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After being cautioned by my mom and sister over Christmas break about growing reports of the perils of soy milk, I undertook some casual Web research to assess these warnings for myself. I was dubious, of course. It’s soy! It’s ancient! Beloved by healthy Easterners for centuries! I defiantly munched my cheddar-flavored soy crispettes and started perusing Google.

Finding the controversy was easy enough. But further Googling ensnared me in a super-techy recursive loop of a conversation between Bill Sardi and his soy-bashing antagonists, Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. Here, at last, my techno-triumphalist, age-of-mass-culture-is-dead self started scrambling for an “authoritative” source to lead me from this thicket.

And they totally failed me. Snopes said the jury’s out. The frickin’ SF Chronicle delivered a novel-length shrug disguised as a news report.

Best as I can tell, largely on the strength of this 2000 FDA Consumer report, much of the controversy derives from the fact that we currently like to consume not only soy — the protein, the marvelous whole food that makes the peanut seem one-dimensional — but also a number of soy derivatives in pill form, as dietary supplements. These pills or powders are made from the individual components of soy (isoflavones), and holistic health sources like to bottle ’em up and sell ’em to consumers as miracle drugs. But there’s no proof these components bring any health benefits on their own, and there’s reasonable evidence they might bring some risks.

So the pills, not the protein, are the problem. I think. As far as I know, the FDA still allows foods that meet certain criteria to bear a label saying, “Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease.”

I have no particular point in sharing any of this, I just think it raises a few interesting questions. Sorry to those of you who read looking for a boffo insight at the end. For the record, I just finished a delicious bowl of Multigrain Cheerios, drowned in Silk.

I mean, it makes sense, but I’d never really given it much thought. I remember seeing my dogs twitch in their sleep and saying, “Aww, they must be dreaming.” But I guess I didn’t really believe it, or I didn’t really follow the thought through to its conclusion. But I find the image of a dreaming rat retracing its steps through a maze to be a little sad and, er, poignant. Am I a sap?

John Brockman’s got his crew of deep thinkers he commissions with answering humankind’s big questions, I’ve got mine. So how ’bout it, folks? What are you optimistic about? Why?

If ever a post were truly worthy of the “Media Galaxy” category, it’s this: tons upon tons of quality copyrighted media, for free, for now.

Heeeeey, my paper just got sold. Howard, does this mean I don’t get to post on Etaoin Shrdlu anymore?

Er, Robin, Will tagged us with this ‘5 Things You Didn’t Know About Me’ meme last week. We don’t really have a protocol for this stuff on Snarkmarket. Hmm.

OK, how’s this? I will throw an unspecified number of things about myself into the comments as I come up with them. If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged. Feel free to jump in the comments and add stuff about yourselves as well, or do so on your own blog and link back to it here. And if you, gentle reader, have no interest in trivia about the lives of me, Robin, or any of your fellow Snarkmarket readers, consider yourself unmolested.

• Python collaborative filtering algorithm dissected.

More thought provocations via Khoi Vinh. In this interview with Science of Shopping author Paco Underhill, he drops this nugget:

I think of knowledge as a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid is data; the next layer of the pyramid is information; the next layer of the pyramid is intelligence; and the top of the pyramid is wisdom. I like to tell my clients that we’re in the business of giving them intelligence and wisdom, and if they want to collect data, or if they want to collect information and process it themselves, that’s their business.

Of course, this pyramid is hardly Underhill’s invention, but I like that he specializes. I’d swap “knowledge” with “intelligence,” as I have. Totally an aesthetic thing, I just think “intelligence” is a word more suited to apply to the whole structure. Pure data can be characterized, in the CIA sense, as “intelligence,” while “knowledge” is a trickier fit. I like this explanation of the four concepts.

I’d say journalism suffers from not articulating these concepts as decisively as Underhill does. When asked what we’re “in the business of” giving to folks, most journalists would probably shrug and say, “Journalism.” Which is absolutely not a separate plank on the intelligence pyramid, our overinflated egos notwithstanding. (Some would answer “stories,” which I think is a less-than-artful way of dodging the question.) If you squint your eyes a little bit, you could might imagine journalism’s version of this pyramid as Underhill’s version, split into two halves — the “objective” half (data and information), and the “subjective” half (knowledge and wisdom). Squint a little bit more, and you might even see how these concepts form your average newspaper — data and information being the substance of the reporting and presenting process, and knowledge and wisdom being fodder for news analyses, commentaries and editorials.

But I’ve seen reporters recoil at the notion that the foundation for all their work is gathering data. And while most journalists seem to be content with providing mere “information” for a time, 90% of them seem to harbor secret ambitions to impart “wisdom.” It would be worth saying, I think, that actually gathering data is a noble end in itself, as is providing information. It would also be worth giving more journalists access throughout their careers to the fields of knowledge- and wisdom-dispensing. (I.e. Rather more clear subjectivity added to the “objectivity” soup.)

Khoi Vinh’s pretty astute observation about the ubiquitous Chris Ware:

In spite of his many and frequent innovations, Ware

At Patchbox, artists can submit a link and an 80 x 80px thumbnail, and you can look at samples of a bunch of different styles of graphic art all at once. (MetaFilterrific.)