Stepford Wives: there’s a subtle appeal…

No, I’m not talking to you men who’d like a Cherry 2000 model to cook, clean and f*ck away your cares.

I’m talking to the gals in the audience.  Would the world be a better place if we all had a backup model?  Wouldn’t it be nice to take a hot bath, go to bed early, wake up late, have a backup who’d take care of everything for you until you were ready to deal with it?

What if every man on earth had a Stepford Wife of his own in addition to a human spouse; would there be less war and strife if there was more than plenty of housekeeping and sex to go around?

Maybe I should shut off The Stepford Wives now playing on AMC and go have a beer with buds.  This movie has always freaked me out, but for some reason I’m actually looking at it differently this time.

God, this must be cabin fever; it can’t be good when one starts thinking “Electronics-R-Us” is a great solution to everything.

Keep my barstool warm, eh?  Be right there.

4:57:49 PM    comment []

Dead or alive?  Check your city’s pulse here…

The town in which I live is DOA.  No, not even that.  It’s mummified.

Actually, I live in a township adjoining a city.  The township represents the resulting population flight from a mummified city.  The people that moved had the money to do so, but not the brains or wherewithal to turn this township into a thriving replacement.  It’s just one big long bedroom community that will eventually be vacated for another bedroom community once businesses that anchored the old city die off and leave.

One symptom: for an area that has over 30,000 residents, some of them the most affluent in this county, we have 2 coffee shops.  Nope, not Starbucks – for that you’d have to go to the Barnes & Noble megastore by the mall. 

We have virtually no nightlife here.  A state university and the largest community college can be found in another adjoining township, but they’re backup schools.  There are no business incubators adjoining these campuses.

I’m struggling to find an acceptable restaurant for dinner with business professionals and spouses that’s not a chain.

All this, in spite of the presence of several Fortune 50 and 100 businesses in the area.  I don’t know what would possess anyone with brains to stay here if they were young and had no kids.

I’m not even certain why I’m here, other than I’m not that young any more and I have kids and my spouse’s job is here.  We got on this merry-go-round and can’t yet get off.

All this is incredibly obvious to me, not having lived here my entire life and having traveled a bit.  It’s not obvious to lifelong residents or the rural folks here in this county.  They think crime brings blight, can’t be persuaded it’s the other way around.  Agh.

I took this test and got confirmation that I’m living in Deadsville.  Imagine my relief.

I sure hope you’re not, and if you are, I sure hope you’ll get active and with community development or flee.  This area has so much potential, but the closed mindset and homogeneity is the kiss of death.

I’m leaning towards flight if the job thing gets much worse.

p.s. this test may not work for those outside the U.S. – I sure hope it’s better elsewhere!

12:26:58 PM    comment []

Pre-term birth treatment: blessing or bane?

A recent study found that progesterone administered late in pregnancy to high-risk patients substantially reduced the occurrence of premature birth.  The finding was so overwhelming and incontrovertible that the study was cut short.

This finding is seen as a blessing since 12% of all pregnancies in the U.S. deliver before term.  Premature babies suffer frequently from developmental delays and breathing problems due to underdeveloped lungs; they are at much higher risk for developing cerebral palsy, may have diminished hearing, sight and mental faculties.  Expenses related to caring for premature infants as well as their mothers prior to birth may be 10 times more than for normal infant births.

The bane here is that there may be no compelling reason for seeking the underlying reason why pre-term birth occurs once this regimen is institutionalized.  There may be other compelling health complications which have been masked by pre-term birth; delivering at term may only postpone the inevitable need for treating the root cause. 

We may also be kidding ourselves that defects found in premature infants result solely from prematurity; perhaps the defects themselves cause the pre-term birth.  Note the placenta generates a major portion of the progesterone required during the pregnancy.  Poor placental development means fewer nutrients reach the fetus.  The inadequate placental production of progesterone may indicate a larger systemic problem, perhaps the cause itself of the defects seen in premature infants.  Researchers are continuing to look into additional drug therapies, but therapies are reactive in nature.  Finding the root cause itself is the only cure.

It is interesting to note that the number of premature births in this country have steadily increased, and that a theoretical treatment is the use of nutriceuticals found in foods.  Women have been discouraged over the last decade or so from eating fish because of bio-accumulated toxins found in fish.  Yet the nutriceutical being studied occurs naturally in fish, in high concentrations.  Perhaps the real problem is that pregnant women are simply not getting the broad spectrum of nutrients required for fetal health, including fish.

What other nutrients are now missing in women’s diets, yielding long-term health repercussions?

It may be five years to a decade before the medical community sees a trend worth studying – and it will be too late for the children born during that time who stand to benefit from additional research.

9:26:14 AM    comment []