But the list of chemicals that can cause weight gain and promote obesity extends well beyond these to include a wide variety of everyday chemicals associated with manufacturing and a polluted environment (see Chemical calories, page 42).

A key effect, says Dr Baillie-Hamilton, is the way industrial pollutants interact with the sympathetic nervous system. This system releases hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline that suppress our appetite, particularly for fat. These hormones also increase the ability and desire to exercise, as well as increasing body temperature, so that while you are exercising you are also burning calories more efficiently.

“Chemicals like organochlorines act directly on the sympathetic nervous system attacking each and every part of the way it works,” she explains. “It’s like a chemical cosh. They reduce levels of important hormones necessary for weight balance and also block and even destroy the hormone receptors in fat cells. This means the hormones can’t communicate with the fat cell and the cell becomes less sensitive to those metabolism-regulating hormones that are in circulation.”

Adapt and survive

Research at Laval continues to confirm that high circulating levels of organochlorines alter metabolism and may be one of the most important contributors to adaptive thermogenesis and the rebound weight gain so depressingly familiar to dieters.

But once liberated by weight loss these chemicals are also free to attack vital organs such as the brain, liver and kidneys, and this threat triggers an even more intriguing response. As chemicals build up beyond a level with which the body’s detoxification pathways can cope, the body begins to ‘dilute’ the amount of circulating toxins – the majority of which are fat soluble – by making new fat cells to store them in.

Recent evidence even suggests that the presence of some industrial pollutants such as bisphenol-A and organotins can signal dormant ‘baby’ fat cells, known as preadipocytes, to grow into fully mature fat cells, or adipocytes. As the number of fat cells increases it can become harder to keep weight down. In addition, with increasing weight the body detoxification system, which would normally facilitate the excretion of toxins, appears to shut down in preference to simply storing any toxins in available fat.

Professor Tremblay admits there is still much that is unknown about the way these chemicals interfere with metabolism. But, apart from triggering hormonal changes, the presence of organochlorines and other toxins can also act as inflammatory triggers.

Intelligent fat

Some physicians such as Dr. Leo Galland, author and internationally recognised expert in nutrition, believe industrial pollutants can also trigger allergies and allergic responses that can cause, or worsen, the problem of chronic systemic inflammation.

For Dr. Galland, it is the problem of chronic inflammation that is most relevant to rising levels of obesity. Inflammation, he argues, causes the body to release a range of chemicals that make the system resistant to the relatively recently discovered hormone, leptin. Professor Tremblay agrees that this is “entirely possible”.

The discovery of leptin 12 years ago in New York at the Rockefeller Institute changed the whole map of our understanding of obesity.

“Prior to that,” says Galland, “the way that everyone thought about fat was that it was just a bag of unused calories that was totally inert. The key thing about leptin is not just that it is a hormone that affects appetite, metabolism and fat stores. It’s that leptin is produced
by fat cells exclusively. So all of a sudden fat became an active player in the body. Really, fat is an organ and its function is just as intricate as any other organ in the body in that it interacts with the immune system, with the nervous system and with other systems
and can produce changes that can be very complex.”

Galland admits that the science is difficult, and yet some understanding of it is crucial if we are to get to grips with the problems of hard to shift overweight and obesity.

“Whenever there is inflammation, the cells respond by producing anti-inflammatory chemicals known as SOCS – suppressors of cytokine signalling. Two of these, SOCS1 and SOCS3, interfere with leptin by blocking the signal in the cells. The mechanism is very similar to the development of insulin resistance, which is also due to inflammation. In fact, inflammation also causes production of the fight or flight hormone cortisol from the adrenal glands. Cortisol blocks leptin and it also raises blood sugar, which in turn decreases the response to any given amount of insulin.”

The bigger picture of what these scientists are saying is staggering. Inflammation is fundamentally a protective process necessary, for instance, for wound healing as well as for curing infection. If inflammation arises in a polluted body it’s highly likely that it is a protective response to the presence of toxins.

Body fat also has a protective effect. For example, studies show that animals that are exposed to environmental toxins while at the same time encouraged to gain weight through a high calorie diet will survive better than exposed animals that are not allowed to gain weight. In other words, body fat, because it is a repository of these toxins, also becomes a survival mechanism. Thus it is possible that the obesity epidemic, as Tremblay postulated as far back as 2000, is in reality an adaptive response by the body to a chemically toxic environment.

The bigger picture

Viewed in this way, obesity could be seen as the response of an intelligent body trying to cope and maintain balance in an overwhelmingly polluted world. Sadly, in an environment where we are overwhelmed with pollutants, this intelligent adaptation is proving lethal and continued advice to simply decrease calorie intake dramatically in order to speed weight loss may even be making the problem worse.

Clinical practice has been frustratingly slow to catch up with the conceptual changes prompted by the link between environmental pollutants and obesity.

Says Dr Baillie-Hamilton, “There is still no academic textbook that brings it all together and it takes time to get through to people’s consciousness. If you are talking to an obesity specialist, whose professional life has been spent telling people that if they eat too much
and don’t exercise they are going to gain weight, he may not have a clue about the link between industrial pollutants and weight gain. And until the professionals do get a clue their conclusions, and the solutions they propose, will continue to be very limited.”

Dr Galland agrees. “There is a worldwide epidemic and it is definitely associated with industrialisation and pollution. And yes, of course, there may be confounding factors because industrialisation and pollution are also associated with dietary changes and changes in activity patterns. But the reality is that the results of most weight loss treatments are lousy and creative new approaches are urgently needed.”

To an intelligent health service the ‘fat map’ of Britain would be seen as a wakeup call, an opportunity to get to grips with a difficult and challenging problem. Instead, NHS and government advice remains stubbornly allied to the calories in/calories out equation. For example, the latest Department of Health (DoH) patient leaflet ‘Your Weight, Your Health’ makes clear that excess weight is due to ‘energy imbalance’, explains the number of calories needed per day, suggests ways to reduce the calories you take in each day and lists the benefits of being active.

Another booklet from the DoH, The Obesity Care Pathway, for health professionals advises much the same thing and suggests that a sensitive, empathetic, non-judgemental approach should underpin all obesity-related interventions – advice that is intended to complement the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines on the prevention, identification, assessment, treatment and weight management of overweight and obesity in adults and children due to be published this month (November).

Certainly, not blaming the victims when conventional diets fail would be a good first step. Given the available data on the environmental complexity of obesity this is rather like blaming the poverty striken of the world for being lazy and feckless, the victims of starvation for not having had the foresight to stock up on food, and the people murdered in the twin towers for going to work that day.

There also needs to be a much more comprehensive and honest focus on the double bind in which some of the nation’s poorest people find themselves in relation to good health. People in lower income brackets may already be subsisting on poor quality food that is high in sugar and fat and low in nutrition. Their general level of health will already be
compromised. Add the chemical cosh of industrial pollution to the mix and the metabolic and detoxification pathways that should be protecting the body may break down entirely.

Uncomfortable questions

There is also a need to address the obvious question of why the people in polluted cities like London and New York remain slimmer than those in industrial towns and cities. Given what is already known about polluted bodies, it is a fair bet that such research might show that being thin is not the only, or even the best indicator, of a healthy population. That the particulate pollution from traffic and lighter forms of industry in and around major capitals like these behaves in a distinct way in the body and causes its own kind of chemical chaos. New Yorkers and Londoners may be thinner, but are they also, for example, more infertile or more prone to allergies and asthma and generally more immune compromised?

What stands in the way of recognising the need for such solutions, says Professor Tremblay, is simply that the concept of industrial pollutants altering body chemistry invites far too many uncomfortable questions about the world in which we live. Most of these pertain to the economic consequences of acknowledging this issue.

“There is a global context here,” says Tremblay. “You see it with George W Bush’s position regarding the Kyoto agreement. He says it is out of the question to move towards any solution that might lead to what he sees as economic vulnerability. It’s the same with
obesity. The response is always framed by the politics and economics of addressing the reality, not by the potential health problems of exposure to substances like organochlorines.”

But just as the US President should be worried about global warming, he should also be worried about the fact that the ‘fat map’ of Britain was not unique to the UK. A just-published survey by the Trust for America’s Health found that the 10 fattest states in the US – Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, South Carolina and Texas – were in located in the industrial South of the nation. The report failed to mention any aspect of environment, yet the Mississippi River, which runs through several of these states, is officially the most polluted river in the US. Likewise, West Virginia, Texas, Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia are home to some of the top 20 mercury polluting power plants in the US. Fish and wildlife in some southern states like Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee are regularly found contaminated by organochlorines like DDT and PCBs – due to the former production of these chemicals in these areas.

Instead of falling over ourselves to promote a lot of PC nonsense about not being judgemental about overweight and obesity, perhaps it would be more productive to acknowledge that the most pressing human problems, the biggest human disasters, don’t just apparate out of thin air. They evolve in the industrial, environmental and politcial milieu of modern life – and modern life can be a much dirtier business in certain parts of the country.

The health problems associated with polluted bodies are usually unseen. Some, like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, can take decades to develop. The problems of overweight and of obesity offer us a rare and very visible cue that tells us that pollution is killing us, inch by everexpanding inch.

The recognition that chemical pollutants could have such a direct effect on our bodies is possibly one of the most important new ideas in public health; one which demands a difficult but necessary shift in our conceptual understanding of the dynamics of weight control. Allied to this there is an urgent need to acknowledge the way that our actions shape our environment and our environment, in turn, shapes our lives.

In July of this year members of the Women’s Institute in the UK took the initiative and dumped carloads of unnecessary food packaging back on the doorstep of supermarkets countrywide, with the message ‘you created this problem, now you clean it up’. The time has come to dump the problem of overweight and obesity back on the doorstep of industry and government with the same unflinching message.

Chemical Calories

In addition to organochlorines, a range of other industrial and everyday chemicals are known to encourage weight gain. These include:

ORGANOPHOSPHATES
Organophosphate pesticides, such as malathion, dursban, diazanon and carbonates, constitute 40 per cent of all pesticides used. These chemicals are mainly used inside buildings as opposed to in agriculture. They are neurotoxins and hormone disrupters.

CARBAMATES
Including aldicarb, bendiocarb, carbaryl, propoxur and thiophanate methyl, are used extensively in agriculture, forestry and gardening, and are suspected hormone disrupters.

ORGANOTINS
These chemicals, which include tributyltin (TBT) and the mono and dibutyltins (MBT, DBT), have many applications, including stabilisers in PVC and catalysts in chemical reactions. They are also found in glass coatings, agricultural pesticides, biocides in marine antifoulant paints and wood treatments and preservatives. They are damaging
to the thyroid and immune system and potential hormone disrupters.

BISPHENOL
A Estrogen mimic used to make clear, hard, reusable plastic products; also used in the manufacture of polymers, fungicides, antioxidants, dyes, polyester resins, flame retardants and rubber chemicals and some dental resins.

PHTHALATES
Hormone disrupting chemicals, produced in large volumes, and commonly detected in groundwater, rivers and drinking water as well as in meat and dairy products. Around 95 per cent of phthalate production over the last few decades is tied to the PVC industry. Can be found in many plastics and consumer products – everything from hair spray and nail varnish to plastic water bottles and tshirts.

POLYBROMINATED FLAMERETARDANTS
Added to many products, including computers, TVs and household textiles to reduce fire risk. Also found in baby mattresses, foam mattresses, car seats and PVC products. Office workers who use computers, hospital cleaners and workers in electronics-dismantling plants are at particular risk from these chemicals. Polybrominated flame-retardants are oestrogen mimics and can also affect the thyroid.

BENZO[A]PYRENE
A common food pollutant that belongs to a family of chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It is derived from coal tar and enters the atmosphere as a result of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. In animals it has been shown to cause weight gain in the absence of any detectable change in food intake. It is possible that other PAHs may have a similar effect.

SOLVENTS
Neurotoxic chemicals that include xylene, dichlorobenzene, ethylphenol, styrene, toluene, acetone and trichloroethane are commonly found in human blood samples. Necessary for a wide range of industrial processes and found widely in adhesives, glues, cleaning fluids, paint and felt-tip pens, perfumes, paints, varnishes, pesticides, petrol, and household cleaners and waxes.

CADMIUM
Principally used as a protective plating for steel, in electrode material in nickel-cadmium batteries and as a component of various alloys. It is also present in phosphate fertilisers, fungicides and pesticides. Cadmium in the soil is taken up through the roots of plants and distributed to edible leaves, fruits and seeds, and eventually passed on to humans and other animals, where it can build up in milk and fatty tissues. Neurotoxic and a potential hormone disrupter.

LEAD
Professions that put their employees at risk of exposure to this neurotoxin include lead-smelting, -refining and -manufacturing industries, brass/bronze foundries, the rubber and plastics industries, steel-welding and -cutting operations, and battery manufacturing plants. Construction workers and people who work in municipal waste incinerators, in the pottery and ceramics industries, radiator-repair shops and other industries that use lead solder may also be among the high-exposure groups.

www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp

Iran, China Buy U.S. Military Gear

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has sold forbidden equipment at least a half-dozen times to middlemen for countries - including Iran and China - who exploited security flaws in the Defense Department's surplus auctions. The sales include fighter jet parts and missile components.

In one case, federal investigators said, the contraband made it to Iran, a country President Bush branded part of an "axis of evil."

In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting U.S. missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison. He purchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a U.S. company that had bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, speaking on condition of anonymity, say those parts made it to Iran.

The surplus sales can operate like a supermarket for arms dealers.

"Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Right Price, Every Time. Best Value Solutions for America's Warfighters," the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service says on its Web site, calling itself "the place to obtain original U.S. Government surplus property."

Federal investigators are increasingly anxious that Iran is within easy reach of a top priority on its shopping list: parts for the precious fleet of F-14 "Tomcat" fighter jets the United States let Iran buy in the 1970s when it was an ally.

In one case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the Defense Department's surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again - customs evidence tags still attached - to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran.

That incident appalled even an expert on weaknesses in Pentagon surplus security controls.

"That would be evidence of a significant breakdown, in my view, in controls and processes," said Greg Kutz, the Government Accountability Office's head of special investigations. "It shouldn't happen the first time, let alone the second time."

A Defense Department official, Fred Baillie, said his agency followed procedures.

"The fact that those individuals chose to violate the law and the fact that the customs people caught them really indicates that the process is working," said Baillie, the Defense Logistics Agency's executive director of distribution. "Customs is supposed to check all exports to make sure that all the appropriate certifications and licenses had been granted."

The Pentagon recently retired its Tomcats and is shipping tens of thousands of spare parts to its surplus office - the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service - where they could be sold in public auctions. Iran is the only other country flying F-14s.

"It stands to reason Iran will be even more aggressive in seeking F-14 parts," said Stephen Bogni, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's arms export investigations. Iran can only produce about 15 percent of the parts itself, he said.

Sensitive military surplus items are supposed to be demilitarized or "de-milled" - rendered useless for military purposes - or, if auctioned, sold only to buyers who promise to obey U.S. arms embargoes, export controls and other laws.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found it alarmingly easy to acquire sensitive surplus. Last year, its agents bought $1.1 million worth - including rocket launchers, body armor and surveillance antennas - by driving onto a base and posing as defense contractors.

"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming to be an identity theft victim.

The Pentagon's public surplus sales took in $57 million in fiscal 2005. The agency also moves extra supplies around within the government and gives surplus military gear such as weapons, armored personnel carriers and aircraft to state and local law enforcement.

Investigators have found the Pentagon's inventory and sales controls rife with errors. They say the sales are closely watched by friends and foes of the United States.

Among cases in which U.S. military technology made its way from surplus auctions to brokers for Iran, China and others:

-Items seized in December 2000 at a Bakersfield, Calif., warehouse that belonged to Multicore, described by U.S. prosecutors as a front company for Iran. Among the weaponry it acquired were fighter jet and missile components, including F-14 parts from Pentagon surplus sales, customs agents said. The surplus purchases were returned after two Multicore officers were sentenced to prison for weapons export violations. London-based Multicore is now out of business, but customs continues to investigate whether U.S. companies sold military equipment to it illegally.

In 2005, customs agents came upon the same surplus F-14 parts with the evidence labels still attached while investigating a different company suspected of serving as an Iranian front. They seized the items again. They declined to provide details because the investigation is ongoing.

-Arif Ali Durrani, a Pakistani, was convicted last year in California in the illegal export of weapons components to the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Belgium in 2004 and 2005 and sentenced to just over 12 years in prison. Customs investigators say the items included Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran that he bought from a U.S. company that acquired them from a Pentagon surplus sale, and that those parts made it to Iran via Malaysia. Durrani is appealing his conviction.

An accomplice, former Naval intelligence officer George Budenz, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in July to a year in prison. Durrani's prison term is his second; he was convicted in 1987 of illegally exporting U.S. missile parts to Iran.

-State Metal Industries, a Camden, N.J., company convicted in June of violating export laws over a shipment of AIM-7 Sparrow missile guidance parts it bought from Pentagon surplus in 2003 and sold to an entity partly owned by the Chinese government. The company pleaded guilty to an export violation, was fined $250,000 and placed on probation for three years. Customs and Border Protection inspectors seized the parts - nearly 200 pieces of the guidance system for the Sparrow missile system - while inspecting cargo at a New Jersey port.

"Our mistake was selling it for export," said William Robertson, State Metal's attorney. He said the company knew the material was going to China but didn't know the Chinese government partially owned the buyer.

-In October, Ronald Wiseman, a longtime Pentagon surplus employee in the Middle East, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing surplus military Humvees and selling them to a customer in Saudi Arabia from 1999 to 2002. An accomplice, fellow surplus employee Gayden Woodson, will be sentenced this month.

The Humvees were equipped for combat zones and some weren't recovered, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Ingersoll said.

-A California company, All Ports, shipped hundreds of containers of U.S. military technology to China between 1994 and 1999, much of it acquired in Pentagon surplus sales, court documents show. Customs agents discovered the sales in May 1999 when All Ports tried to ship to China components for guided missiles, bombs, the B-1 bomber and underwater mines. The company and its owners were convicted in 2000; an appeals court upheld the conviction in 2002.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., called the cases "a huge breakdown, an absolute, huge breakdown."

"The military should not sell or give away any sensitive military equipment. If we no longer need it, it needs to be destroyed - totally destroyed," said Shays, until this month the chairman of a House panel on national security. "The Department of Defense should not be supplying sensitive military equipment to our adversaries, our enemies, terrorists."

It's no secret to defense experts that valuable technology can be found amid surplus scrap.

On a visit to a Defense Department surplus site about five years ago, defense consultant Randall Sweeney literally stumbled upon some items that clearly shouldn't have been up for sale.

"I was walking through a pile of supposedly de-milled electrical items and found a heat-seeking missile warhead intact," Sweeney said, declining to identify the surplus location for security reasons. "I carried it over and showed them. I said, 'This shouldn't be in here.'"

Sweeney, president of Defense and Aerospace International in West Palm Beach, Fla., sees human error as a big problem. Surplus items are numbered, and an error of a single digit can make sensitive technology improperly available and knowledgeable buyers could easily spot a valuable item, he said. "I'm not the only sophisticated eye in the world," he said.

Baillie said the Pentagon is working to tighten security. Steps include setting up property centers to better identify surplus parts and employing people skilled at spotting sensitive items. If there is uncertainty about whether an item is safe, he said, it is destroyed.

Of the 76,000 parts for the F-14, 60 percent are "general hardware" such as nuts and bolts and can be sold to the public without restriction, Baillie said. About 10,000 are unique to Tomcats and will be destroyed, he said.

An additional 23,000 parts are valuable for military and commercial use and are being studied to see whether it's safe to sell them, Baillie said.

Asked why the Pentagon would sell any F-14 parts, given their value to Iran, Baillie said: "Our first priority truly is national security, and we take that very seriously. However, we have to balance that with our other requirement to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money."

Kutz, the government investigator, said surplus F-14 parts shouldn't be sold. He believes Iran already has Tomcat parts from Pentagon surplus sales: "The key now is, going forward, to shut that down and not let it happen again."

www.military.com/NewsConte...87,00.html

Local Newspaper Reporter Biased!

I got a call from the newspaper reporter, Angela Woodall, who is covering the election for the Argus. She wanted to know why I hadn't filed a financial statement. Well, because I didn't raise any money and I haven't spent any money. It isn't a crime, in fact the guy who registered me explained that I didn't need to spend a lot of money. I've campaign word of mouth, but I don't hold any real illusions about my chances. She pointed out that two of the incumbants had raised large sums for publicity. Well good on them. I guess having a couple of challengers has helped the local economy. LOL

But I also got an answer to a question that had been bothering me and which I had posted in my column last week. Why did she make such a big deal of my political party when it's for a non-partisan position. Well, the answer friends is that she doesn't like Libertarians and felt that the public knowing I am Libertarian was more important than their knowing any thing else. She doesn't even know what party the other candidates are, that didn't matter to her. As long as she could expose me and the other challenger as Libertarian and expose the Libertarian Party for trying to take over.

So much for unbiased reporting, my loves. Don't know what her issue is, but she came out and admitted she "outed" me on purpose. It wasn't my imagination. And she admitted that she knew that identifying me as a Libertarian (California has a few Greens they tolerate, but has no use for Libertarians, to hear her tell it.) damaged me more than her revealing my religious background. (former Mormon, former Wiccan)

As I told her in the original interview, I have no illusions about winning. This is a test run. I've been interested in running for office for years and the time was right for a tryout. I think I would be an excellent asset the hospital and a chance for the public to actually know what goes on there behind the closed doors where all the decisions are illegally made and I know that I'm new and, as if that weren't enough, the local reporter covering doesn't want the party I am affliated to to win.

Just thought you all might like to know that you can count on your local paper to protect you.

mailto:awoodall@angnewspapers.com

Solution for the Middle East situation

I think that one thing we can all agree on is that the Middle East is a fucking mess. It has been for millennia. If the Bible is true, nearly 5 millennia. Three major religions and myriad smaller religions claim it as their "Holy Land". I think it is safe to say that the majority of the people on the planet belong to one of these religions. Therefore, the Holy Land, to me, could be considered EVERYONE's land.

Solution:

I suggest we create an international society/organization whose sole purpose is to restore the Holy Land to the world. I think it would be possible to declare Israel and the surrounding areas the first International Preserve. In additon to establishing a fund to rebuilt and reclaim the most sacred of sites, including Solomon's Temple, the rest of the world could assist a majority of the people there to relocate to other areas. This would be especially helpful to refugees like the Palestinians. Over the next half century we could move all commerce out of the area and replace it with centers for all different faiths. The only industry permitted to remain would be the tourist industry. Various faith based organizations could create entertainment and re-inactments of all the events in religous history, right on the spot were the events occurred. (Unless a majority of the faith felt strongly about any representations of their prophets.)

The profits from this could used to end poverty and suffering, as was the command of all the prophets and the commandment of God, him/herself, in addition toexperienced organizations faciliating better "hajs" and pilgrimages. Tell me what you think.

Isa 2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

Isa 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, [that] the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

Isa 2:3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Isa 2:4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Updated Myers-Briggs Personality Classification and Description

Not your father's Myers-Briggs inventory...

ENTJ: The Evil Overlord

The ENTJ is best characterized by his charisma, his ability to grasp complex situations and to think flexibly and creatively, his keen and active intelligence, and his overwhelming desire to crush the world beneath his boot. ENTJs are naturally outgoing and love the company of other people, particulalry minions, henchmen, slaves, and the others they rule with ruthless efficiency.

ENTJs usually die at the hand of secret government agents in a fiery cataclysm that destroys their entire underground fortress. Often, Evil Overlords will have a secret clone whose implanted memories contain all the knowledge and ambition of the original, stored in cryonic suspension in a safe location. The clone will appear in a sequel.

RECREATION: ENTJs enjoy spending their leisure time in groups, seeking out the company of others with whom they can exchange strategies and ideas, and test their mind control rays. They also enjoy competitive games which challenge them intellectually, such as chess, go, and "tell me where the missles are or I'll open the pirhana cage and the girl dies."

COMPATIBILITY: Ideal companions include ENTPs, whose inventive natures often most useful; and ESTJs, who make excellent henchmen once the neural realignment is complete. ENTJs often employ the services of ISTJs but don't usually make good romantic partners with them. Under no circumstances should an ESTJ ever date an ENFJ; no good can come of it.

Famous ESTJs include Ming the Merciless, John Bigboote, and Charles Montgomery Burns.

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ENTP: The Mad Scientist

The ENTP, like the ENTJ, is charismatic, outgoing, and intelligent. ENTPs are often quickwitted, clever, and genial; they typically display a highly organized, rational cognitive ability which makes them natural scientists and inventors.

ENTPs are creative, complex people who seek to improve their understanding of the natural world, usually by building armored fifty-story-tall robotic monsters with iron jaws and death-ray eyes, or by creating genetically mutated plagues that spread unstoppably across the land, turning all who are contaminated into mindless zombie drones. They are less likely to want to conquer the world than to destroy it utterly, reducing it to nothing but slag and rubble--though this is often merely a side-effect of their pursuit of knowledge.

RECREATION: ENTPs enjoy recreational activities which challenge them physically and intellectually, such as water skiing and porting Linux to their iPods. They are also fond of collecting gadgets like combination cellpone/PDAs and orbiting arsenals of brain lasers, which they may port Linux to as well.

COMPATIBILITY: ENTPs and ENTJs make natural companions, as the one's unspeakable hunger for power compliments the other's unspeakable hunger for knowledge. They do not generally build successful relationships with ESFJs, as ENTPs they are prone to behaving in inconveniently erratic ways, which pisses ESFJs off to no end; and because ENTPs simply do not know how to dress appropriately for formal occasions.

Famous ENTPs include Spencer Silver (the inventor of Post-It Notes), Robert Oppenheimer, and Dr. Jeckyll.

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ENFJ: The Cult Leader

ENFJs are big thinkers. They are extremely charismatic, and wish to offer the benefit of their wisdom to the world at large. They tend to see the grand scheme of things, and to be able to deduce connections between things that other people miss; these psychological personality traits are the result fo the fact that they are the Messiah.

ENFJs use their charisma and their knowledge to teach others, benevolently helping their fellow man reach a higher plane of evolution through such unorthodox but enlightened means as Psychic Third Nostril Enlargement. They then retire to secluded farmhouses in rural areas, where their followers express appreciation for the ENFJs by signing over all their worldly possessions and giving up their wives and daughters to the ENFJ's "special care."

RECREATION: ENFJs are fond of collecting things, such as wives, guns, ammunition, and FBI search warrants. ENFJs often pass their leisure time engaged in such pursuits as self-flagellation or being nailed to things. Some ENFJs eschew these activities, preferring instead to watch their followers engage in them, offering suggestions and gentle advice when appropriate.

COMPATIBILITY: ENFJs make natural companions and mentors to INFJs. They often get along well with ENFPs, although a friendly rivalry may sometimes erupt between the two.

Famous ENFJs include J. R. "Bob" Dobbs.

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ESFJ: The Control Freak

Champions of rule and tradition, defender of convention and order, the ESFJ values predictability, consistency, promptness, and continuity. This love of order, stability, and tradition most often manifests as a fanatical and almost compulsive control freakery, combined with an anal-retentive streak that is at once maddening and infuriating to those around them.

ESFJs are often friendly, outgoing, and generous, at least until you cross them. This generous nature, in combination with their obsessive need for control, makes them ideal for such jobs as Jedi master, senior bank teller, or middle management at a large chain department store. Most ESFJs die of heart attacks, at least the ones who aren't slain in a galactic power coup made possible by the rigid, dogmatic inflexibility and self-absorbed narcissism of their Jedi order.

RECREATION: ESFJs are fond of celebrating birthdays, bar mitzvahs, initiations into the grand order of the Golden Dawn, and other momentous occasions. They also take delight in creating elaborate schedules on their PDAs, memorizing the Periodic Table of Elements, and ripping off the heads of those who cross them before laying their eggs in the victim's neck, which hatch into larvae that devour the victim over a period of many years.

COMPATIBILITY: ESFJs are most compatible with ESTJs, who love and cherish the ESFJ's control freakery.

Famous ESFJs: Fame? A Jedi craves not these things!

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ESTJ: The Bureaucrat

Like ESFJs, ESTJs value continuity and order. They have outstanding organizational skills, and are meticulous, detail-oriented, Unlike ESFJs, ESTJs are followers and joiners; they are happiest when they belong to organizations, the larger and more mind-numbing the better. ESFJs often have an abnormal obsession with being normal at all costs.

ESTJs thrive in occupations which best utilize their organizational skills, such as driver's license bureau worker, junior bank teller, postal employee, COBOL programmer, or any other profession which involves long periods of mind-crushing tedium, preferably involving counting things. Quiet and courageous, they can perform difficult tasks other personality types are not well-suited for, such as denying health insurance benefits to crippled children with leukemia. They also make excellent extras in Hollywood movies.

RECREATION: ESTJs enjoy the company of others, and are often fixtures at office parties, where they cut loose by working the photocopier that the naked ESFP is sitting on. They also enjoy lining up sharp pencils on an otherwise clear desk.

COMPATIBILITY: ESTJs make good companions for ESFJs; the ESFJ lays down how it's going to be, and the ESTJ happily bounds along like a puppy dog. A big, orderly, tidy puppy dog that loves to count things.

Famous ESTJs include Count von Count and "Orgazmo's" Joe Young.

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INFJ: The Conspiracy Theorist

Beneath the calm, collecteed exterior of the INFJ lies the horrible reality of someone who has seen The Truth. The INFJ knows what other people are too naive or too brainwasted to admit: the Conspiracy is real. Mistrustful and suspicious, the INFJ is not easily fooled, and does not take the word of the government-controlled medico-military-industrial complex for anything. Whether it's uncovering the plot by butter-eating Jews to clog the arteries of Christian folk with artificial margarine or discovering the secret laboratory in Tibet that's producing legions of Jimmy Carter clones that will be sent out to seize the manufacturing facilities in the Guangdong Province of China under the pretext of inspecting chickens for influenza, there is no lengths the INFJ won't go to in order to blow the lid off the whole thing.

INFJs can often be found holding down jobs as AM radio talk-show hosts. They can also be found driving taxis in the greater Washington, DC area. Other common jobs often held by INFJs include vagrant, loony, whacko, and writer/director/producer of the television show "Seinfeld." INFJs can also be found feeding that crucial bit of information to determined FBI agents just before they are brutally murdered.

RECREATION: INFJs often come home from a hard day's work exposing conspiracies about how the government is poisoning us with mind-control agents spread by passenger airliners and unwind by spending all night writing Web sites exposing conspiracies about how NASA faked the Bush election.

COMPATIBILITY: INFJs are usually happiest and most successful in relationships with Julia Roberts, though the relationships may not end happily.

Famous INFJs include...well, if I told you, I'd have to kill you.

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INFP: The Idealist

The INFP is a dreamy, imaginitive, idealist, capable of finding the good in anything or anyone, even something as foul as Newark, New Jersey. INFPs are sometimes dangerous to the well-being of society as a whole, as they are prone to adopting subversive and destructive ideologies like "The world should be fair," "people should treat one another well," and "You know, 'Friends' is a really, really stupid television show."

These irrational thought patterns may sometimes cause INFPs to run off and join the circus, the Resistance, or the Rebellion, where they tend to do well in any position requiring excellent hand-eye coordination or mastery of the Force.

COMPATIBILITY: INFPs and ISTJs generally exhibit a natural predator/prey relationship, which, though it might appear harsh and cruel from the outside, is all part of the natural cycle of life. In fact, were it not for the predation of the ISTJ, the population of INFPs would soon grow to unsustainable levels, overwhelming the ability of their ecological niche to support them.

Famous idealists include that girl in your sixth-grade homeroom who got the teacher fired for saying that girls aren't good at math; that guy in the cubicle next to yours who got the manager fired for saying that women don't make good employees; and Anais Nin.

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ENFP: The Scientologist

The ENFP is a creative thinker who sees all humanity as connected to a cosmic whole, and gives of himself tirelessly to improve the condition of his fellow man.

Whether he's creating bizarre religions aimed at bringing us all back to our origins as immortal space aliens made of pure thought or conducting seminars and classes on alien abduction, the ENFP is always seeking the answers to the great mysteries of life, such as "Who are we?" and "How can i use two tin cans and a Radio Shack multimeter to bring enlightenment to the world?" and "What is it with UFOs and anal probing, anyway?"

RECREATION: The ENFP is gregarious, outgoing, and slightly silly; they often spend their leisure time engaged in role-playing games, having pillow fights that lead to wild, lustful lesbian orgies, or being abducted by space aliens.

COMPATIBILITY: ENFPs are happiest in relationships with Tom Cruise.

Famous ENFPs include anyone who has ever dated Tom Cruise.

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ISTJ: The Thought Police

ISTJs are characterized by loyalty, duty, and civic responsibility. As an ISTJ, you have a natural understanding of the value of civil harmony and order, and a deep-seated dislike of non-conformity, anarchy, and chaos.

For an ISTJ, work is very important to a sense of self-satisfaction. Happiness comes most easily for you when you have a job that allows you to express your ethic. Whether it's blasting traitorous rebel scum as a proud Imperial Stormtrooper or monitoring the population's cerebral implants searching for evidence of unauthorized thought patterns as one of the Thought Police, you're most satisfied when you are crushing the population beneath the iron boot heel of oppression on behalf of your masters.

RECREATION; ISTJs approach leisure with the same dedication they bring to spreading tyrrany and oppression. Common ISTJ pasttimes include cleaning their rifles, improving their marksmanship, betting on political dissidents in the Gladiator Arena, and macrame.

COMPATIBILITY: ISTJs are capable of stong emotional connections, bonding closely with the other ISTJs in their unit, platoon, or sector.

Famous ISTJs include TK-421, Torquemada, and Yuri Andropov.

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ESFP: The National Enquirer Headline

An ESFP is a spontaneous, outgoing, charismatic, fun-loving person like the guy you used to room with in college--you know, the one who was found floating face-down in the reservoir with the homecoming queen's underwear in his teeth.

The strongest element of the psychological makeup of an ESFP is his easygoing, impulsive approach to life. ESFPs often build their careers out of dating supermodels, being involved in scandals, and appearing regularly in such newspapers as "The National Enquirer" and "The Weekly World News." ESFPs often die in bizarre circumstances, usually involving jealous boyfriends, exotic dancers, escaped pythons, feather boas, and falls from the penthouse floor of high-rise apartments; those who don't, usually die of veneral diseases.

RECREATION: Everything the ESFP does, whether it's shagging the Brazilian women's volleyball team in a public fountain in downtown New York City or fleeing from their manager in a stolen Ferrari on a winding Milan street, is done for recreation.

COMPATIBILITY: Everyone. ENTPs, INTJs, ENFPs, sea turtles...there's nobody the ESFP won't shag.

Famous ESFPs include every female James Bond character EVER.

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INTP: The Absent-Minded Professor

The typical INTP is a logical, abstract thinker whose intellect is ideally suited to understanding pure mathematics, linguistics, formal logic theory, and other pursuits unsuited to making a real living. The INTP can often understannd even the most subtle nuances of lattice quantum chromodynamics, but cannot perform more concrete tasks such as dressing himself, operating a motor vehicle, or opening a door. An INTP may be able to tell you how to construct a nuclear reactor from a coconut and two pieces of string, but may be completely incapable of fixing a hole in a boat.

The INTP is really only suited to two careers: college professor and game show contestant. Of these career choices, only one offers the financial rewards which allows him to suport himself; for that reason, INTPs often take the other path, and become tenured academics.

RECREATION: Surprisingly, INTPs are often the hit of the party--not for their sometimes annoying habit of turning every discussion into a debate about semantics nor for their fascinating stories about Pierre de Fermat's habit of writing things in the margins of his books, but for the fact that they often show up with their pants on backwards and that if you put a Post-It note reading "Kick Me" on an INTP's back, he won't notice it no matter how many people kick him. That kind of entertainment never gets old.

COMPATIBILITY: INTPs make ideal companions to INTJs, as neither of them notices they're in a relationship.

Famous INTPs include Pierre de Fermat and the Professor from "Gilligan's Island."

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INTJ: The outside contractor

INTJs are solid, competent personalities who may seem aloof and even arrogant, but who are typically highly skilled in any field which interests them. INTJs are confident in their skills and knowledge, self-assured, and imaginitive; their exceptional problem-solving skills make them ideal architects, auto mechanics, and tools of the evil empire. While it requires the driving will to conquer of an ENTJ to imagine the Death Star and the evil genius of an ENTP to invent its devastating weapons systems, the skill and technical prowess of the INTJ is what makes the whole thing work.

The INTJ sees life as a problem to be solved. For that reason, the INTJ is the person a company brings in from the outside to streamline production processes and identify redundant assets for termination. The INTJ's combination of analyticial problem-solving skills and complete and utter disregard for the morality or consequences of his actions also make him ideal for the job of hatchet man, CIA operative, and helpdesk operator.

RECREATION: INTJs are often baffled by the strange and incomprehensible recreational rituals of other people, such as going to parties, watching television, and having sex. Instead, they prefer to spend their leisure time installing twin missile launchers in their cars to deter tailgaters and playing chess with megalomaniac CEOs of the Tyrell corporation.

COMPATIBILITY: Silly person, INTJs don't have relationships! They may, however build their own friends.

Famous INTJs include J. F. Sebastian and Sgt. Apone.

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ISTP: The Psycho Vigilante

ISTPs are quiet, unassuming people, who tend to be mechanically gifted but withdrawn and reserved. ISTPs often need a great deal of personal space and "alone time," which may give others the impression that they are aloof; in reality, this time is necessary to hide their secret identities.

The typical ISTP leads a dual life; his outward reserve and quiet masks an inward seething rage at the injustice of life--often, the death of a loved one at the hands of a criminal. In this secret life, the ISTP uses his mechanical gifts to create a terrifying arsenal of bizarre weapons with which to strike fear into the heart of evil. Sometimes, ISTPs may become evil themselves, either slowly over a long period of time or in response to a perceived rejection from the very people they are trying to save.

RECREATION: ISTPs are happiest when they are building and constructing--either new weapons to smite their enemies, or new plots to destroy those who oppose them. They have a very industrial sense of aesthetics, and can spend hours absorbed in the appreciation of works of art such as a 1969 Hemi Cuda retrofitted with missile launchers and ejection seats.

COMPATIBILITY: ISTPs don't often get along well with their extroverted cousins, Evil Overlords and Mad Scientists. Instead, they prefer the company of INTPs, or perhaps their pets. Romantic relationships with ISTPs tend to be drawn-out, tragic affairs, filled with bitterness, longing, and teenage angst. The sex is usually pretty good, however.

Famous ISTPs include Spider-Man, Q, and Magneto.

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ISFP: The Crackpot

ISFP personalities are characterized by their impulsiveness, their defiance of conformity and orthodoxy, and their competitive natures. Taken together, these traits make up the ideal crackpot. While an ISFP's personality might seem flighty and their attention span short to an outsider, ISFPs live by the motto "Life is best approach--oh, look, potato chips!"

ISFPs are always on the cutting edge of new trends. Whether it's podcasting, taking up guitar, or running away to a far-off east African compound and joining a doomsday apocalyptic cult, ISFPs are always following their hearts and quickly embracing new ideas. However, they tend to be fleeting in their passions, which means they often may lack the dedication that marks a true cultist. While ISFPs often lack the dedication most people give to careers and family, they can still support themselves in more unorthodox ways, like by selling blood plasma, turning tricks, and mooching off their family.

RECREATION: ISFPs enjoy activities that cater to their emotional passions, and often pursue many hobbies, such as music, painting, sculpting, and running off to Vegas to marry that cute waitress from Mack's Truck Stop over on Route 9. Whenever God speaks to someone, it's usually an ISFP.

COMPATIBILITY: ISFPs do well in relationships with ISFJs and with anyone they meet in Las Vegas.

Famous ISFPs include Joan of Arc and--oh, look, potato chips!

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ISFJ: The Martyr

If you are an ISFJ, you are giving, generous, and believe strongly in sacrificing yourself to serve your fellow man. Whether you're spending the entire weekend cooking souffle for your husband's big dinner with his boss or giving over your body as a vehicle for the Shoggoth from beneath the ancient city of the Old Ones so that the Great Gods can rise again, selflessness and service are your hallmarks.

This generosity of spirit makes ISFJs admirably suited for any career positions involving being tied to altars or ancient ritual daggers. ISFJs also do well in positions such as teacher, doctor, and crack whore.

RECREATION: ISFJs are of such a self-sacrificing nature that recreation does not come easily to them. Their leisure pursuits often express their inner natures; thus, they often amuse themselves and provide endless entertainment for those around them by being moody and passive-aggressive.

COMPATIBILITY: ISFJs do well in relationships with ENTJs, who take their self-sacrifice for granted and expect no less from their minions. They also do well with ESFPs, because...well, ESFPs will shag anyone.

Famous ISFJs include Thomas the Martyr, Tertullian the Martyr, and Theka the Martyr.

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ESTP: The Conman

As an ESTP, you are driven to succeed and to win. Your personality is dominated by your drive to test yourself and to triumph over your fellow man.

This generally expresses itself as an overwhelming urge to prove your self worth (and fatten your wallet) by taking advantage of the suckers, marks, and dupes who surround you--after all, isn't that what they're there for? It's not your fault that their stupidity and gullibility lets them believe you when you say that Hershey's Kissesses exposed to your patented psychic amplifier rays will let them fly! As your hero and fellow ESTP, P. T. Barnum, once said, "it is morally wrong to let a sucker keep his money."

As an ESTP, your greatest fear is failure. Under no circumstances will you permit yourself that kind of weakness, which makes you ideally suited for a job at Enron, where your natural talents can be recognized and rewarded.

RECREATION: ESTPs enjoy recreational activities such as card sharking, pool sharking, and conning little old women out of their lives' savings. They're often fond of polo as well.

Famous ESTPs include P. T. Barnum and DR. PETER OKOYE, SON OF THE LATE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA M. B. OKOYE, WHO REQUESTS YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN HELPING TO TRANSFER $150,000,000 (THE SUM OF ONE HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION USD) INTO YOUR U.S. BANK ACCOUNT SO THAT IT MAY BE DISTRIBUTED TO NEEDY CHILDREN, IN GOD'S CHARITY.

Thanks Tacit (tacit.livejournal.com/ ) for some good laughs.