Owens Rhetoric

Nutritious

I got to thinking today about nutrition. I reckon that nutrition, as I am thinking of it, is the process of putting things into our bellies—and thus permeating our cells, organs, and inside-eco-systems—with stuff from outside. Along with the (what I am positive will forever remain correct) advice to eat a lot of different colors as much as possible, I figured that our analysis of eating is destined to be based upon a balance (like colors) of four varyingly important themes: our humanity, our gender, our great grandparents, and our selves.

I have two unoriginal hunches that, together, might could be a book that I’m not going to write (feel free to mention me in the dedication, budding nutrition PhD): one, we need to pay attention to individual genetics, and development, when considering dietary needs; two, those elements (genes and individual) need to be considered fairly equally with the more universal elements of species and gender.

There are things we should or should not eat, and ways we should prepare or not prepare those things. Maybe eat raw shark, maybe eat cooked shark. Maybe eat shark that has been buried for a year to rot beneath sand.

I got to thinking that we probably have positive or negative reactions to foods based on what we’re used to eating and what our family tree was used to eating. Clearly our human species has some preferred intake to providing energy and functionality. Our gender-based hormones have their own martian and venetian desires.

In my armchair nutritionist world, though, I have heard less about my body’s reaction to sushi based on my English/Scotch/Irish heritage. I have heard similarly little about that reaction based upon my eager consumption over the past 10 years of deliciously red tuna and steak…in other words, have I gotten my body adjusted to raw meat?

My little brother went to Russia once and had no beef for a summer. A burger would have made him ralph had he welcomed himself back with angus. Our individual habits and actions inform our appetites…Discovery Network teaches me this with the lizard penis eating, get over it it’s just your mind telling you it’s gross, travel to a new culture, shows. Beyond psychology, my brother’s post-Russia tummy cautions confirm something more gastronomical to our individual situations. Where we are, and who we are, means something when we bite.

My family has long enjoyed slow smoked pig. We’re from eastern North Carolina, and southern Virginia. My early American kin ate pigs, usually preserved to last a good spell. I bet that my genes somehow anticipate that pork, and use it to their advantage. I have absolutely no evidence or scientific reason for so betting…but it just makes sense.

Anyway—the family (and I mean deep-down, ancestor layers that give our genes meaning), and our personal places and times probably go a long way in telling our bodies how to react to what we eat. I am thinking, though, that those factors, along with our human and gender needs, have different weights in each person.

Like, my body might react especially to the groove I’ve been in lately. My friend’s body might be more geared to long-term genetic needs. Thus, a diet based on Paleolithic Man might be good for so and so with a nutritious system that reacts to those two factors (ancestry and gender). My hunch, though, is that we can never really be sure which of those four general factors (species, gender, ancestry/genetics, and individual) are most relevant to our bodies at a given time. Perhaps my individual body-eco-system can overcome its anglo-saxon genetic disposition and adapt well to a sushi-heavy intake. Further, perhaps that adaption is because of changes that occur in my body during my life, or perhaps it is because of a larger , human species reaction to sushi. I don’t know. The hunch is simply that these different factors all have some say toward whether our cells smile or frown when they meet the newcomers we bring to the party.

Side Note to our Polygyny Debate:

The Economist has an article this week about the inter-relation between lifespan and monogamy. Apparently there is new scientific research to suggest that male members of monogamous species outlive their male counterparts from polygynous species. Adds an interesting dimension to our earlier debate about the causes behind human societies’ universal condemnation of polygamy! Here are excerpts:

In the cause of equal rights, feminists have had much to complain about. But one striking piece of inequality has been conveniently overlooked: lifespan. In this area, women have the upper hand. All round the world, they live longer than men. Why they should do so is not immediately obvious. But the same is true in many other species. From lions to antelope and from sea lions to deer, males, for some reason, simply can’t go the distance.

One theory is that males must compete for female attention. That means evolution is busy selecting for antlers, aggression and alloy wheels in males, at the expense of longevity. Females are not subject to such pressures. If this theory is correct, the effect will be especially noticeable in those species where males compete for the attention of lots of females. Conversely, it will be reduced or absent where they do not.

To test that idea, Tim Clutton-Brock of Cambridge University and Kavita Isvaran of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru decided to compare monogamous and polygynous species (in the latter, a male monopolises a number of females).

In 16 of the 19 polygynous species in their sample, males of all ages were much more likely to die during any given period than were females. Furthermore, the older they got, the bigger the mortality gap became. In other words, they aged faster. Males from monogamous species did not show these patterns.

Most students of ageing agree that an animal’s maximum lifespan is set by how long it can reasonably expect to escape predation, disease, accident and damaging aggression by others of its kind. If it will be killed quickly anyway, there is not much reason for evolution to divert scarce resources into keeping the machine in tip-top condition. Those resources should, instead, be devoted to reproduction. And the more threatening the outside world is, the shorter the maximum lifespan should be.

There is no reason why that logic should not work between the sexes as well as between species. And this is what Dr Clutton-Brock and Dr Isvaran seem to have found. The test is to identify a species that has made its environment so safe that most of its members die of old age, and see if the difference continues to exist. Fortunately, there is such a species: man.

Dr Clutton-Brock reckons that the sex difference in both human rates of ageing and in the usual age of death is an indicator that polygyny was the rule in humanity’s evolutionary past—as it still is, in some places. That may not please some feminists, but it could be the price women have paid for outliving their menfolk.

–excerpted from “Live fast, love hard, die young,” The Economist, Oct 18th 2007 ed.

More J. RBG Bits from 10/19/07

-On whether the government should regulate speech: The best way to fight hate speech is with good speech — not with repressing freedom of expression.

-On squabbles between the Court and Congress: We shouldn’t worry about them too much — they are ultimately healthy, and they are as old as the Republic! The venerable case of Marbury v. Madison is a perfect example: it was argued in 1801 but wasn’t decided until 1803. Why? Because Congress was angry at the Court and would not appropriate enough money to allow the Court to sit in the year 1802. The two branches have been at loggerheads since the very beginning.

-On Minnesota v. White, a case invalidating limits on the content of speech by judicial candidates in a contested election, which drew a strong Ginsburg dissent: RBG called this a “Gertrude Stein” case. G. Stein famously said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” RBG thinks the majority in White believed an election is an election is an election, and that’s just not the case. Judicial elections are a special animal and the state legislature has a right to treat them that way. The Justice noted, however, that although she thinks White is “quite wrong,” it is also quite narrow if read properly. In short, she said, “It is a wrong decision but it can be contained.”

Lily’s overall impressions of Justice Ginsburg (or her public persona, anyway): She has a reputation for being austere and/or severe, but I think that is just an overblown reaction to her natural reserve. She was serene, unhurried, and seemed unflappable. She was above all dignified. When someone asked her a question, she generally let the silence stretch for several seconds before answering; but then she would come out with an articulate, well-organized, and complex response. It was this practice, as much as anything, that I found personally educational — so often I find myself replying immediately to a question with a torrent of disorganized thoughts! I would like to be less eager to please in my responses, and better organized. For this concept alone, the conference was worth attending.

“Bush v. Gore Was In A Class Of One” – An Evening with Justice Ginsburg

This evening I had the opportunity to attend a dinner reception featuring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. During the course of a conversation moderated by Professor Suzanne Reynolds from Wake Forest Law School — which included time for Q&A with the audience — the Justice spoke with remarkable frankness about her life at the Court. Here are some of her most interesting points:

– On the shrinking docket of the Supreme Court (i.e. the Court is consenting to hear fewer and fewer cases each year): This is a good development. Having extra time to hone the opinions gives the Justices more time to achieve consensus on the cases they do hear. We can notice that the Court is not issuing the same number of confusingly split opinions that they once were, because they are taking more time to craft compromise language that enables everyone to get on board. The end result is less dissenting and concurring, and fewer instances where justices will write things like, I agree with Parts 1, 5, and 6 of the majority opinion but write separately to dissent as to part 2 and concur as to part 4.

– On the Supreme Court’s cert pool (i.e. why they choose to hear the cases they do): The Supreme Court has made a decision that it is not an error correction court. There are plenty of lower courts doing a fine job taking care of the everyday administration of justice in this country, and we do not need yet another layer of correction. Instead, the Court has chosen to prioritize conflict resolution. The justices think it is important to have the law be uniform across the country. So they are looking to grant certiorari on cases where the federal circuit courts have split with each other or split with the state courts.

– On Bush v. Gore and the politicizing of the Court: Bush v. Gore was completely unique – in a class of one, as she put it. It was an exercise in endurance because of its short time frame – cert was granted one day, briefs were due the next day, the following day was oral arguments, and the decision came out the day after that. It is a telling fact that, in the years since BvG, the Court has never once cited it. It is essentially limited to that particular situation and those particular facts. She thinks the Justices will not allow politics to be the basis of their decisions under normal circumstances. BvG was a special case. (Is this a tacit admission that it WAS a politically motivated decision? Lily couldn’t tell!)

– On Hillary Clinton being the first woman to mount a serious campaign for President: “Brava!”

– On Justice Scalia: He is one of her closest friends on the Court. The Ginsburg and Scalia families have a tradition of spending New Years together. The two Justices share a love of opera. She described J. Scalia as a “wonderful raconteur of stories and a great teller of jokes.”

–When asked what is the single biggest threat to the Rule of Law in our country, Justice Ginsburg replied immediately that it is fear — fear engendered by terrorism and the tragedies of 9/11. She said that if we allow this fear to condone unwarranted intrusions on civil liberties and (as she put it) “encourage the government to spy on us,” we will fundamentally change who we are as Americans and our enemies will have completely triumphed.

I am scheduled to attend a CLE featuring Justice RBG tomorrow, along with many female judges and justices from across the country. I’ll attempt to follow up here on OR with more details about what they have to say! Stay tuned!