September 2006

There is an amazing source of information available to anyone dealing with the transgender spectrum, be they practitioners or people and that is The Official Journal of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, the International Journal of Transgenderism. While the journal is now published by Hawthorne Press, the archives of material from 2002 is still on line and, let me tell you, it is great reading. From time to time I’ll feature material from the journal as it is too rich a source to leave untapped. In respect of copyright laws, I won’t put the full articles here, but I’ll be refering to them. You may view the archive yourself of course by clicking directly to it at this linke here.

For the first mining of this treasure I’d like to present what will be a controversial topic, in my opinion, for many of you reading this. It certainly was for me. The piece is entitled, “What I Did For Love: Temporary Returns to the Male Gender Role”. And is the remarkable story of Laura Davis. She transitioned at age 60 (so there’s still hope for me apparently) and then found herself in a very important life choice, should she, indeed could she, live for a time as male in order to help her wife in a difficult career situation? Would you switch back to your incorrectgender to help someone you love? What circumstances might drive you to do it?

I’ll leave you with this teaser from Laura’s writing:

I can do now for love what would have been impossible ten years ago. My gender essence has consolidated to that of female but the public presentation of a female identity is less important than my love for my Judy. As needed to not hinder my wife’s ministry, I have and will continue to gladly adopt a male identity temporarily. Like Jim, [from the story by O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi"], I can pawn my watch for my beloved

It’s a provocative story and one that encourages any of us under the transgender umbrella to think about what each of us might do for love. For the full story, please click to this link here.

(Picture courtesy of Nadar’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

I am, by all accounts, health conscience in my food. I try to eat five more servings of vegetables a day, drink lots of water, and stay away from too much meat. But the call to try out SPAM in my kitchen was too great so off the shelf and into my basket it went on Friday. I kept thinking, it can’t be all that bad can it?

When you read the label you get a sense of what you’re in for. Calories from fat are 140 per serving. The calories in one serving are 180. Do the math fair reader. You are eating a slab of lard. Still, even that can be okay once in a while (though some in the medical community think that even a single fatty meal can muck you up, (see this article on the risk from fat in a single meal written by Dr. Simeon Margolis, M.D., Ph.D. of John Hopkins, click to the article on Yahoo at this link HERE)

Undaunted, we at Beck’s Cafe lept at the chance to try the fabricated food to see if it had any redeeming value outside of being an excellent source of material for Monty Python. We donned aprons, fired up skillets and, with our trusty dog at our heels lapping it’s chops for any scraps that might make their way to the floor, and we began to cook.

Cooking Spam straight up is easy. Anyone who can boil water can do it (though you may wonder why you’d do it). You simply POP the handy top off and presto, pink perfectly square meat that has a “meaty/porky” smell to it (since pork is the main ingredient that scent is a good thing). Then, skillet heated to medium heat, you can get it out by:

• Scooping some out with a melon baller
• Slicing delicate strips of it out trying to make it look elegant
• Making squares or cubes out of it
• Cutting up triangular or rough shapes
• Using a cooking cutter to create odd shapes such as bunnies or stars, let your imagination free!

Once chopped to a desired shape, simply slap it into the skillet and away you go! It should hiss and sizzle as it hits the heated pan and then you need to cook it till it’s lightly to medium browned on the outside. DON’T burn it, you’ll regret it we assure you.

The smell and taste are uniquely, well, spammy. Its sort of a bland meatless taste that has added spices to it in order to enhance the taste. It is greasy. It doesn’t so much leave a puddle of grease in your pan like, say, bacon. It’s more like the grease is permeated IN the meat and never leaves. I have to give Hormel Foods credit, they try hard to make a food tasty that is really formed to exist for the long haul on your shelf. If you have no food, SPAM is a great source of calories. If you do have food it might be better to try other options for a nice meal.

The Cook’s Thoughts
You can get creative with SPAM, Hormel has a whole list of recipes to choose from. To see the list of recipes click to the Hormel site via this link here.

I found in cooking it that if you cook it with something, like eggs, the Spam tastes better. It’s tastes seems to blend a little with other tastes.

And what did those who ate it think?
* DAMN get me something to drink to get this taste out of my mouth!!
* Hmmm, I think I’ll pass on that taste test.
* Slobber, slobber, gulp {my doggie enjoying a morsel)

Blog content theft is beginning to be a big issue. I don’t think it’s happened to us here at Beck’s Cafe but who knows? Maybe we’re too busy swilling capuccino to notice. Still though it is disturbing. It’s so damn wrong. Someone’s thoughts on their blog are there for public reading, debate and consumption not to be snatched up and made to be someone else’s. It’s rather goulish really.

I guess the real issue isn’t if some wonderful article you or I have written is going to be ripped off, it’s when. One question you might ask yourself is, why? Why steal our drivel when someone else can come up with their own perfectly drivelly drivel themselves? I thnk the answer to that question is money and time. The time to write the drivel to earn the money. And the money is earned by witless readers who go to a site that’s ripped off content and then see Google Adsense Ads and click on those. Get enough clicks and I’d imagine such a scam is worth creating hatred for yourself in the blogosphere. But there are some things you can do, cheaply we might add, to hunt down and combat these miscreants.

Lorelle on Wordpress has an excellent series of articles on the issue of Blog Content theft. Starting with her excellent series will get you up to date as to what the issue is. You can click to Lorelle’s site by clicking on this link HERE.

Spoken For’s blog has an outstanding series of free methods to fight back, and fight back hard. You can read her sad tale and then learn how to fight back by clicking to her post on this subject at her blog HERE.

(Photo courtesy of Caribb’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

When I saw the article on September 19th being “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” at The Inquirer (see article here), I thought, “what a bunch of jokers”. Then I realized it’s real! In the words of the offical, International Talk Like a Pirate Day web site:

International Talk Like A Pirate Day began in the mists of the 1990s, when two Yankees, John Baur (Ol’ Chum Bucket) and Mark Summers (Cap’n Slappy), be talkin’ like pirates all o’a sudden. They decided that, to further the noble causes of the sweet trade of piracy, September 19 each year be the day when all souls over the world should be talkin’ like pirates. For years, their valiant efforts were wasted, until they contacted a man by the name of Dave Barry, who be writin’ a humour column for the great masses o’ landlubbers out yonder.

He showed his devotion to the cause by promoting the Day to millions of people across the world from the tropical climes of Miami, to the wild and weary shores of Thunder Bay. From thar, the media across the seven seas carried the story, and it reached every corner of the world!

Back then, we be havin’ no connection with Dave Barry, John Baur, or Mark Summers, but we be enjoyin’ the Day and we be makin’ this site, the first of its kind.

Shiver me timbers! 

(Skull & Crossbones pic courtesy of GeishaBoy Photos, Pirate Women photo courtesy of McBeth’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

I love this movie, Under the Tuscan Sun (or Sotto il sole della Toscana in Italian) It is rich, gently textured, unpredictable, nurturing and satisfying. It is a movie with such memorable quotes such as:

• A fountain and a magnum of champagne will always set you right
• I am going to make love all over you!
• Regrets are a waste of time. They’re the past crippling you in the present.
• Any arbitrary turning along the way, and I would be elsewhere. I would be different.

This comedy and drama movie is about a woman named Frances (played by Diane Lane) who, divorced from her husband, becomes very depressed and goes to Tuscany Italy with a tour group. While she is there she impulsively buys an old villa with all her savings, and she has a wish. Her wish is that there will be a wedding at the villa and a family too. And it is the rich story and excellent acting that leads her to the fulfilling of those wishes.

The acting is well done. Diane Lane, as Frances, is excellent as the novelist turned general contractor as she works with a polish speaking contractors, in Italy, to bring the suddenly bought house to life. The story and scenes of that subplot will make any homeowner wince in empathy. But that’s not the only thing Frances is up to as romance, unexpected visits and further plots twists are weaved through the movie. The movie has a gentle but not slow pace. It’s carefully crafted and best enjoyed with wine.

There are many memorable scenes, among them:
* Francis grabbing the arm of a strange man to avoid some other Italian “admirers” from stalking her. Her choice in a stranger leads her in a path in life that she didn’t expect
* The collapse of the main wall in the house during the construction. It’s priceless.
* The incredible “luck” of Frances, now living in Italy, unable to speak Italian, who has hired Polish laborers, and she doesn’t speak Polish either.
* Katherine, her ex pat British friend, who poses naked for her artist friend 20 years her junior and then invites Frances up just to say hello.

Under the Tuscan Sun was nominated for a Golden Globe award and won the GLAAD Media Award. It stars Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Raoul Bova and Lindsay Duncan.

I’ll end with the best quote from the movie, by Frances:

What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain. The house protects the dreamer. Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game. It’s such a surprise.

Guy warning, it’s mostly a chic flick, so girls, get your friends together for this one and bring the wine, chocolate and tissues. The tears you’ll shed are not in saddness but for how your heart is touched by this wonderful movie.

“I’m furious about Women’s Liberationists. They keep getting up on a soapboxes and proclaiming that woen are brighter than men. That’s true, but it should be kept a very quiet or it ruins the whole racket”. Anita Boos

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own”. Charlotte Bronte

“As you climb up the ladder of success don’t let the boys look up your dress!” Jennifer Bunis

“Behind every successful woman…is a basket of dirty laundry”. Sally Forth

“They say getting thin is the best revenge. Success is much better”. Oprah Winfrey

“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths”. Lois Wyse

“I wanted to be scared again…I wanted to feel unsure again. That’s the only way I learn, the only way I feel challenged”. Connie Chung

“To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist”. Gail Sheehy

“Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid it will never begin”. Grace Hansen

(Words from the book, “Witty Words from Wise Women, Hallmark Gift Books, B. J. Gallagher, photo courtesy of Jerry Daykin’s Photos used under Creative Commons License)

Like the JFK assassination a generation before us, our generation will always remember where they were on 9-11-2001. The day the United States was attacked on it’s own soil for the time since World War II.

My story is like so many others. I travel alot for work but on this day I just wasn’t, though many of my colleagues were. Working in high tech you have to spend time travelling to certain areas such as Silicon Valley, Shanghai, China, Texas or India. It’s just part of our world. But on 9-11-2001 I wasn’t travelling I was working in my office when one of my co-workers came in and said a plane, a passenger jet, had struck one of the World Trade Center towers. That was it. What a knucklehead I thought to myself. Air traffic must have messed up or maybe there was a malfunction in the instrument panel of the plane and with heavy fog well anything could happen. I shook my head and just thought, “damn” and went on with work. I figured it was bad but not horrible. Until I tried to reach some other co-workers for some information. They were not to be found.

So I stepped out of my office and headed down the hall then I saw them. All 50+ of them, crowded around a small portable radio. And they were listening intently. As I drew nearer a women looked up at me, terrified, and said, “they’ve attacked New York City”. I looked at her trying to understand what she meant as I strained to make sense of the radio broadcast.

Who attacked New York City? As I was thinking it through, my mind flooding with more and more bits of data, another man turned to me to say that “there are planes all over, no one knows how many more will go down”. Still a third person, their hands over their mouths, said, “it’s rush hour, there are 25,000 people in those buildings”.

Finally I understood what was happening. A chill went through my body, and it does still today, the United States was under physical attack from an outside entity, an unnamed (at that point) enemy.

I sat with the others, all 50+ of us, around a small radio listening as the second plane hit, as the Pentagon burst into flames and as the confusion, fear and terror of the day wore on. It wasn’t a productive day. It was a day I’ll always remember though. And something I will never forget.

More stories and pictures of that sad day have been archived the 9-11 Digital Archives. In case you don’t know about this site, it is, in their words, about:

The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and the public responses to them. Funded by a major grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and organized by the American Social History Project at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University…

(Photo courtesy of Babasteve’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

It’s a pretty common, yet cyclical theme to beat on the internet as the reason why some parts of our society is in decline. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d bet a tray of my chocolate chip cookies that the telephone and TV were probably blamed for damaging some part of our society too. Any new technology that comes onto the scene is, generally, neutral in it’s effect on society. It’s how people use it that determines it’s impact whether positive or negative.

So it came as no surpise to me see a recent article in Network World magazine entitled, “Study: Internet partly to blame for your lack of close friends“. The study, as you might have read in the June 23rd, 2006 edition of Network World or as originally published in the American Sociological Review, was done by by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona.

In the study, the researchers conclude that:

Increased use of the Internet, along with the number of hours people are spending at work, are factors contributing to a drastic decline in the number of close friends that Americans have.

I don’t think anyone would argue about the hours at work piece. With downsizing, rightsizing and efficiency re-work programs in place, more people do less work now than ever before (or the work gets pushed down to customers under the guise of automated customer service, see a sad example of that practice at this article I posted on that topic at this link HERE).

But the internet reducing person-to-person contact? Lets look at that again. The researchers note that, “New technology links people over greater distances, but cuts into face-to-face meeting time, the researchers said”. I’d have to say that all depends on the sub-community using the technology and how they are using it. Certainly the risk for people living holed up not seeing daylight exists and cases have been documented. But what about communities of people that are already isolated by society anyway?

In communities that are already isolated,(perhaps by geography, or in case of the transgender community, or perhaps autism, or other non-mainstream sectors of our society where person-to-person contact is very important for figuring out what is wrong then doing something about it), I would suggest that the internet acts as a strong bridge that can bring together people for person to person relationship building. I can only talk to my experience in the transgender community of course.

When I was first coming to grip with what was going on I didn’t know a single person or even where to turn to for help. I thought I was really in trouble. Well, after some snooping on the web I found out that not only wasn’t I as messed up as originally thought, there were others out there too. Relationships started on the net and soon grew to in person. Fears had to be conquered, “what if they don’t like me in person”? Then our groups of friends introduced each other to others and the snowball grew. Did I have to be careful? Sure, that’s the common sense approach to any relationship building where it starts in a relatively anonymous manner like the internet. But over time I learned who was real and who wasn’t and today I’m face-to-face friends with these and many others. All because the internet provided a bridge to others that didn’t otherwise exist.

So what is your experience?

(Brunel Bridge pic courtesy of didbygraham’s photo’s, used under Creative Commons license)

Could a sad heart lead to an unhealthy heart? That seems to be what is suggested from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) led by Dr. Mary Whooley, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco (see link to abstract at JAMA here). A recent article published by her discusses how major depression is a risk factor for the development of heart disease in healthy patients and for poor outcomes in patients with known heart disease.

In Dr. Whooley’s study she looked at over 7500 elderly women and tracked them over 7 years. She tracked them on a sort of depression scale to see how many symptoms and signs of depression they had. What she discovered was that 7% of women with no signs of depression passed away over the period of her study while 17% of women with three to five signs of depression passed away. Most alarming of all, 24% of the patients with six or more signs of depression passed away. In short, the more depressed her study subjects were the more likely they were to die of heart disease. Dr. Whooley was able to make the link between heart disease and depression by correlating her data with that of many other studies, most notably:

• A study in Denmark of 700 men and women that was followed for 27 years showed that those with depression had a substantially greater risk of hear attack and death
• Another study of 8000 men and women that showed an increase risk of coronary heart disease in depression patients
• a study of patients who were healthy and free of heart disease but for whom the risk of developing heart disease and dying from it was actually caused by depression.

But what might be the connection between depression and heart disease? Is it simply being blue clogs your heart or is depression a trigger for biological changes that bring on the disease? In an article by Dr. Tedd Mitchell for USA Weekend (July 28-30, 2006 edition) and an in an interview for National Public Radio (NPR) of Dr. Sydney Spiesel, Yale Medical School professor and Slate medical columnist, they both note the following possible biological connection between heart disease and a sad heart:

• Depressed people have a greater resting heart rate potentially leading to heart stress or abnormal heartbeats
• Hormones that control blood pressure and heart rate are higher in depressed patients
• Blood platelets are more activated in depressed patients that could lead to a greater incidence of blood clots and heart attack or stroke
• Behavioral issues come to play too, depressed patients tend to generally smoke more, exercise less, eat more poorly and are less compliant to taking medications that you’ve been prescribed to help keep heart disease from advancing.

So since being depressed is one cause of heart disease, what to do if your so blue? There are a number of potential weapons at your disposal that will help your mood and your heart too. Anti-depressants are one way to go. Dr. Whooley notes in her study that treatment with anti-depressants with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is a generally safe approach to alleviate depression. But some studies have shown that exercise is actually more effective.

In a study done in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (April 2001;35:114-117) found that just 30 minutes of walking daily improved depressed patients symptoms faster than medication. And in another study, published in Psychosomatic Medicine (September/October 2000;62:633-638) the researchers found when comparing treating depression with either 45 minutes of exercise three times per week or Zoloft, a popular anti-depressant that is a selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor, the exercise group were more likely to be partially or fully recovered from depression than those in the medication group.

So a sad heart can indeed be a sick heart too and treating it best may include anti-depressant medication or perhaps plain old exercise to make your heart happy and healthier too. My bet is on the exercise, it’s easy and cheap and has many side benefits in helping you physically and mentally, a combination that is time efficient and can’t be beat.

(silver heart photo from Lonely Angel Photos, used under Creative Commons license)

Beck’s Cafe has two sides. A big backside that has all the tech weenie stuff in it and the front side where we do the actual writing, recipe testing, frugal tech experiments, coffee swilling and general goofing around. The front side is the nice side for sure and one day, when we finally get the kitchen cleaned up enough, the tables actually shining and some of the crap off the floor (what IS that gelatinous glob over there anyway that everyone avoids) we’ll show the front side too.

But for now I thought the more technically inclinded and the generally curious might like to see what our big backside looks like You can click to see picks of the datacenter we share, as hosted at A Small Orange, at this linke HERE.

(amazingly big butted cat pic from Denise Michelle’s pics, used via Creative Commons license)