Muddle

Fresh tofu in Japan is far better than it is anywhere else, and the tofu in Kyoto is generally held to be the best in the country.

A friend of mine said the other day that Japanese cuisine was vegetarian pre-Tokugawa. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but as it turns out, during the Kamakura period, which was highly influenced by assimiliation of Buddhist practices, the vegetarian diet prevailed. Anyway, the tofu in Japan is genuinely amazing. Just last night I had Okonomiyaki with tofu and Maitake mushrooms at a place called Minato-ya in Ako city. Just perfect—and not that hard to make at home yourself.

Happy International Women's Day

The Saddest Movie in the World (starring Ricky Schroeder) has been used to make people cry in scientific studies, as we recently discussed, and therunner-up  sad movie starred a famous animated deer. The scientific list of saddest (and most amusing  , and scariest  , and most disgusting  ) is now 16 years old, so Slate wants to update it. Their current suggestions to make people cry are these scenes from Finding Nemo  , Dancer in the Dark  , and Mystic River  , but they are looking for others. Perhaps from the AV Club’s films too disturbing to watch twice? [Warning: sad scenes are sad, gross scenes gross, scary scenes scary, and the funny one amusingish]

and

First 15 minutes of Up, no question.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:11 PM on August 1 [102 favorites +] [!]

Sometimes just hearing the music gets me going…

MetaFilter Memories

a small project to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the launch of MetaFilter by asking members of the site to share stories of how they came across the community and their favorite memories.

Speculation over at Metafilter suggests that the USPS is in a downward spiral. Unfortunate, because I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them. That said, Google may have it’s sights on the post.

The Other Other #166: One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

“Documentary tells the story of Dick Proenneke who, in the late 1960s, built his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness.” (Color, 57mins)

It’s been on metafilter at least three times.

From the Creators of Wallace and Gromit (nearly 20 years before it's inception, that is) comes "The Trapdoor"

The world of The Trap Door is completely inhabited by monsters, and almost all the show takes place in the monsters’ castle, and especially the pantry or cellar where Berk, the castle servant and central character of the show, resides. Beneath the castle are a series of dark and mysterious caverns inhabited by all manner of “horrible things”, accessible by the eponymous trap door in the bowels of the castle.

The Best of Google Video

If you haven’t already heard, Google Video is dead. Metafilter put a list of some of the best videos together (from their archives) and uploaded them to the archive project so they wouldn’t be deleted. Awesome!

Japan's Nuclear Crisis Keeps Going

This is a fantastic compilation of news reports on the Fukushima Reactor situation. Pretty freaky stuff.

I was talking to my friend Laura the other day about the water they pump into the reactor. Apparently, sea water, which is what they used in this situation, has high levels of Boron which soaks up excess electrons that emit from radioactive elements. Dope science.

The negatives: Apparantly, being poor/uneducated, adverse psychosocial experiences in childhood, peer rejection, childhood trauma, and having experienced childhood adversity, high fat diet, all predict higher levels of inflammation. Further more, prenatal exposure to inflammation in the womb can cause brain damage in mice, and a host of negative responses in the human infant. 

The good news: Having positive social support, exercise, anti-inflammatory components in nutritious food, yoga, and mind body awareness all seem to reduce these inflammatory markers. The ease with which one can take a blood test and see how the body is responding to environmental factors, lifestyle changes, and social support may open up new doors in understanding the environmental origins of many common chronic conditions, as well as being able to measure how we can create positive environments and supports that will directly reduce such inflammation. Of course, pharma is hoping we choose NSAIDs.

The research also has found that inflammation seems to be a common link between obesity, heart disease, neuroinflammation, diabetese, PTSD, liver disorders, HPA axis dysregulation, irritable bowel syndrome and mental illness. Finding ways to reduce or reverse the inflammatory process before drugs are necessary may be more easy to measure now than ever before (although we are just now at the beginnings of studying how inflammation fits into such a multi faceted process.)

We’ve been hearing for years that things like exercise, getting sun, hanging out with people and talking, and diet all put you in a better mood and contribute to health later in life—this just seems like an extension of that ideal into psychology/neurology.

More from Metafilter.