This short review of the impacts of bacteria on the body is absolutely fascinating. It’s also a topic that Twyla is passionate about, having devoured every book, article, and online discussion she can get her hands on.

Introducing and maintaining beneficial bacteria in our kids from, literally, the beginning of their lives will be the single biggest determining factor in their lifelong health. It’s also why we treat antibiotics with extreme caution, using them only as a last resort.

It is becoming increasingly clear that different bacteria provide people with different advantages and disadvantages. All over the world, teams of scientists are looking at how bacteria affect the folks they live in. Certain bacteria have been linked to the incidence of stomach ulcers, but take away those bacteria with antibiotics, and young people get more asthma, hay fever, allergies and eczema.

We try to foster good gut health in ourselves and in our kids primarily through the things that we can directly influence, like diet, as opposed to the things we can’t influence as much, like environment (i.e. hands in mouths, etc).

Granted, all of my understanding of the subject comes second-hand from discussions with Twyla but we already know that diet affects behavior and, with some studies linking diet with autism ^[1], it can’t be too much of a leap to start talking about bacterial health and its affects on child development ^[2] and personality.

Implications of this research go even further when you consider the reference to geographical differences.

…a person who grows up in Argentina and another who grows up in northern Alaska tend to acquire different bacteria … these differences seem to matter…

It reinforces the ‘eat local’ mantra pushed by the slow-food/organic/bio-dynamic communities.

Notes:
[1] I realize the link between diet and autism is controversial as it seems to presume that autism is, then, preventable but, nevertheless, the studies exist and the research seems to be continuing.
[2] While not related to a discussion of bacteria, I thought this article about ADHD’s (non)existence was interesting too especially when you start drawing the links between all of these topics.

At my desk in the office on election day… local time is 12:10PM, 7:10PM in Austin. I’ve can’t get the audio feed from KUT or the video feed from CNN so I’ve got all of the following on my screen right now:

• New York Times Election Results Dashboard
• MSNBC Election Widget
• Daily Kos Electoral Map
• New York Times Presidential Election Map (manual refresh required)
• MSNBC First Read blog page (manual refresh required)
• Daily Kos homepage (manual refresh required)
• and a few other pages that I’m cycling through.

Watching this in on the web is definitely not as exciting as live TV but I’ll take what I can get. Overall though, this is very nerve wracking.

After a hard drive crashed a few months ago, I made the switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu on my work laptop. I’ve used Linux for a long time but hadn’t run it as my primary system for years and especially not at work. It’s really been great and I’ve been able to integrate with our Windows-based office network and apps fairly easily.

I still run XP in a virtual machine but only for Outlook and the odd corporate application that hasn’t made it out of the stone-age and onto the net.

Of the few annoyances I ran into after the switch, slower network performance had me pulling my hair out until I found a fix for a 2.6.x kernel problem.

I sent in our absentee ballots for the ‘08 election yesterday. It was a bit anticlimactic after having followed the race so closely, swept up in the excitement of a potentially historic vote. I missed not going to the community center at the “Y”, signing in and manipulating the big red dial on the electroinc voting machine. Absentee voting was incredibly easy though and FedEx guarantees one day delivery of the ballots for free from here.

Related Australian Fact O’The Day: In Australia, voting is mandatory. As in, there is a federal law here that requires each citizen to vote. That still puzzles me. And my Australian friends think it’s equally bizarre that it’s not mandatory in the US.

A recent visitor to our house in Austin…

Picture courtesy of Lolo.

Update 8-Oct-2008: It’s a harmless orbweaver spider. Scroll down to Orbweavers on this page. Remarkable that the picture is almost identical.

Flights to Auckland? … check

iPod loaded with The Lord of the Rings soundtrack? … check

Campervan booked for an eight day driving tour during which my wife, two small children, and I will camp on the side of the road in a foreign country where sheep out number people 20 to 1? … check

In case you were wondering, Johnny Costa was the musical director and pianist for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I told Twyla a while ago that it sounded like Bill Evans primarily because Bill Evans is the only jazz pianist I know. She told me I was crazy. It’s been bugging me for a while so I finally looked it up. She was right of course but it turns out Mr. Costa was an accomplished and well regarded jazz pianist in his own right. All the music for the show was done live by Mr. Costa’s in-studio jazz trio.

Also learned today that Mister Rogers’ middle name was McFeely.

So, there you go, that should fill your useless knowledge quota for today.

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions.
- 2008 GOP Platform

Should be fun to watch the 2008 GOP kick W out of the clubhouse.

Things I noticed in the first five minutes of this speech:
1. Obama is pushing for a more transparent government
2. No mention of ethanol when referring to alternative energy strategy
3. Broadband was first on the list of infrastructure improvements
4. Hinted at ending large-farm subsidies in favor of support for the small guys

Things I noticed in the last two minutes:
1. Wisconsin was the launchpad for the modern progressive movement (huh?)

I slept through the rest of the speech but don’t blame it on Obama… I had a bit too much wine at dinner. Okay… the middle of the speech was a bit muddy.

I’ve been reading quite a bit about the financial crisis in the US lately. My initial reaction to the bail-out talks was echoed in a reddit post that I can’t find anymore: Why not bail-out the regular folks by giving them money to cover their defaulted mortgages and watch the results trickle up to the banks? Granted, probably a naive idea. But the author of this letter to Senator Obama has another alternative along the same lines: Ensure the FDIC is adequately funded to cover consumers then let the banks fail and rebuild the industry through bankruptcy courts and future legislation. Seems a much better plan than rushing to throw 700 billion at Wall Street with little to no oversight.