Peeking into the rock

operatic: thanks to personhead lpetrazickis I have got Opera to look better. It wasn't just a matter of "how pretty will this be?" but "can I stand to read my webmail?" It doesn't seem to do Popcap, but maybe that's just as well. Fortunately, the widgets (esp. games) that clever people have made for Opera are only mildly amusing, not addictive.
( TMI for the diabetic thing )
Science News reports that osteocalcin, a much-studied but little-understood protein produced by the bone-building osteoblast cells, appears to correlate strongly with type 2 diabetes. As in, mice engineered to have extra osteocalcin avoid obesity and insulin problems even when they're fed too much, and mice engineered to lack osteocalcin became obese, had less insulin in their blood, and their cells were resistant to insulin. Mice with more osteocalcin have more, and more productive, insulin-producing cells. They're proposing that feeding people osteocalcin might help the metabolic syndrome.

Meanwhile, polycarbonate plastics -- Nalgene, anyone? -- leach a substance known as bisphenolA(BPA) into the food and water contained in them, and this stuff reprograms the genes of infant mice. This time they didn't expose the mice to many times more than people are expected to get. Instead, the exposure was brief and the level of BPA in the mice's organs was lower than the levels measured in adults right now. This is after soft plastics have already been found to leach nastiness into food, especially when heated in the microwave. Heat your food on ceramic plates, covered with ceramic or glass bowls, okay?

So, my suggestion: whatever the day care people say, send your children's food in steel and glass. (hmm. I'm thinking about how to replace all that plastic)

Oh, and you know teflon? I've never trusted it, ever, because when you look at old teflon pans there's always scratches and holes in the surface, and where did that teflon go? Into your food. So, here it is: the teflon is, in fact, breaking down in your body into things that will cause problems.