First report: doctors mystified by increases in allergy rates.

I have to wonder how much of the increase is due to increased recognition of what is going on, and more widespread public acceptance of the fact that food allergies can in fact kill you.

I am such a dork, I love academia. I'm not yet sure what this abstract is saying, but I think I love it:

Soc Sci Med. 2004 Feb;58(4):825-36. Related Articles, Links Governing peanuts: the regulation of the social bodies of children and the risks of food allergies.

Rous T, Hunt A.

Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, Ottawa ON K1S 5B6, Canada.

This paper explores the way in which children with life-threatening food allergies, their parents and their public caregivers have increasingly been made subject to both projects of moral regulation and mechanism of governance aimed at the management of risk. We argue that new regulatory measures in Canada designed to significantly change the food consumption practices among children in elementary schools have three main consequences. First, they structure the relationship between ideologies of individualism and community so as to blur the distinction between the public and private dimensions of school life. Second, such efforts ensure that a discourse, formerly concerned with the problem of health promotion, has been supplanted by new sets of discourses styled by absent experts that focus on the management of risk. Third, such regulatory practices have a particular dual effect that is characteristic of liberal welfare governance. On the one hand, they encourage the individualized development of self-governing subjects, and on the other, they stimulate a heightened moral problematization of 'safe' eating habits within the environment of the elementary school.

heightened moral problematization

Love this.

I think I may be the queen of sloth right now.

From what I remember, the point of the article was to stress that nursing mothers should take care about what kind of Vitamin E oil they used on their nipples. There was some speculation that because a lot of it had been peanut based, that babies were being exposed to too much peanut oil, too soon, before they could tolerate it.

Most peanut allergics don't react to peanut oil unless it's cold-pressed.

My mother ate english muffins with peanut butter for breakfast and apple slices dipped in peanut butter as snacks throughout all 4 of her pregnancies. Only one kid turned out allergic. Sure, there are environmental factors you can avoid, but it's still pretty much a crap-shoot.

OMG. One of my coworkers is explaining American Pie to the rest of them.

The song, not the movie. One of them didn't know the title of the song, and they're treating the "this is about the death of Buddy Holly" like it's news. I'm willing to let "Hotel California is about drugs" slide, but not American Pie! I'm the music-illiterate foreigner here!

Quick, ask them what the lyrics to "Blinded by the Light" really are.

I'll see your "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" (which is easy, since I've never heard of it) and raise you a "Little Red Corvette."

Well, I still have no idea what LRC is about (aside from your Trojan comment). But I never really concentrated on the lyrics, either.

Sonofabitch is gone.

See, I don't want him off the Katrina case, I want him gone gone. It's possible there are some vengeancey feelings involved.

Here's your hat, what's your hurry; don't let the door hit you in the ass, on the way out; your cell is ready, and a 1,001 other platitudes to him.

Unfortunately, he's still around to take charge when the next disaster hits.

Cereal:

Let me guess, amych, you were around for Fran?

You'd think all the little cave-babies and toddlers would've choked on rocks (Annabel is fascinated by pebbles) or poisoned themselves by stuffing random leaves in their mouths.

You have a baby every year and you raise a quarter of them, if you're lucky.

Apparently there are a lot of peanuts in places you wouldn't expect them (e.g. skin oils), as well as there being cross-allergies to soy. A baby who's on soy formula young is supposed to be at greater risk of a later peanut allergy.

There's also a cross-risk with some other foods like mango, and maybe some other melons. If I weren't lazy, I'd look up trends about cooking (both home, and mass production) with peanut oil. I know it seemed sensible to me not to use a peanut based vitamin E oil for nursing care.

I still have no idea what LRC is about

There was me, thinking it wasn't all about sex, love, or god. Dude. It's Prince. It about one (or all) of those three, probably.

Key tells:

• u had a pocket full of horses / Trojan and some of them used
• u drove me 2 the place / Where your horses run free
• I saw all the pictures / Of the jockeys that were there before me
• u say, baby, have u got enough gas?

And how you know I really wasn't paying attention?

• I’m gonna try 2 tame your little red love machine
• u got an ass like I never seen / And the ride... / I say the ride is so smooth