A weakening US economy is taking a small swipe at American vanity.

But analysts said the outlook for breast implants was not that bad.

"It's one of the last things to get hit when the economy turns."

Cosmetic procedures decline as economy weakens

A little something for Huckabee ...

A skittish kitten that scampered out of its carrier on a subway platform has been found after 25 days in the underground tunnels.

Transit workers tracked down 6-month old Georgia under midtown Manhattan Saturday. Police reunited her with owner Ashley Phillips, a 24-year-old Bronx librarian.

After hearing that the black cat might have been spotted below Lexington Avenue and East 55th Street, track workers Mark Dalessio and Efrain LaPorte went through the area making "meow" sounds.

Georgia responded, and they found her cowering in a drain between two tracks.

Georgia had lost some weight and scratched her nose but was otherwise unhurt. She had disappeared while Phillips was bringing her home from a veterinarian visit last month.

Runaway kitten found after weeks in New York City subway

No other book covers this vital subject in such a comprehensive and understandable fashion.

Lameness

7 is the new 8.

The new "8" -- the medically suggested definition for abnormally early breast development -- is 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

"Over the course of a few decades, the childhoods of US girls have been significantly shortened."

"They're not even playing Monopoly yet. They're still playing Candyland."

Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected

Have you seen Muir Woods?

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness. Likewise many of nature’s five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and cornfields. In the settlement and civilization of the country, bread more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the blindness of hunger, the early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded God’s trees as only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get rid of. Accordingly, with no eye to the future, these pious destroyers waged interminable forest wars; chips flew thick and fast; trees in their beauty fell crashing by millions, smashed to confusion, and the smoke of their burning has been rising to heaven more than two hundred years. After the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had been mostly cleared and scorched into melancholy ruins, the overflowing multitude of bread and money seekers poured over the Alleghanies into the fertile middle West, spreading ruthless devastation ever wider and farther over the rich valley of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy pine region about the Great Lakes. Thence still westward the invading horde of destroyers called settlers made its fiery way over the broad Rocky Mountains, felling and burning more fiercely than ever, until at last it has reached the wild side of the continent, and entered the last of the great aboriginal forests on the shores of the Pacific.

...

There will be a period of indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, who are as unconscionable and enterprising as Satan. But light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain.

This essay appears in The American Idea. For further reading, consider Cimbing the Redwoods, by Richard Preston, from a February 2005 issue of The New Yorker:

About ninety thousand acres of old-growth redwoods have remained intact, in patches of protected land. The remaining scraps of the primeval redwood-forest canopy are like three or four fragments of a rose window in a cathedral, and the rest of the window has been smashed and swept away. "Oh, man, the trees that were lost here," Sillett said to me one day as we were driving through the suburbs of Arcata. "This was the most beautiful forest on the planet, and it's almost totally gone. This is such a sore point."

You might also consider The Idols of Environmentalism:

Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs. ... it seems to be largely responsible for the destruction of the natural world ... it has the strong tendency to reduce the human beings inhabiting it to two functions, working and consuming. It tends to hollow us out.

The American Forests | John Muir | August 1897 | The Atlantic

Says Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal:

"A lot of people who are not conventional are not serious. But the real breakthroughs in science are made by serious thinkers who are willing to work on research areas that people think are too controversial or too implausible."

Meet Aubrey de Grey:

"I was appalled. Utterly appalled. I began to realize the profound difference of motivation and mind-set between scientists on the one hand and technologists and engineers on the other hand."

de Gray is the founder of The Methuselah Foundation and author of Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.

He says:

Try something and if it doesn't work, try something else. Science doesn't pave the way for engineering, it's the other way around.

... bringing pragmatism to biology ...

With adequate funding, de Grey thinks scientists may, within a decade, triple the remaining life span of late-middle-age mice. The day this announcement is made, he believes, the news will hit people like a brick as they realize that their cells could be next. He speculates people will start abandoning risky jobs, such as being police officers, or soldiers.

When he talks about people soon putting a higher premium on health than wealth, he twirls the ends of his mustache back behind his ears, murmuring, "So many women, so much time."

See also, Our Biotech Future, by Freeman Dyson. And recall Eric Schmidt:

Failure is an essential part of the process. "The way you say this is: 'Please fail very quickly -- so that you can try again'."

Finally, check out Tom Friedman:

The technologies we need ... are already here. The only thing we have a shortage of now are leaders with the imagination and will ...

The Invincible Man

This story is over a year old, but for some reason the New Yorker decided to mention it last week. I now pass it along to you.

Igbal Asghar reached across the counter at Super Halal Meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer's second order, goat meat.

When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer's severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store's center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was "not a terrorist." Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand "for Allah."

If you are in the general area, I recommend Kabob Palace in Crystal City. I have eaten there more than once and have never seen anyone leave the restaurant without their left hand. Or their right hand, for that matter.

Customer at Market in Springfield Cuts Off His Hand

"It's basically a way to make socially acceptable something we all kind of know is wrong."

It's about desire -- how much we are willing to deceive ourselves in the reckless pursuit of something forbidden.

The beauty of the five-second rule is that it is utterly pliable and that it is not about food so much as it is about yearning and disgust and gastronomic history and evolutionary wiring and the implicit social contract we make when we break (and drop) bread with other human beings.

See also another recent post about disgust.

How Soon, and How Often?

From the starred review at Publishers Weekly:

"The social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific," Gawande writes —— a conclusion that could serve as a thumbnail summary of his entire output.

For a recent discussion with the author, check out this podcast from Scientific American's Science Talk, a weekly program which explores the latest developments in science and technology through interviews with leading scientists and journalists.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

If you enjoyed using the Gapminder web site when it was recommended here back in September, or again last month, you'll be interested to know that a fascinating presentation by Hans Rosling, from TED 2006, is now available online.

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world” using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling’s hands, global trends — life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates — become clear, intuitive and even playful.

Debunking third-world myths | Hans Rosling on TED Talks