Buy One / Get One Free .... is evil.

In preparation for our upcoming beach trip, I unknowingly ventured into the land of "buy one/get one free" at my local grocer.  I went there to buy a ham to bake for good ole ham sandwich making at the beach.  It all started innocently enough, I got a bottle of lemon pepper spice for half off (you can buy one, not two, and get half off during buy one / get one free events at my local grocer).   I love that about them.  What I don't love is that they put those buy one / get one free deals right by the front door where I have to pass them to buy my intended target.  I was fine at first, resisting everything left and right, until I ran across the frosted strawberry pop tarts.  That's where trouble wore me down and followed me home. 

What?  Like 3 pop tarts for dinner is a bad bad thing?  It's not like I ate three pop tarts in addition to dinner.  My dinner consisted only of three pop tarts.  Okay fine, eating three pop tarts for dinner, is a bad bad thing, no matter what.  My choices are frequently so bad in fact, that I decided to finally give my inner voice room to talk.  Fortuntately for it, I wasn't trying to memorize seven or more numbers when it was trying to tell me how bad making a meal out of 3 pop tarts is for me.  If I had been I may have had a few more pop tarts.

Just so you know that I'm not out in left field with that seven number reference, I will rewind a bit and tell you that I have been listening to hours upon hours of RADIO LAB and have learned some very juicy scientific tidbits.  One bit of information which recently caught my attention ... was mentioned in the program related to memory.  Keep in mind, I inevitably miss pieces of these podcasts because my mind wanders off, and I have yet to find the rewind button on my IPOD.  Soooooooooo, I was listening to this podcast about memory, and they mentioned somewhere within it that humans can easily retain about 7 digits plus or minus one ... but anything beyond that range isn't as prevalant unless achieved by lots of practice.  With this in mind a group of scientific people decided to conduct a study ... they assigned certain students to remember 7 digits and walk a short way down a hallway to the next room where they would tell the person waiting there what those 7 digits were.  They assigned other students to remember only 2 digits and walk a short way down a hallway to the next  room where they would tell the person waiting there what those 2 digits were.  During the short walk both sets of students, those assigned to memorize 7 digits, and those assigned to memorize 2 digits .... were met in the hallway before they reached the next room by a young woman who offered them a snack for participating in the study.  The young woman offered them a choice of an ooey gooey piece of chocolate cake or a fruit salad.  They found that the overwhelming majority of students who were to remember 2 digits chose the fruit salad, and that the overwhelming majority of students who were to remember 7 digits chose the ooey goody piece of chocolate cake.  The resulting theory ... when humans are "stressing" their brains they don't have as much rational brain left to use so they revert to their emotional brain.

Ding ding ding ... it is in our heads, but not in our imaginations, that we overindulge and make very poor choices when we are overtaxing our rational brains.  I can't say I was mentally overtaxed when I bought those pop tarts -- that was nothing but temptation (look ... you love pop tarts ... look, they are on sale ... look ... they have one box of strawberry frosted pop tarts left ... you know they are your favorite ... go ahead buy them, you hardly ever buy them).  Temptation won in spite of my stress free state of mind.  However, there are too many times at work when my rational side has been beleaguered by stress and I make very poor choices.  So, very recently, while I was in a very stress free state of mind, and nobody was asking me to memorize 7 digits, I made the conscious decision to start a food diary in an effort to combat the choices instigated by stress.  I'm not on a diet, I'm on a mission to have glowing skin and a sharper than sharp brain.  I want to eat better for my overall well being.  Although I am only in day two of the food diary, and although the food diary hasn't stopped every bad choice, I can already see that it is going to prove itself as a serious opponent when it faces off with BUY ONE // GET ONE FREE.

Disclaimer:  Sorry for any typos, bad grammar, blah blah blah.  I'm sleepy.

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I was held hostage and liked it.

As I was about to pull into the Lowe's parking lot last evening to shop for some light bulbs and garden stuff, I made the mistake of turning on the radio and punching in my favorite station -- NPR -- national public radio.  Don't roll your eyes at me you young whippersnappers, I liked NPR when I was a toddler so this has nothing to do with me being old (even if I was, what's it to ya?), it has everything to do with me being a geek.  As I parked the car, a voice on the radio caught my attention.  It was some guy INCREDUOUSLY questioning another guy as to why he kept "something" in his garage, but he didn't say what that something was (needless to say I was a few minutes late to the conversation).  The other guy said something like ... "Because I thought it would be the last place anyone would think to look for it."  Of course, I was hooked from that moment until the next hour .... voluntarily held hostage in my car by RadioLab on NPR.  I just had to know what that man was keeping in his garage, that other people might want.  I saw the sun fade in my rear view mirror and the moon rise in front of me, and I realized time was getting away from me, but I truly could not leave the car or those soothing voices enlightening me about cells of all things.  Who knew cells were so fascinating?  Who was the guy keeping cells in his garage?  Why, it was Leonard Hayflick, of course, a guy I had never heard of, but apparently someone who in his younger days busted the chops of the established cell experts who touted the belief that cells are immortal in the right environment.  Hayflick discovered that cells are not immortal in that sense, and his discovery is now known as the Hayflick 50 or the Hayflick limit.  The really freaky thing is that cells not only count to 50 (and then expire), but if you freeze them in a suspended state and later unfreeze them, they will start counting from where they left off.  No crap, they really will.  If they were on number 16, they will pick up on number 17, count until it reaches 50 and expire!  That's woooo woooooo stuff there dudes ... and I was totally fascinated by that.  What's all that got to do with anything?  Well, the whole show which I gather was on aging, dying, mortality, immortality, etc. featured different people, including structural biologist Cynthia Kenyon who found a way to lengthen the life of a worm from 14 days to 28 days.  (Note:  She has since expanded their life span by six fold (125 days!)  Move over Ponce de Leon, Cynthia Kenyon is on the scene!  Isn't it slightly ironic that Ponce de Leon was searching for the Fountain of Youth and discovered Florida?  That strikes me as funny given Florida's current elderly population.  Sorry, getting back to Cynthia Kenyon's research into longevity (or as I like to call it the "fountain of youth") on those worms.  Her tinkering of one gene (get that ONE gene) in those worms, didn't just result in a longer "aged" life for them, the worms were kicking life in the pants almost until the time they ... ahem ... expired.  No wheelchairs need for them!

Okay, okay, I know some of you are now squirming in your seats about the morality of what this could potentially mean in the future.  At least for now, you can put your worries in your pocket,  because just as in life ... the debate about the consequences of a longer life span made up the rest of the show, and it too was interesting, but not nearly as exciting and fascinating as the quest to get there!

I won't pretend to be an expert and throw out my opinion on all that business above or the morality of some of it, but I will weigh in on those RadioLab guys who were the hosts of that program.  They grabbed me by the collar of my mind, expanded it a wee bit and made me like being taken hostage in my own car.  It was a perfectly good way to wile away an hour of my sweet time.  I watched the sun set, the moon rise, felt the spring breeze blow through the car window, and was pleasantly  entertained.  I love the imagination you have to use with radio!

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