Search Engine Gems (Fool’s Gold)

I accidentally searched only on Google just now, instead of Zuula––”first self-help book”––because I forgot the title, and the fifth entry down says this:

“Build Your Hypnosis Business and Publish Your First Book in 2008″

I rest my case.

Obsessed with Psych

We’re a bit nuts over psychology here. When Rachel and I heard that Shannon, a new guide writer who will also be “floating” in the other sections, was writing about Sunday Night Depression (also known as the “school bus blues”), our ears perked up. Who can say why? Well, we probably identified with Sunday night blues, even though we evidently relish our jobs. But I’m also writing five articles on various aspects of psychology and the brain: mental illness study, the effects of exercise, the self-help phenomenon, the effects of romance, etc. So I was intrigued about the possibility of a sixth section. I was also watching Reuters Television, or whatever it’s actually called, at my doctor’s office on Monday and saw a story about depression in the workplace. Apparently one in five employees has it, and one in three managers has it. Notable risk factors? Being a highly intelligent woman, apparently. How flattering!

I started my psych research with the findingDulcinea Science of the Brain Guide, a recent addition, but I also found a lot of goodies in the Dreams Guide, which I’ve always designated “randomest guide ever,” even though it is fascinating. Working together, my brain and a couple of web guides come up with some pretty cool ideas. I flatter myself. But anyway, today I’m doing the exercise section, which will hopefully act as a jumper cable to people’s dwindling New Year’s resolutions about exercise. I’ll also be writing a “Loving and Hating Exercise” piece, a standalone, in a few days, as Netcetera transitions into a featurey complement to the Beyond the Headlines section.

Ah, Celebrity

I’m compiling birthdays for a new findingDulcinea feature called “Happy Birthday.” I already have dibs on the “Happy Birthday Henry James” entry on April 15th. But I just don’t know how I’m going to stick to the 500-word limit. Anyway, in my findings, I discovered this.

Across the Web, poor Eric Roberts, brother of Julia, is referred to thus:

“Eric Roberts, brother of Julia, disturbing in Star 80.”

That’s how I want to be remembered. “Elizabeth Colville, granddaughter of Alex, affecting as the voice-over for Dove body lotion.”

“Healthy”

The other day my coworker Rachel was blogging about hypochondria, which is also one of my favorite pastimes (hypochondria, not blogging, although blogging comes close). Many of us in the office are falling prey to what might be called the Dulcinea Virus, which is not just a single virus, and has nothing to do with viral marketing. It’s just that typical problem that offices have––germs spread. Rachel is online a lot, as most of us are. So researching a health problem, or potential problem, online is only a natural outpouring of her/our addiction to the Web. We pride ourselves on being able to do it better than the average citizen. Buuuuut, if you’re a hypochondriac, the situation becomes a little more complex. Being a hypochondriac ups the ante on a researcher’s ability to find credible information. One of the sieves on the way to getting the answer is, “Are you allowing this information to make you think you have such-and-such terminal illness/exceedingly rare fingernail condition?” If you answer yes, well, at least you get educated on something interesting. If you answer no, you’re closer to your enlightenment, and maybe even a self-diagnosis.

People are always the best remedy to health confusion, next to actual medicine or surgery. And as RB mentioned in another blog post on our site, we are real people behind our insights and link choices. In-sight. In-sight. Computers can’t see, you will recall, which is why you have to type in those strange jargon utterances when you sign in or sign up to a site (“Are you human? Sorry, we have to ask” – Digg). And when I first suspected I had Celiac disease––an autoimmune disease requiring a terminal avoidance of wheat––it was a person, another coworker, actually, who planted the seed in my brain. Yes, I certainly thought I was being a hypochondriac. But after hours and hours of fascinating research on the Web, which began with our Health Guide and ended on Tuesday with my gastroenterologist sticking a tube with a camera on the end of it down my esophagus, I learned that no, my gut (the poor thing) had been right; no more pre-race pasta dinners for me.

One of the first light bulb moments I had was on Columbia University’s Celiac Center site, where I learned that those with other autoimmune diseases (in my case, silent thyroiditis (sounds like a submarine movie)), are prone to a second autoimmune disease. Not only that, but Celiac disease can also be silent––symptom-less––for years; the thyroid condition, or whatever it is, is usually diagnosed first. That’s exactly what happened to me. The good news? A well-managed Celiac patient can also gain much improvement in the thyroid department. I’d prefer not to have my thyroid radioactively zapped, which is the other treatment for an ornery gland. So we’ll see how this rice- and veggie- and strange-grain-filled diet works out for every body part involved.

The irony (in the sense that it’s triumphantly funny) is that I haven’t been “sick” since November (knock on whatever this desk is made of). The work “sick,” to me, is an onomatopoeia of the common cold. Hearing it now in my echoic memory, it is being uttered by someone with a stuffy nose and puffy red eyes. It has nothing whatever to do with Celiac, thyroids, or more serious conditions. I have conditions, but I am not sick. In October, before I did get a fairly bad cold, I invested one time in those silly Dannon Activia yogurts that claim, in their TV ads, to boost the immune system. Dannon is now being sued for allegedly duping consumers, and I can attest that those drinks are absolutely useless. But the live cultures in yogurt do work. It’s just unnecessary to buy some fancy, fruity, tiny, expensive thing with a lot of additives in it to get the benefits. I’ve eaten a cheap, bland, fat-free yogurt every day for breakfast since Jan 2 (I was told to by the detox author). I also drink about 6 cups of Yogi tea a day. I’m just saying. Anyone in our office should try to reap the benefits of that Yogi genius. I believe in the power of the Kombucha mushroom to keep that Dulcinea Virus at bay. The other reading of my otherwise-healthiness: my immune system just feels really bad for me. And for that, I thank it.

The other joy of researching health conditions online is, you realize that, OK, I’m probably self-involved and just want to know how I’m supposed to eat for the next 60 years so I can get pregnant, have healthy children, and not die of bowel cancer when I’m 35 (sorry). But I also am just generally fascinated by the body, and have been since middle school. I used to be really good at science, and then science started getting hard, and I started writing poems and doing my best impression of Edith Piaf. But when my small intestine got its fifteen minutes of fame the other day thanks to Dr. Jonathan Cohen’s nationally acclaimed camera work, I asked him if I could see the images. He was either going to roll his eyes and say, “Looky here, we’ve got a pseudo doctor who’s really up on her condition,” or he was going to think that in his head, and let me look at them. He did the latter, and I began to think about the possibility of med school.

For more on the Dannon story and what live cultures can do for you downstairs, check out this article on the Well Blog.

Say Goodbye to iPhone

It’s a lovely little gadget, but I had to get rid of it. All those colorful buttons and multi-tasking … I felt like a child playing office with Fisher Price. Here’s the problem with iPhones, gorgeous enablers of connectivity and awareness: they foster a short attention span and never-on-vacation attitude more than any piece of technology that exists (its neighbors on the podium are the Blackberry and the Trio). I knew this would be the case when I bought it (at a steep discount, mind you). But I cringed reading the 4-Hour Work Week blog, realizing how far away I was from “working” only four hours a week (like many bestsellers, the title of this concept is hyperbolic; by “working” I think he means “tearing one’s hair out”). Just that day, I had configured my Mail application (another, browser-free Apple delicacy) to give me RSS feeds from publications ranging from the New York Times to uh…the New Yorker. I have such range.

But as time wore on, I noticed that I was rarely looking at those RSS feeds. Is it because the concept of having RSS Feeds in your e-mail is disconcerting? Absolutely. Getting 100 e-mails a day is hassle enough already; I don’t need 100 more things that look like e-mails but really contain mere links to other pieces of information­—in your browser—to cultural goings-on. No thanks. But do I use any other RSS feeds, besides as a means of bookmarking my favorite bloggers (ahem, writers)? Nope.

Meanwhile, I was still vainly checking my mail on my iPhone in the morning while the N train crossed over the Manhattan Bridge. The point? After all, the AT&T network is now so slow that if you’re not on wireless, it can take up to 10 minutes for 10 e-mail messages to load completely. No thanks. And anyway, what advantage was it to get those e-mails before I got to work? Whatever it was, it was short-lived.

I’m currently using a Microsoft Word trial to compose a blog entry to Netcetera. I need no Internet connection; it hovers silently in the background so Word can post my document to the Web automatically. I’m on vacation and would prefer to stay away from the medium I work on, in, and around 45-50 hours a week, partly so that I can recharge my admiration for its mixed bag of opportunity, education, and distraction. I’ve just retired from the business of music criticism, at least temporarily, and will be working on short fiction for the next eight days. I nearly gave up creative writing after three years of full-time writing jobs, and I wonder if technology, a spaghetti-splatter of information that alternately sticks to and falls from my face, is to blame. I’m using my dad’s Bose headphones to block out sounds and listen to old, old music. I’m reading “Eat, Pray, Love,” because I was sure I would hate it. But sometimes a big ball of cheese is the best medicine. The book is the #3 bestseller on Amazon and has been for weeks, months. On the subway you will see at least one young woman a day reading it, and guess what, it’s not an Oprah Book Club selection–yet. So why am I reading it? I, who never do what the masses do, except if they were to roll their eyes at another mass? I’m stepping outside of myself for awhile. I’m trying to be open-minded. The book is about abandoning everything one thinks one wants—a successful writing career, a house on Long Island, an apartment in New York, and a family (hey, it’s not exactly my dream, but it was Elizabeth Gilbert’s)—and traveling to three countries that coincidentally start with ‘I’—Italy, India, and Indonesia, in search of spirituality, love, good food, and oneself. It’s like a vacation within a vacation. I like it so far (thanks, Kate, for the recommendation).

What we do at Dulcinea Media is exalt the Web. We primp, prune, inspect, dissect, powder, pluck, groom and tie a bow around the Web. What is required for that job is an almost spiritual methodology: enter the Web with a calm, open-minded attitude. Respect it, but narrow your eyes at it, especially if you smell a whiff of somebody (or simply, an IP address) up on a soapbox. But most of all, approach the Web the way you would a classic novel by, say, George Eliot, who could pack as much information about the world and English society into an 800-page novel as the Internet can in a couple of pages of search engine results. In other words, it can be as classic, as classy, and as educational as a book, a PBS special, or a symphony. But it can also be as addictive as caffeine, as dizzying as a trip to Costco, and as mind-numbing as an episode of an MTV reality show. Taking a vacation from the 21st century, thus far defined by the Internet, not only relieves stress—something even a 24-year-old can face, by the way. It also reminds us of the fruits of the labor of generations past, and how we must put their accomplishments on the Web, keep them there, and do everything in our power to emulate them.

One thing they do: they read the entire New Yorker from cover to cover. In this era of choice, can you even imagine doing such a thing? Well, try it. And then try doing the same thing on its Web site. Does anyone savor the Web? As if it were a 1891 first edition of a Henry James novel? As if it might vanish or disintegrate tomorrow? What happens when your Internet connection fails? Get back to me when that happens.

So as I sit here at my parents’ droid of a PC, I think, well, I’m not blogging! I’m writing a letter to my coworkers and other scattered fans of the Netcetera Blog. Semantics is a form of therapy. I highly recommend it.

I Love Football

How strange: I spent most of my life in a world of drizzle, a perpetual blanket of slate-colored cloud, where pints of cider reign and football meant David Beckham and Michael Owen, slogging down a massive field in the mud. There is no cheer like the cheer of 30,000 British men; it is monophonic, cool, and sustained. Under no circumstances did my childhood include imagery of American Football––not on television, and not in person. OK, maybe I saw some football movie starring James Van der Beek, but that was it.

So imagine my surprise when I was, this winter, lured into a high-definition world of underdogs and a Wesleyan grad (Bill Belichick) with a penchant for fleecy Patriots sweatshirts with cut-off sleeves. Here I am, drinking ginger ale, two large cats lounging by the fire, immersed in another family’s tradition, for which I feel vicarious affinity and a level of discomfort and boredom that–would you believe it–faded as the weeks wore on. Still, I could not commit. I did not watch the Giants beat Green Bay in yet another upset away game (I think I was running at the time). But the anticipation of the Super Bowl was palpable, especially over at FindingDulcinea. I climbed on board. My reservation was only that I felt like a phony.

Love one sport, love them all. That’s what I learned the other week, rejoining that family to witness one of the greatest Super Bowl moments in history (lucky me). Because I have been an enraptured fan of pro tennis since I was 7, though I rarely play the sport myself. Watching Rafael Nadal face Roger Federer in 2007′s Wimbledon final was almost as exciting as watching the long-suffering, soft-spoken mama’s boy Eli Manning rise to the challenge and beat an undefeated team in the final 35 seconds of a game. In this sport, every second counts, and I deeply respect that about it.

Ironically, it was a terribly played Homecoming game at Wesleyan in 2002 that hinted at my future interest in the sport. Being that close to the action, caring about your team, no matter how bad they are, and having autumn as the backdrop to a bustling Sunday morning, it’s then that you finally start to accept, OK, I hold an American passport and have for two decades. It’s time I started acting like it.

I admit it; I love Martha Stewart

I just love anyone who is obsessed with color in an organized form. Takes photographs of pretty foods and tells you to eat them. Really likes labels and gives you some to print out and stick on your leftover receptacles. Makes her own cards, gift boxes, socks. Cares about confused, relatively impoverished 20-somethings as much as her own generation. I’m writing a piece on fun with kids, and MS.com really helped me out. Thanks, Martha!

O, ye treasures of the Internet!

Today I’m researching yellow journalism for a feature on the press that’s publishing next week. I was supposed to be done with the yellow journalism portion, but I find myself back in its midst today, finding even more goodies. After reading a book review in the Times on The Yellow Kids, a book now sadly out of print, I learned of a pioneer roving reporting by the name of James Creelman, who lived at the turn of the 20th century and met some of the most important people who ever lived, including Leo Tolstoy. In Creelman’s memoir, On the Great Highway, he devotes a whole chapter to “the Count.” Miracle of miracles, the entirety of On the Great Highway is available as an ebook! Here’s an excerpt from the incredibly titled “The Avatar of Count Tolstoy” chapter:

“It was all so strange, — and it was stranger still to an American writer, fresh from hard-headed London, Paris, and New York, — to sit with the great master in this house, whose doors were never closed to the hungry or weary, whose table was always spread, whose owner called every wandering pilgrim a brother.

“That night, as I lay in the Count’s little iron cot, among his books, I heard the clock strike twelve, and it would not have surprised me ifthe clock had struck thirteen, so unusual were the ways of that wonderful place.”

Dear Martin,…

Thank you for honoring us with your mission. We spent hours on the Internet last week learning about your life, your legacy, your influences, and all the terrific and terrifying events that occurred in this country before you even were born. Here’s the result, a five-part homage to Martin Luther King, African-American history, and the civil rights movement.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

That’s the wisdom of the author of In Defense of Food, which, according to the Well blog, is the #1 bestseller this week. I agree with this statement, though I have to say, I tried organic chicken from Whole Foods on the recommendation of my pal Dr. Joshi (that all meat and select produce should be organic, though his rule of thumb with produce is that one pick that which is “brightest and cleanest”), and it’s probably the best home-cooked chicken I’ve had in years. It was simply delectable.

I just can’t get enough of Well, or Paper Cuts, or any number of other blogs on and off the Times site. For addiction feeding, I recommend RSS. Unless you’re of the four-hour work week mindset. Firefox makes the process of figuring out what the heck RSS is graceful and painless. When you’re on a blog’s page, simply click that little blue (or orange) square on the right-hand side of your browser’s address bar. Firefox will ask you where you want to put the RSS feed. Forget readers–just add it to your bookmark bar. Better yet, create a folder in your bookmark bar called “RSS,” subdivide into the topics of your favorite blogs, and feed away! Did I mention I’m obsessed with organizing? Here’s what the right-hand area of my browser looks like:

Oh, and by the way, we may all be familiar with food. We know what’s healthy and what isn’t. But rarely do we actually know the numbers behind what we’re eating. Fortunately, the government cares! The USDA has a free resource to let you track your calories and physical exercise. Use it! It’s enlightening and very helpful.

Motion Control

It’s a great day when you complete a 4000-word article on the civil rights movement and feel as if you’ve learned more than school ever taught you, simply because you’re old enough to get it, to perceive nuances that you couldn’t as a 16-year-old, and were able to find it all ON THE INTERNET. I can’t link to the piece yet because it’s publishing on Monday. But no doubt I will on Monday.

It’s also a great day when your significant other says he is going to buy a pair of running shoes!!!!!! To runners, it means so much to have other dorks who sympathize with the mundane drudgery of their chosen sport. Now if I can just think of more convincing adjectives to describe it, so that he will actually want to keep doing it. Because I accept that it does take about two weeks to start actually liking running, as opposed to wanting to punch it.

So how about enlightening, energizing, humanizing, humbling, and ego-boosting? That last one is crucial. I think the other adjectives beget ego-boosting. The moment that you realize you were humbled on a run is the moment you realize how awesome you are. So yeah, it kind of cancels the other adjectives out. Runners simply love patting themselves on the back. Every step they take (ideally, between 180 and 200 a minute), they are also patting themselves on the back. In the gym this morning, I exchanged a knowing nod with a fellow runner, a svelt, compact little man wearing a Fred Lebow t-shirt (named for a yearly NYRR road race event that took place last weekend). If we wanted to, we might point to our temples, then to each other, in one of the most obnoxious expressions ever to take place in a New York Sports Club (except the body builders who grunt and then drop 250 lb dumbbells on the floor): We are harder than anyone else here!

Yes, it’s offensive. But the one argument we have in our defense is a sound one: running is the most high-impact sport of all. Because of how many muscle groups are required to take one single step in running, you burn more calories, tone more muscle, feel more tired, eat more pasta, and get a bigger ego. Try it; you’ll love it!

And ye fellow running nuts, be humbled by James Sullivan’s Running Guide on findingDulcinea. There, you will find numerous sites you’ve never heard of––or even thought would exist. I was star struck by this guide and I think I bookmarked every single site on it, using my Firefox bookmarks toolbar FOLDERS, which are the greatest innovation in bookmarking ever. I have a running folder and everything.

The chain will keep us together

That’s Fleetwood Mac. Here’s some insight into desk jobs that require 6,000 words of output a week. Sure, we’re a relaxed group of people as far as schedules go, because we’re sharp and smart and we all stay late several times a week. But here’s an idea I am putting into practice today: Do not get up from desk more than once an hour. I’ve got invisible chains keeping my left hand around the ASDFG keys and my right around the HJKL: keys. Maybe everyone does this. But I’m addicted to tea (and consequently, the lavatory), so I haven’t been able to do this as successfully as I’d like. Today, I won’t be moving anything but my hands until :37 of every hour.

Detox 2k8!

We all know the feeling. The new year has begun and we want a big change in our lives. We are exceedingly optimistic and refreshed, despite the fact that we’ve been gorging on turkey (or tofurkey) intermittently for two months.

On New Year’s Day, I spent the morning with Twinings reading the findingDulcinea New Year’s Resolution Guide, illustrated with an uncanny stock photo of a guy who looks just like the star of Little Children. In the photo he’s contemplating putting out a cigarette. I don’t have that problem, but at the time I had a knee injury that was preventing me from running. But I was optimistic. I sat down with that guide and explored the variety of options for a better life in 2k8. I found great ways to create a food log online, watch fitness videos, and come up with some legit resolutions. I think that pep rally helped, because a week or so later the knee had magically healed itself, not without hundreds of leg lifts, and the deep-tissue talents and knowledge of Sejal at Metro Sports.

After the Reso guide, I moved on to the Well Blog at the New York Times site. I cannot emphasize enough what a breath of fresh air this blog is. Tara Parker-Pope is its author, and she writes on everything from using Google to diagnose illnesses, to organizing clutter in your house. I was pleased to read on New Year’s Day that there IS a relationship between cleanliness and mental wellbeing. I’ve always needed to live in an immaculate space to feel mentally sane. My idea of a joyous shopping trip is an hour in the Container Store.

The wintry hiatus of Christmas week had one final stop: Dr. Joshi, an Indian health guru who wrote the book Joshi’s Holistic Detox. The book took off in England several years ago and was endorsed by gorgeous celebs like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss. OK, so it sounds like another freakish diet for rich, skinny freaks. But really what it is is a twice-yearly, 21-day detox diet that is meant to have positive repercussions for the whole year–and your whole life, if you keep using it. What appealed to me about Joshi is that his detox plan requires taking out all gluten-based foods, which includes breads, cakes, pizza, wheat-based crackers, etc. I’ve been suffering from some strange digestive habits for a few months, triggered mostly by doughy foods, and while I wait for my February appointment with New York’s best, I am trying to find simple ways to curb the problem.

Joshi is strict. Bananas are the only fruit allowed for three weeks (I’m sure I’ll have others in moderation though). Fruit juice is abandoned in favor of carrot juice, wheat grass shots (working from 1 oz a day up to 6 oz) and a mixture of vegetable juices once your body thinks it can handle multiple veggies at once. “Live” yoghurt is the breakfast staple and the only permitted dairy product (eggs don’t count). Other breakfast friends include gluten-free oats, bananas, and honey if you need some sweet stuff. Lunch is brown rice, leafy greens, tofu, chicken, or high-omega fish like salmon. Dinner is more of the same. So-called deadly nightshade vegetables, which increase acidity (see pH anecdote below) include peppers and uncooked tomatoes. And green tea is god. (No coffee or regular tea!) Instead of flavoring things with salt, he advises fresh pepper, cilantro, cumin, and other herbs. And he’s not nuts––to help out in the nutrition department, he advises first-timers to take a multivitamin as backup.

Joshi’s belief is that gluten-based foods are those that tend to make us feel the most sluggish. That doesn’t mean starve yourself; it just means eating a diet of carbs and protein that are lean, productive, and provide actual energy, not a rollercoaster of sugar highs and lows, lethargy, and cravings. No sodas, no processed foods. No sugars, and minimal salt intake. Extra virgin olive oil in salads, and sunflower oil in cooking. Makes sense, right?

A weird anecdote: He suggests going to the pharmacy, buying litmus paper, and testing your pH level. The goal of the detox is to be around 7.5. He claims that if you’re feeling sluggish, have digestive problems, etc., your pH is probably very low, and therefore very acidic, and in the book he includes a list of foods that are meant to restore the pH balance. I’m going to try this today and investigate.

Am I New Agey or what?!?! I’m even giving up milk in favor of soy milk (fortified with Ca, of course).

I’ll be tracking my progress, or lake thereof, over on Lizzyville for the next 20 days.

Talking Point of the Day

“One voting machine in Ohio was found to have cast 4,258 votes for Bush when there were only 638 voters in the entire district.”  – The NAACP, talking about the 2004 election and the effectiveness of electronic voting machines.

My new favorite E2008 coverage

Is by Reuters. I’m biased. But check it. It’s good.