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The Amazonian Yanomami Indians famously manage on only 50 mg (1 mmol) of sodium chloride per day, while in more developed societies, we struggle to keep our average intake below 100 times that level.

The post The perils of salt appeared first on OUPblog.

Hypertension (or high blood pressure) is a common condition worldwide, and is known to be one of the most important risk factors for strokes, and heart attacks. It is considered to affect almost a third of all adults over the age of 18.

The post Hypertension: more fatal than essential appeared first on OUPblog.

For the Mayans, 2012 is the end of their calendar… and maybe the end of the world. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard apocalyptic predictions throughout much of my life. Remember the millennium? Y2K? The Great Zombies Uprising?

Well, whatever you believe… apocalypse or not… there’s no harm in making sure you’re all set in case the worst happens. Isn’t the Boy Scouts’ motto “Always Be Prepared”? 

SALT! I cannot impress upon you how important salt is. Okay, so maybe your doctor says it’s giving you high blood pressure right now. But that’s because you’re using too much of it (salt is already in most foods, therefore it’s not necessary to add more).

Fact is, salt is actually vital for you. Salt regulates the water in your body. A sodium deficiency can lead to seizures; even cause you to fall into a coma.  

Image via Wikipedia

Salt’s even been used in place of currency. In fact, the word “salary” comes from the word salt. And perhaps you’ve heard the saying “worth his weight in salt”. Yep. Salt was a real comparison of worth because of its high value.

One of the main health necessities of salt is due to its iodine. Years back they started putting iodine in salt, a small but essential amount that keeps us from Iodine Deficiency. This lack of iodine is pretty serious. It can lead to mental retardation. (Worldwide, Iodine Deficiency effect 2 billion people)

Image via Wikipedia

Salt is a great preservative. Once we lose electricity, we lose refrigeration. Salt may be the only way you will be able to keep your meats for any length of time.

Plus, rumor has it salt can help you fight off demons. If the religious nuts are right and the apocalypse comes by way of Lucifer, than that’s just one more reason why you should have plenty of salt on hand.

So, bottom line: Salt is cheap. If you’re smart, you’ll start stocking up your cupboards now with this white, grainy gold.

Image via Wikipedia

Next weekend Scott Westerfeld and yours truly will be guests of honour at the 2008 High Voltage ConFusion science fiction convention. It’s our very first time being guests of honour and we are stoked. TOTALLY stoked. In fact I’m so very stoked I’m thinking of celebrating with the purchase of a new dress. Surely, being guest of honour requires new clothes, right? I gotta look pretty, don’t I? If you have an opinion on this Very Important Matter please to express it in the poll to your right.

I’m thinking this one, though with black gloves not white:

Vivienne Westwood’s Watteau ball gown

Here’s Scott and mine’s schedule. Because we are joint guests of honour we are doing everything together:

FRIDAY 18 JANUARY:

1900 Den 1 Interview: Author GoHs by John Scalzi
Tee hee! Mr Scalzi will ask us questions and we will plead the fifth and get away with it because we know where he buried the bodies. I suspect zombies will be mentioned.

2000 Salon FGH Opening Ceremonies
We will say a few words but there won’t be an actual speech speech. Some of my words will be “quokka”, “zombie”, and “oscillate”, or maybe not. Depends.

2100 Salon FGH Dessert Reception
Where we eat dessert and natter with folks what want to natter.

2200 Den 1 Originality is Overrated
There’s this idea that writers work entirely alone and create their work out of whole cloth. That’s rubbish. If a work were wholly original no one would be able to read it. All writers are influenced by those who came before them. Most writers talk to other writers. Many are in writers’ groups and even those that aren’t frequently read and comment on each other’s work. Let’s talk about the influence and community that writers share. Even when they don’t know each other. Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld (M), Patrick Nielsen Hayden, John Scalzi, Patrick Rothfuss and Doselle Young.

I confess that I wrote this description on account of it’s something that drives me crazy and I’m looking forward to talking about it with such esteemed and smart companions. Especially Doselle. Everything is better if Doselle is involved.

SATURDAY 19 JANUARY:

1100 Den 1 Fantastic Sports
Organized sports are a vital part almost every culture on the globe. But sf and fantasy novels tend to overlook this key aspect of world-building. We examine what sports are and what they tell us about a culture, and dig up some good examples in sf and fantasy. Justine Larbalestier (M), Scott Westerfeld, Steve Ainsworth, Dave Klecha and Catherine Shaffer.

Mmmm . . . sport. If I weren’t moderator I would just spend the session teaching USians cricket.

1300 Salon G Juvenilia
Writers dust off the storage trunks, turn off the shame meter, and read from their 5th- through 12th-grade works of unalloyed proto-genius. A great way for young writers in the audience to feel much better about their own efforts. Justine Larbalestier (M), Scott Westerfeld, Merrie Haskell, K. Tempest Bradford and Marcy Italiano.

I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that Scalzi is not on this panel. Laughing at his early writing efforts was the whole reason I agreed to go to ConFusion!

1400 Den 1 SF Is Not Dead
More sf is written and consumed these days than every before, in the form of manga, video games, rpgs, and YA lit. Yet our beloved field constantly bemoans its own demise, while ignoring those 100,000 crazy kids down the road at Comicon. How do we connect these two worlds of sf? Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld (M), Anne Harris, Jim Frenkel and Peter Halasz.

Because me and Scott are sick to death of hearing the folks in the old sf people’s home whingeing about the death of sf. It ain’t dead! It’s doing just fine, thanks.

1500 Den 1 Golden Age of Young Adult Lit
Some argue that the YA books being published now are some of the best the field has ever seen. There are more of them, the quality is better, and the authors are being paid more. Is now the Golden Age of Young Adult Literature? And if so what does that mean for the next generation of readers? Justine Larbalestier (M), Scott Westerfeld, Steve Climer, Suzanne Church and Peter Halasz.

I think it is. I also think it’s just going to get better and better and better.

1700 All-Author Autographing Session
If you have books you want strange author types to scribble on here’s your chance.

2100 Concierge Literary Beer
The only thing we’re doing that you have to sign up for. It’ll be me and Scott sitting around with a smallish group of interested folks and answering their questions while we all drink beer (or water or whatever you wish to drink. I wish to drink Krug—I hope the ConCom is on top of that!).

SUNDAY 20 JANUARY:

1100 Salon H Gluten-Free Fantasy
Most medieval cultures didn’t have chainmail, swords, horses, or wheat. Yet the overwhelming majority of medieval cultures in fantasy do. What do we stand to gain by breaking the bonds of Europe on our collective imagination? And what’s so scary about bolas, sled-dogs, and rice? Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld, John Scalzi, Karl Schroeder, Jim Frenkel.

This panel is also something me and Scott came up with. It has a backstory. Way back in the dark ages we were on a panel together about fantasy where we panelists suggested that there were other settings for high fantasy other than mediaeval Europe. Scott went as far as to say that wheat is not essential to high fantasy.

The audience turned on him. “We LOVE wheat!” they proclaimed. “We hate fantasy that isn’t set in mediaevel Europe. We hate wanky literary fantasy. In fact, we hate you writers on the panel who are trying to take away our wheat!”

Scalzi was in the audience along with the wonderful Karen Meisner and they both say it was one of the most extraordinary things they have ever seen. Karen even sent Scott a Canadian license plate wth a beautiful picture of wheat on it. Scott still contends that we were caught in the wave of an Atkin’s diet backlash.

Here’s the con’s full schedule.

Hope to see some of you there! I mean if this wussy Aussie girl can brave the dead of winter in Detroit. Surely some of you can?

I was meant to be on NPR's TALK OF THE NATION tomorrow. But their schedules have shifted and I'll be on the radio this afternoon -- Wednesday the 8th of August. I think that http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5
is their website. I'll be on towards the end of the second hour (the hour that some stations don't get).

John Scalzi writes wisely, as usual, over at his blog about Stardust and how he thinks it'll do:
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/2007/08/07/stardusts_chances.html
and I couldn't see anything there to disagree with.

I have no doubt at all that Stardust will do brilliantly around the world, rock out on DVD, and become one of those films that is beloved. But how it will do this weekend... ah, that's a mystery. I was fascinated by this article about success and failure -- and, more importantly, the perception of success and failure -- in movie box office:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/hollywood-where-ignoran_b_59464.html
(link via.)

I remember the first time I went to Hollywood, with Terry Pratchett, in 1992 I learned that you could frame any conversation about something you wanted to do in a plot that Hollywood Execs didn't understand or had a problem with if you referred to another movie that they'd seen. ("So why don't they...?" "Because they forget about it, um -- just like at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK." "Oh. Got it.") And it was useful for talking about the feel of things -- you simply positioned what you were talking about against or with other films.

By 1996, when I went back to Hollywood, something had changed. I remember naming a movie in one of those conversations -- talking about look and feel or about lighting or about something like that -- and having the Exec look at me as if I had something unpleasant on my shoe, and he said, simply, "But that film didn't make any money." He couldn't understand why I would even have brought it up.

...

Over on Charles Vess's blog you can see a photo of us at the end of the premiere, me in a tuxedo and him not, because he forgot his shirt studs.

The birdchick does a honey from our hives taste test over at http://www.birdchick.com/2007/08/go-see-stardust-and-little-about-our.html

I realize this topic is of no interest to most of you, so I shall probably make this my last post on the matter--but for those who do care, I have this little speech to make:

I was a bit discouraged reading all the commentators on Scalzi's blog who are saying: I would vote for you, but, though I qualify, I never bothered to join SFWA.

Back when I first qualified, I wasn't going to join SFWA either, but then a very wise gentleman (Paul Park) told me I should, noting that then I could nominate for the Nebulas, and would get an invitation to the SFWA Editors reception held every October. Of course, you can go to the reception without being a member of SFWA, but receptions are expensive things, and it seemed to me that rather than freeloading year after a year, I should be chipping in somehow. And having the option to nominate for the Nebulas is always nice. I don't nominate often, but when I do, it's heartfelt.

So I joined SFWA, expecting to get those advantages, but none other. Alas, SFWA didn't seem to have any other relevance to me. However, those advantages mentioned above aside, it also seemed to me that SFWA, for better or worse, is the professional Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers organization, and being a professional fantasy writer, I should support them for that reason alone.

Now I'm glad I did join SFWA, and I can't help but wish that others had done so as well, rather than remaining aloof. The only chance of change is from within.

Of course, until now, I didn't try to do much to change from within, but it's hard to muster up a solo effort. Now that a movement is under way, I'm delighted to be able to participate.

And I urge those of you who can qualify but haven't, and who want to see change, to get your paperwork in the mail ASAP and join the Revolution!

Back to regularly scheduled programming.

If you are a member of SFWA, please read this.

If you are not a member of SFWA, and yet qualify for membership, please read the above, and consider becoming a member post haste, so you can vote in the upcoming officers' election.

If you are not a member of SFWA, and have no idea what I'm talking about--never mind. In this case, Ignorance truly is bliss.