Freeday 30 April 1999

Pic of the day: The phytoestrogens strike again!
Did y'all know that some plants contain hormone-like chemicals? For instance, soy protein contains small amount of phytoestrogens, molecules that mimick female sex hormones. When ingested in large enough quantities by men, they will lead to some breast development and widening of hips and thighs... There are also phytoestrogens in beer. Generally they're considered healthy.

I hope you appreciate the effort I've put into finding a perspective and lighting that would make me look somewhat continental. True, my formative years left me with somewhat larger hips (and narrower shoulders) than the average viking. But as an adult my fat distribution has been classical male, with virtually all my fat reserves around my stomach and little on my thighs and backside. (So, after I grew up, men don't come on to me unless I have a cell phone in my shirt pocket.) As most of you have no doubt noticed, the classical female fat distribution is different, with a goodly storage of calories on the thighs, hips and rear. This is not only decorative; it's also inherently more healthy, for some obscure reason. The lower-body fat tends to stay put except when needed for reproduction, whereas the upper-body fat easily goes into and out of the bloodstream, contributing to the earlier demise of your average male.

My thanks to famed biologist Desmond Morris, whose books I've read from the onset of puberty, for pointing out that female hips are not just on average larger; but that they, more significantly, grow larger the further down you look, rather than narrow down again like ours. This useful piece of information makes it so much easier to gender identificate a person when only their rear is visible, always a useful thing. You wouldn't like to address them with an improper honorific, after all.
(Afraid I can't illustrate this with suitable .jpg, since my female friends generally object to having their hips displayed on the Internet, for some reason. Beats me. So use Altavista or something.)

The voices in my head say this is quite enough on that topic, so onward to other fun. I don't know how it is in the rest of the world, but at least in large cities in Norway the night between April and May is traditionally rather rough. There is a tradition of fringe political violence, presumably connected to the political holiness of May 1st (which is like the Christmas and Easter of socialism). Combine this with the tradition of senseless drinking by the russ (I've mentioned those before, the ones who are about to leave high school or other pre-university education). In addition to the fights, which usually end before someone gets critically hurt, there's also the drunken speeding. So, there's a good chance that people are going to be hurt, perhaps killed, tonight. More than usual, I mean. More than usual for a Freeeday, even.
That's just sad. Not all traditions are good traditions.

It may or may not make things better that from this year on, April 30 is the deadline for the tax return form for common people. Even though there is nothing to lose by posting it a week or three before, it would be typical if most people go to deliver it just before midnight. It may be that the crowds of stressed wage earners will drown out the troublemakers, but I'm not sure that will succeed in the traffic. Time will show.