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Time to get controversial. As regular readers (or at least, readers from back when RTT was regular) will know, Wifeshui and I have recently been joined by Babyshui, an adorable little bundle of poo, vomit and occasional all-night crying sessions, whom we love above all else. Nowadays, she’s almost on solids, so the issue of breast or bottle is becoming immaterial, but back when she first popped into the world, both of her parents were adamant beaters of the breastmilk drum. After all, we’d spent the entire pregnancy devouring NHS leaflets on how breastmilk protects your baby from infection; we’d read countless articles in Mother & Baby Magazine about the many benefits of suckling on a titty; we’d encountered multiple midwives for whom whapping out the mammaries was the only feeding method imaginable and we’d scoured numerous parenting websites which touted breastfed babies as being cleverer, healthier and just downright better than their reprobate formula-fed counterparts. If Babyshui was indeed going to become a vigilante superhero, she needed nipple-juice, and plenty of it, so from day one Wifeshui’s bazoongas (which are, I might add with pride, quite exceptional examples in the field) were never far from Babyshui’s nose. And that’s when the trouble started.
To bust one breastfeeding myth upfront, babies are not all born with the ability to suckle. Maybe it was the Caesarean delivery, maybe it was a matter of personal taste, but Babyshui just did not get breastfeeding – it took several days of practice, during which time Wifeshui suffered enormously, before she could latch on properly. By this time, the feeding process had become an extremely unpleasant experience for all concerned – Babyshui found it frustrating, Wifeshui found it excruciatingly painful, and I found it massively disempowering, since there was nothing I could do to help. We started considering the alternative – formula feeding – in spite of all the dark tidings we’d heard about how it would make Babyshui a crippled, immunodeficient, asthmatic retard. In order to find out just how bad it might be, we did some research. The results were… surprising.
You would expect a statement like, “Breast is Best,” so readily trotted out by doctors, midwives and paediatricians, to be backed up by some pretty major evidence. You know the sort of thing – RCTs, large-sample studies, multiple peer-reveiwed research – the kind of evidence one would find backing up a new anti-cancer drug, or a drastic surgical procedure. You would anticipate that it would have substantially more scientific backing than a quack treatment like, say, homeopathy. And yet, as it turns out, the clinical evidence for the advantages of breastfeeding is about on a par with that for homeopathic cancer remedies. It exists – but its validity is dubious at best.
The problem is that all of the studies showing breastfeeding to be beneficial have ignored the problem of self-selection. Women who participate in these studies invariably tend to be those who are also most likely to breastfeed, namely full-time mothers in the higher levels of social stratification, the middle-classes and the comfortably well-off. Such parents generally also have higher levels of education, are more likely to consult their GP, have access to more resources, have more nutritious diets, engage in more varied activities and spend more time interacting with their baby – all of which have an effect on the baby’s wellbeing and intellect. In other words, mothers who follow the advice of their doctor and breastfeed are also likely to be better at bringing up children in general. This problem of confounding variables can be adjusted for, and some studies have done so, but the adjusted research paints a rather different picture. The largest and most notable adjusted study was carried out in 2007 by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which found that: “there was no relationship between breastfeeding and cognitive performance”. Not only that, but breastfeeding also has a “negligible” effect on a mother regaining her figure, has “no relationship” to increased bone development infants, and “did not have a noticeable effect” on future obesity. There does appear to be a reduced risk of breast cancer in lactating mothers – that data, at least, seems pretty solid – but the evidence for decreased risk of ovarian cancer and osteoporosis is far shakier.
Why, then, is there such a massive emphasis on breastfeeding amongst the medical profession? In part, it’s because of the World Health Organisation’s advice on the subject, which recommends that babies should be breastfed for at least the first six months of life. That suggestion makes perfect sense in a global context; after all, in much of the developing world a mother’s milk is obviously going to be better for her baby than formula milk made from the local water. In the affluent West, however, where our water supply is far less likely to be riddled with cholera, hookworm and dengue fever, such advice is superfluous.
Breastfeeding is also a highly emotive issue – in this respect it is similar to the abortion debate, in that evidence is always going to be secondary to people’s highly-charged feelings on the subject. As such, waving a pile of data which demonstrates that formula-fed babies are just as healthy and happy as their nipple-noshing counterparts is rarely going to convince anyone. Nevertheless, Babyshui is on the formula now, and seems to be thriving – and the evidence appears to show that she will continue to do so, in spite of the various acronymic organisations which would have us believe otherwise.
There’s been a fair bit of discussion around the web in the last week or two on the subject of gender relations (posts have appeared at Daylight Atheism, Humanity by Starlight and OLFC, to name but three) so I figured I’d throw in my two cents. Our household is pretty much the exact reverse of the conventional domestic set-up: yours truly stays home, looks after Babyshui, cooks (expertly), cleans (ineptly) and generally plays house; whilst Wifeshui toils to bring home the bacon. She drives, I don’t, she deals with the finances, I don’t, she smokes a pipe and wrestles bears (okay, not technically true…). What I’m getting at is that, by most people’s standards, I’m playing the woman in our relationship.
Now thankfully, in modern times this isn’t the abnormality it would have been fifty, or even twenty, years ago. Plenty of men now stay at home to look after children, and many women are now the principal breadwinners in their families. It’s a sign of how far we’ve come that I can now tell people, “I’m a house-husband,” without them batting an eyelid, let alone replying, “Dear gods, old chap, how on earth did that happen? Did you lose your balls in an accident?” However, there’s still more that needs doing. Gender equality is still a remote goal in certain areas of society, most notably the City and the Church, but also in the media and in the community at large.
It won’t be news to anyone that I believe much of this inequality can be blamed on religion, but the traditional roles of man as breadwinner and woman as housekeeper are even more firmly rooted than that, stemming back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Can we then blame sexism on biology? Men are supposed to be muscular, athletic, mammoth-stabbing hunters, women are meant to be nurturing, baby-making, vegetable-gathering Earth-mothers. For most of human history, in pretty much all cultures, society has been patriarchal in nature. Does this not suggest that the two genders ought to play different roles? Perhaps, but save for those fundies who really want to party like it’s 1399, modern humans have progressed beyond the need for women to churn out offspring to preserve the tribe. In the same way that we no longer treat headaches by trepanning, so we no longer need to subscribe to the old gender roles of our forebears. Thus, I’m proud to be a stay-at-home dad, embrace my ability to knit and see nothing unmanly about wielding a feather duster. And, to those who would take this as leave to question my masculinity, I say: put a sock in it, or I’ll set my wife on you.
Okay, I know my last post was supposed to be my – well – last post, but I thought those of you who take a passing interest in my life might be interested to hear that Babyshui No. 1 arrived in the world this afternoon, at 6lb 7oz. Mother and baby are both fine after a rather unexpected C-section – turns out Babyshui was breech and had been for months, in spite of the palpations of three midwives and a GP… Everything went safely and well, and, since in this case my opinion is going to be unfailing subjective, I can safely say that she is the most beautiful little bit of life in the world.
Right, now I really am signing off – these pink BabyGros aren’t going to sort themselves, you know!
Before embarking on an evening of throwing big, sweaty men around a mat, I and my fellow aikidoka line up in the dojo and bow. We do a lot of bowing. We bow when walking into the training hall, we bow when we leave. We bow when stepping onto and off of the mat. We bow when we pick up or put down a weapon, when we finish a throw with a partner, when we speak to the instructor and when we demonstrate a point of technique. Sometimes we bow standing up, sometimes on our knees. Sometimes we bow long and low, sometimes it’s little more than a nod. My point is, we (like anyone else conversant in a traditional Japanese martial art) know a hell of a lot about bowing. But why do we do so much of it?
The rei (bow) which opens each class is a good place to start. Although my sensei points out to every newcomer that, “it’s not a religious thing, it’s just about respect,” there is a certain religious aspect inherent in the movement. We are bowing to a small shrine called a kamiza, literally, a “seat of the gods”, burning incense and clapping our hands in a ceremony designed (originally) to attract the attention of the Shinto spirits. You can still see this exact routine played out in Shinto rituals throughout Japan – two bows, two claps, one bow – from weddings to funerals to festivals. We are, if one accepts the traditional interpretation of the gesture, specifically invoking the interest of the spirit of Morihei Ueshiba, the Founder of Aikido, symbolically asking his blessing on our practice since (having died on the other side of the world some forty years ago), he is unlikely to be dropping in personally to appraise our progress. There is, then, a quite specific religious overtone to this routine, whether one acknowledges it or not.
Since I refuse on principal to kneel and pray when in churches (awkward at weddings, but more so at funerals, I assure you), I have to ask myself: why do I obey the cry of: “Dojo wa kamiza ni, rei!” when it is barked out at the beginning or end of an Aikido class? How is this different from bowing my head and closing my eyes in a cathedral to show respect for a god in whom I do not believe? To answer this, I must engage in a little sophistry…
The prayer posture adopted in Christianity is one of submission to God. It is essentially a physical manifestation of humility, a visible expression of the penitent petitioner’s unworthiness before God. In positioning oneself this way, there is a tacit acceptance that: a) God exists (otherwise who one earth are you bowing to?) and b) God is better than you (otherwise you could communicate face-to-face, as equals). Neither of these, as you may imagine, are tenets that I’m likely to embrace. They stem (especially the second) from the traditional Indo-European cultural significance of the bow. Throughout Occidental history, people have bowed and scraped to their social betters – our medieval forebears doffed hats and dipped knees to royalty and the aristocracy, who returned the courtesy by not having them thrown in the stocks, burned alive or hanged. By contrast, the Japanese bow is a mutual event, akin to a handshake in the West. When they meet, two Japanese people will bow to one another in greeting, as a demonstration of reciprocated respect. Sure, a subordinate may make a deeper bow when encountering a superior, but the superior will still return the gesture, marking his esteem for those who labour to support his position.
The photograph of the Founder which adorns our kamiza can’t bow back, though, so isn’t our respectful kowtow a little one-sided? Well, yes and no. It’s true that, having departed this world, O-Sensei Ueshiba isn’t able to return our politeness, but the spirit with which we enter into the bow remains the same as when we bow to an instructor or another aikidoka. The religious frippery – the clapping and whatnot – is circumstantial to the actual mental process of the bowing student, who uses the bow as a way of focusing on the art he is about to practice and recalling the many teachers, including O-Sensei, who have handed down the techniques he will learn. As such, the Aikido rei engenders a sense of gratitude towards those who have gone before, and does not represent a submission to or even an acknowledgement of any sort of Shinto spirit who might be hanging around the shrine. We bow in memory of our predecessors and in gratitude to them, and the fact that they may not be there to accept our thanks in no way diminishes the importance of the act.
We bow a lot in Aikido, but we do have our reasons for doing so.
Warfare has broken out in Chateau Yunshui. No, the domestic bliss enjoyed by Wifeshui and I remains unbroken – the two of us are united against a common enemy. When historians come to tell the story of the twenty-first century, they will mention with hushed voices the ferocious Battle Of Yunshui’s Kitchen, between the noble alliance of yunshui and Wifeshui and the forces of the evil Formicidae. Yes, folks – we’ve got an ant problem…
Ants are truly amazing creatures, even when they’re trying to pilfer the contents of your sugar jar one grain at a time. They’ve been around, in pretty much the same form, since the Cretaceous Period, so they’ve had about 650 times as long as us to perfect their evolutionary adaptation. As a result, they can be found on every continent except Antarctica, in a vast range of different climates and subsisting on a wide variety of food sources. The most intriguing thing about them is the communal structure of their nests – some scientists have taken to viewing ant colonies almost as living structures in their own right, composed of ants rather than cells.
This collective, Borg-like living arrangement is of great interest to those studying complex systems (such as artificial intelligence, or the human brain). Individually, an ant is about as smart as, say, a greenfly – which is to say, unbelievably fucking dumb. Together, however, a colony of ants can exhibit quite high level problem-solving behaviour, which shouldn’t be possible given the intellectual inadequacy of each member ant. Computer programmers have examined the way in which a colony uses pheromone trails to create efficient solutions to problems, and have been able to use this to create the system of Ant Colony Optimisation, a computational algorithm which uses random trail-and-error to pinpoint the most effective route through any given matrix (so Terry Pratchett’s ant-powered Hex computer might not have been too far off the mark after all). From the seemingly random wanderings of each individual ant, the colony as a whole is able to build up a complete, three-dimensional picture of its environment, and travel through it in a highly organised way.
One problem ants don’t seem to be too good at solving, though, is the application of a hefty dose of Permethrin to their living quarters. As a result, it looks as though human ingenuity will win out in the current battle. Even as I’m wiping them out, though, I can’t help but feel a strong sense of respect for my tiny arthropod enemies – they’ve been around a hell of a lot longer than us, and will likely still be here long after we’ve gone.
As usual, it’s the Christmas presents I buy for myself that tend to be the most appreciated. Not that I’m ungrateful for the floating soapdish shaped like Dennis the Menace (you know who you are…), but my smiles this Christmas were most prodigious upon the arrival of my (self-ordered) copy of Playing Gods, the latest and most sacrilegious addition to my stable of board games. It’s a funny, clever and enjoyable game, with a well-crafted game mechanic and a fairly original premise.
Playing Gods has some surface similarities to Risk, in that the eventual goal is world domination, but it operates in the religious, rather than military, sphere. Players compete to accumulate sects of their faithful around the globe, whilst destroying or converting the competition. This goal is accomplished by the collection and use of special cards, enabling one to vent one’s divine wrath upon the infidels, via earthquakes, floods, solar flares, mudslides and so on – the Problem of Evil is really not an issue for the deities in this game. Those who remember the classic early ‘90s computer game Populous could envisage Playing Gods as a board game version of the same – go forth and multiply, and wipe out the heathens!
Like Monopoly, Playing Gods is at its best as a party game, when five players can compete against one another. As a two-player game, it lacks pace, but when you’ve got the neighbours over for dinner a round of smiting and miracles is a fun and furious way to spend the evening. The board and pieces (I sprang for the Special Edition pawns, but the regular ones are pretty cool-looking too) are well-made and nicely proportioned, in fact the design overall is very crisp and professional. The game plays well, without any awkward hiatuses or log-jams in the flow of actions, and although reasonably complex, is no more difficult to learn than Cluedo or Monopoly. Plus, it has some nice humorous twists, especially in the Expansion Pack cards. If you’ve ever had an inkling that you were destined for more than this mortal life, Playing Gods could be the route to realising your dreams of omnipotence.
It’s official – Wifeshui and I are expecting Babyshui number 1 sometime in July! We are, as you can probably imagine, somewhat excited (not to mention a little apprehensive…) As a result, Right To Think has just slid down my list of priorities by a couple of notches, so postings may be slightly thinner on the ground as I spend my free time rubbing Wifeshui’s feet and fetching her biscuits. Lack of a computer is still causing some slight issues too, since I still haven’t replaced my beloved Mac.
My thoughts today (and likely for some time hence) are of babies, and I’ve been amazed at how many other people seem to have them. Suddenly every third person I see is pushing a pram or wielding an almighty bump – I’m sure there were never so many of them before! Have they all been in hiding?
The reason, of course, is that I’m finding myself subject to a form of confirmation bias: I’m thinking about pregnancy and babies all the time, so they rise to the forefront of my attention. If I see someone with a baby, they thus register more strongly in my consciousness then someone without a baby. We’ve all experienced this to one degree or another – if you have a beard (as I do) you tend to notice men with beards specifically (women with beards attract attention regardless, it seems), whilst other men fade into the pedestrian background. Wifeshui will always notice when someone is wearing a jacket or top similar to one that she owns. My parents’ greyhound pays more attention to other dogs than she does to other humans. Each of us has particular fields of interest, and so notice examples which correspond to those fields whilst subconsciously discounting or devaluing those which don’t.
The same confirmation bias exists amongst those of a religious bent, not to mention followers of pseudoscience. Prayers that are “answered” register strongly, prayers which see no results are ignored. Colds and sniffles that clear up after a dose of allium cepa are hailed as evidence for homeopathy, but recover on your own and nobody cares. Only by considering the whole picture can we hope to establish any sort of accurate knowledge, and so I accept that, although I’m suddenly seeing hordes of expectant mothers everywhere I look, there are a lot of other people around too.
(((Billy)))‘s hit me with another meme – seems rude to refuse…
Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random arbitrary things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
Six Random Things About Me:
I once tackled a girl I really fancied in a hockey game, then went on to score a spectacular goal. When I looked back to see how impressed she and all my teammates were, they were all crowded around her – turns out I’d broken her jaw. Needless to say, no-one was very pleased with me. (We still won the game, though.)
I almost never wear matching socks, believing life to be too short for sorting them into pairs.
I secretly think Predator 2 is a better film than the original Predator.
When making the bed, I invariably have to climb inside the duvet cover in order to get it to fit properly. My wife finds this hilarious.
My 22nd birthday passed me by entirely – I forgot when it was so didn’t tell any of my flatmates, and it was only when I got a card from my parents (a couple of days late) that I realised. Even now I still have to think for a few seconds when asked my age.
I can’t drive a car. Leastways I don’t have a license to do so. If push came to shove, I daresay it might be possible for me to figure out the rudiments – if I was fleeing from zombies, for example, or if… actually, zombies might well be the only thing capable of motivating me to drive. As such, it’s unlikely that I’ll be doing so in the forseeable future.
I don’t like tagging other people, so this is a free meme – if you want it, please consider yourself tagged.
The other day I was watching Transformers: The Movie for about the twenty-seventh time (no, not the Michael Bay number from last year (although I did nearly wet my pants with uncontrollable fanboy glee when we saw it at the cinema, as Wifeshui will attest) but the classic 80s cartoon film featuring such luminaries as Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle and Orson Wells (playing the role of a gigantic, planet-sized creature which devours everything in it’s path – so no method acting required there, then.)). Anyway, as I eagerly recited the dialogue alongside the characters, it occurred to me that there are certain religious themes in the subtext of the story, primarily Christian but with a few elements of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology incorporated as well. It’s easy to draw parallels between Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic Autobots, and Jesus Christ, for example.
Joseph Campbell, most notably in The Hero With A Thousand Faces discussed at length the idea that there is a certain archetypical hero myth which informs most human stories. The hero travels a very specific path. From ordinary beginnings he receives a “call to adventure”, travels a “road of trials” and achieves a goal or “boon” before returning to the ordinary world again. Campbell’s “monomyth” is apparent in many religious stories, from the ancient Egyptian myths of Isis and Osiris, through Jesus and right up to Luke Skywalker in the present day. As a result of this thematic unity, we still see what appear to be religious motifs arising in popular culture – a film with similar themes to Transformers: The Movie comes out at least once a week (albeit usually with fewer giant transforming robots in). The apparent religious undertones (the Christ-like Prime, dying for humanity; the god-like Unicron, “baptising” Megatron to give him a new and better life in servitude; the “Heaven” of Cybertron, only attainable after great struggle) are not there because the film is based on Christianity, but because both Transformers and Christians share a common mythological archetype. Its origins are lost in the mists of prehistory, in Freudian psychology and in the endless game of Chinese Whispers which transmits human culture, but we can see its footprints in Transformers, in Christianity, in Ancient Greece, in Babylonian beliefs, in folk-tales, in fairy stories and even in modern biographies. Stories of Jesus are just as much products of this universal human story as any other myth, and the sooner it is realised that Optimus Prime has as much right to our worship as Christ, the better for everyone.
I’ve got little to write about today, so instead of ranting about theology, here are the top three things in my current List Of Things Pissing Me Off:
3. Charity Muggers. They’ve been hitting the road I work on with a vengance this week, and they bug me. I have no objection to donating to charity, I do so regularly and generously, but “chuggers” are not the way to go about winning converts. When I’m approached by some crusty student wearing a “Save The Halibut” jacket, I have to control an urge to hit them. Mostly, it’s caused by the fact that they’re not volunteers (although they’d love you to believe that they are), they in fact work for marketing companies whose clients (the Save The Halibut Foundation) pay them a substantial fee for their work. Since the money I give to Save The Halibut actually goes into the pockets of these naive marketeers (who are no doubt being duped into thinking they’re “really making a difference, man”), they are in effect beggars, aggressive ones. I don’t give money to beggars who block my path and demand my cash, so why the hell should I hand over a wodge of my hard-earned just because they’re wearing a luminous jacket and have a Direct Debit form?
2. A certain surveyor in Birmingham, who still, after two years, can’t use the mapping system we sold them. Bit of a personal bugbear, this one, but still, they’re really stressing me out with their constant whinging.
1. People who use the word “pacifically” when they mean “specifically”. I heard some political commentator do this on the radio this morning, and I nearly threw the set across the room. They mean completely different things! “Pacifically” = in a peaceful manner. “Specifically” = distinct from others. Buy a fucking dictionary, you moron!
Ahem. Rant ends. Thanks for listening. Normal service will resume tomorrow.
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