500 transcontinental flights, eh? (and other assorted linkage) It's something I've been aware of for a while,* but it hasn't gotten all that much press until more recently. Humans (should) avoid radiation for a reason, and most things have a cost/benefit associated. So while the numbers surprised me, the conclusion didn't:
Anyway. Since I had opened The Interwebs to go look up that NPR article from the drive in before it exited my swiss cheese of a memory, some of you had posted some interesting things already. Here:
I think it was tylik who posted about Tool-using cephalopods (Video!) (And now I want to find that crow who makes tools.)[edit: actually, no, it was gipsieee]
Aiee. Runrun. Oh. Seeing The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth together in one night makes them both trippier. But I really did need more sleep.
[edit: oh. And re the current state of the Health Care Bill, :headdesk: Dad seems to think the whole Leiberman thing is essentially him using his position to get a king's ransom, and that he'll eventually vote with the Democrats, but regardless, bah.]
VA Unemployment Query For those of you with experience with VEC, how long does it take for payments to start? I first filed 4 weeks ago, and filed 3 weekly claims at this point, but have received no payment as yet. Just wondering.
“I really, really, really shouldn't be getting on LJ and making a post this morning so go to NPR dot org. They just had a story about Charles Babbage's difference engine, you know 1840's technology and a crank operated 5t first computer. It never got made at the time but there's one in London and they just flew one to the computer museum in Mountain View. It'll be there for around the year I guess and then go to become part of a private collection in Seattle which down ___ by it was a really fascinating little article not only about what he was trying to do in Victorian times but it had a little bit about Ada Lovelace as well and a little bit about where that technology could have gone just be really have the underlying technology at the time.”
Summary: oh, hell, why am I even bothering? The best case scenario here is that there will be a few things that don't tick me off. The idea of keeping track of how many do just emphasizes the sadness of it all. The fact that I'm trying to give benefit of doubt to as many items as I can possibly squeeze out excuses for does not suggest anything good, either.
The fight over the public plan has never been about its short-term impact. Opponents fear it will lead down a slippery slope to a fully government-run, single-payer health system like those in many European countries.
Many of the most ardent supporters hope that it will lead down a slippery slope to a fully government-run, single-payer health system like those in many European countries. But that was not about to happen anytime soon.
Roads were dry, though Cold Cold Cold. And yet I still require Zyrtec.
BTW, re yesterday's post, I stand corrected - It really was unfair of me to expect Day 2 of riots to be all over everybody's Top News, and Google News was rotating it through Top World stories. scherzoid added some interesting links to NPR's coverage of Day 1.
New low: Bored out of my skull after 8 minutes of swimming last night. Forced self to go the other 7 until the lifeguard wanted to leave.
Tonight: Lumsfs Voyager - Vienna, VA. Probably will drive myself as lunch plans mean can't leave off the car at the shop. Weather permitting, sounds like a good crowd.
And finally (yes, I know I never got round to the Resistance answers - need to find them), a meme: If I came with a warning label, what would it say?
(if you want to play along, post this on your own journal)
(Okay, finally: Much work to get done. Yay, finally people have given me material!)
Not that I know where it is, or when I'll next be okay to dance without doing something stupid to my foot. Week after next there are two different holiday dances (one Flyingfeet, one Reneehouse)I'll probably bail on. Probably just as well, my teeny company's holiday dinner is that night, too. And another 3 parties I know of.
May I say again how much it annoys me to realize that one night of too much twisty was enough to screw up a whole week? I don't know when it will be not-stupid to dance, and it's not like it hurts to. If it hurts it's only a "oh. interesting. that hurts. I suppose I shouldn't have done that."
Bah.
Many thanks to wolfdancer for being willing to work out scheduling for massage. Even if I'm now disturbed by what trivial movements I seem unable to make happen.
and depressing news about the compromises re the Health Bill, that I can't even find on NPR's front page. WashPost article mentions most, including that The Public Option is now defined as maybe buying into Medicare @55, and Medicaid eligibility up to 300% poverty line. I think. Abortion stuff still reigns supreme.
And then I talk with Dad as I'm walking into the office. I'd said something about how prattling on about Tiger Woods was apparently easier than figuring enough out about Health Reform and the bills to intelligently report it. He thought it more a deliberate distraction, away from Health Reform, away from Copenhagen, away from Afghanistan, away from the riots in Iran...
WHAT? Ain't on NPR.org's front page. Ain't in Google News's top stories (is top in World, if you scroll down.) Ain't in the top section of Washington Post, either, though I did find this article when I scrolled down, in the small print labeled "More Nation/World Headlines." (edit: I'd found this NYTimes article on Googlenews.)
But a hospital transport from Tiger Woods's home last night was more important.
Even though, per Dad (I've not read much yet), Obama's current "please don't attack them even though they're way close to having a nuke to drop on you" to the Israelis is that hopefully the regime will fall RealSoonNow but outside attackers might make people get behind their current [hated] government.
Like I said, Bah. And Adobe is annoying the hell out of me; I have no idea why it's inserting two blank pages when I print an .mtf to it.
Oh, and is Mercury in retrograde or something? Communications of late have been so stressfully FUBAR it's not funny.
Eggplant Facial The CSA (local farm share) I was in had its last pick-up the Monday before Thanksgiving, and I'm STILL working through the remnants (cabbage-celery pepper soup, mmm! still being eaten; onions, parsnips to go). lcohen requested a recipe for the baba ganoush I made, so here's the recipe, such as it is.
BABA GANOUSH large eggplant 4 tablespoons olive oil 3-4 tablespoons lemon juice garlic powder - 1 tablespoon? raw peanuts
Pre-heat oven to 400, scrub eggplant fiercely with veggie brush, roast eggplant in aluminum pan or on cookie tray. This takes about 30-45 minutes, depending on size of eggplant and whether you really preheated or not. Some would say, pierce the eggplant skin with a fork several times to prevent explosion, but I didn't know this (it was my first time), and there was no boom.
While the eggplant roasts, combine all other ingredients in the blender (note, I'm going by memory on the proportions above; really, I eyeballed it all). The peanuts I had on hand were in pieces already, but I blended them anyway, to get them slightly closer to tahini (a pretty chunky tahini).
I let the eggplant cool a bit. Most recipes at this point say "peel eggplant" or "scoop out insides of eggplant". Bah, I say. The skin should be pretty well cooked along with the rest of the eggplant, and blends up fine with the rest of it, providing more vitamins, color, and texture in your dish. But if you're the kind of person who hates red skin in their mashed potatoes, maybe you'll want to do all that work. I just stuffed the whole thing into my blender (except the woody stem), put on the cover, and alternated pressing "blend" and turning it off and poking at it with a big spoon to move the stubborn bits closer to the blades. I could have saved myself some work by slicing/chunking it some before blending it all. Even so, it was pretty easy to make, good straight out of the blender, and really excellent after a night in the fridge, if I do say so myself.
... Oh, the facial? I let my massage place talk me into trying my first (and last) facial after a massage. Ow! I'm perfectly capable of breathing through the pain of having muscles stretched out (e.g., around my left foot/shin this morning on my comp day, to correct what I darkly suspect is plantar fascitis), but I'm never getting another facial (and, indeed, the massage center seemed to catch my drift, as they haven't asked again). Chemical heat seems to bother me just as much as temperature sometimes does, no matter whether it's supposedly chemicals for "sensitive skin" or heat treatments that "everyone likes". OTOH I'm ok in a hot tub or sauna. *shrug*
A very good post about the perils of for-profit health insurance.
and while I'm at it, I'm not sure whether to be amused or boggled by Jack Black getting a mammogram "guys, get a PAP, too!" as part of the MenforWomenNow.com facebook save-the-boobies(ish) campaign. (warning: automatic sound)
Can you tell I had coffee Monster Coffee Energy Drink way too late in the day? I couldn't sleep and then I couldn't sleep well, and then I woke way before the alarm. But now as well as everything else I'm keeping myself from researching women's health care around 1800. And biographies of the founding fathers. (Comment in a John Adams biography lead to looking into Nabby Adams.)
It's pretty out, and not as cold as one would think. ( pic behind the cut ) Sadly, it was with someone else's camera, but I think I got a couple pics that'll work for the publication I need out this week.
A Public Service Message from The Wicked Witch of the Mid Atlantic Greetings. If you look out of your windows today, you will see a phenomenon known as "snow." If you didn't already know that, or need a refresher as to what it is, KEEP YOUR SORRY ASS OFF THE ROADS!
The danger of driving in this white stuff is not the snow itself, it's IDIOTS LIKE YOU who think they know how to drive in it.
Looking at the incident map at WTOP I can see that many of you are not listening to this message. Do I have to send the flying monkeys? At least they can get where they're going without having to deal with you nitwits who have wrapped yourselves around trees or phone poles, or have found new ways to off-road.
And what's with this infatuation with bread, milk and toilet paper? Do you think you're going to be stranded in the wilds of the metropolitan DC area without access to food supplies for days? Are you really that silly? If you feel a driving need to rush to the supermarket or the Home Depot for emergency supplies, you KNOW you shouldn't be on the road because you are STUPID! Nobody has yet died due to a lack of toilet paper in a snow storm in metro DC.
So turn on your TV and watch some MMA or Cops or something, just get the hell off the roads. Thank you for your kind attention.
various and sundry - Why is EVERYTHING on the 19th? My small company is having their Xmas dinner that night, too. - Where can I get a cheap hair-trim (possibly with conditioning) near Beltsville? Or maybe Wheaton? My Aveda Institute appt for tomorrow is now in January, as I'm doing a CPR/first aid class tomorrow. - Is anybody driving Mt Airyward in the late afternoon/early evening tomorrow? - I don't know if I trust my car's steering. Maybe leakstop from the morning will help. And finding a time to drop him off is problematic. - an interesting 1998 Catholic Health Association paper about the Directives back then; Artificial Nutrition specifically discussed. - nobody seems to be posting to LJ today - nobody seems to be sending me content I need for the freaking newsletter i'm supposed to write - I keep being up far far too late. And I'm body weary when I try to swim. And swimming is boring. But more than 5 minutes is warranted. (Yes, I'm lucky that I can swim for 5 min if I want to and not have it be /truly/ insane.) - a particularly strange clip of William Shatner and Rush Limbaugh discussing health care. With particularly surprising furniture. - 2007 MSNBC article abotu religion and women's health services; see page 4 re hospital merger effects. - Advance Directive forms/worksheets for all 50 states. - and then there's the Florida Property Rights case before the Supreme Court. How about Florida offers to let the homeowners restore the beach at their own expense?
catholic hospitals redux Eighty Two Comments??? I was expecting a lot of notice, but not quite the level of discussion. Of course it was on a day I was mostly away from LJ, and I'm desperately tired right now and have to get some workwork done.
One major clarification: I've noticed that a lot of conversation has been going to questions of end-of-life care; the article in Catholic News Service at least seemed to be more limited to conditions that wouldn't soon kill on their own:
"While medically assisted nutrition and hydration are not morally obligatory in certain cases, these forms of basic care should in principle be provided to all patients who need them, including patients diagnosed as being in a 'persistent vegetative state,' because even the most severely debilitated and helpless patient retains the full dignity of a human person and must receive ordinary and proportionate care," the revised directives read.
"Medically assisted nutrition and hydration become morally optional when they cannot reasonably be expected to prolong life or when they would be 'excessively burdensome for the patient or (would) cause significant physical discomfort, for example resulting from complications in the use of the means employed,'" they add. "For instance, as a patient draws close to inevitable death from an underlying progressive and fatal condition, certain measures to provide nutrition and hydration may become excessively burdensome and therefore not obligatory in light of their very limited ability to prolong life or provide comfort."
The new text also deletes a reference to hydration and nutrition not being morally obligatory "when they cannot be assimilated by a person's body."
One thing I haven't been able to figure out is what happens in, say, a nursing home situation with a resident who before he lost faculties to dementia wrote an advance directive prohibiting putting a feeding tube in in the first place, but is later deemed by the facility to be likely to die without one.
To me, a goodly amount of the problem is the details. I don't have a need to force people to do what they consider morally objectionable. I do have a need for them not to dictate everybody else's options. As discussed, - people often do not have a choice as to which hospital they land in, and later transfer is not necessarily without penalty. Worse, I have no confidence that, much like we've seen pharmacists refusing to let someone else dispense emergency contraception, there wouldn't be legal challenge to transfer for the sake of nutrition withdrawal. - some areas have no other option but Catholic hospitals. dcseain mentions a place in Ohio where it's 2 hrs drive to the nearest non-Catholic hospital. recalcitranttoylinked to an article about the current trend of hospitals merging; usually in the mergers the secular hospitals adopt Catholic rules*. (in this article it mentions that advance directives in EOL care need not necessarily be honored.)
Do I think it's upsetting to plan not to honor advanced directives? Yes. Do I think it's unfair to say "you're welcome not to take state funds if it pains you to act against standard practice?" Not really. Do I think that's likely? Dunno - DC is getting there re the Bishops and Gay Marriage ('specially since let your employee choose any second adult regardless of relationship for benefits wouldn't fly either). Hopefully one answer is to make sure these policies are made very public and one can transfer elsewhere without penalty. Else the religion of one group is forced on those who do not share it.
Am I angry at the bishops? Not really for this, no. For the Stupak amendment, for the attempt to force DC's hand. But not for elaborating on their concept of moral behavior. Do I think this is a Bad Thing? For the reasons elucidated above, probably yes.
Far more extensive and thought provoking conversation than I've reported is over in the earlier post.
* saying that, I'm heartened that at least I used to know of a hospital that took up one floor of a building that was otherwise another hospital. I found it thoroughly confusing working their tech support, given that these two hospitals seemed to have the same address and shared a server. But while both hospitals had Labor and Delivery, Milwaukee-St Mary's was Catholic, and one floor of their building was Milwaukee - Columbia, which was devoted to reproductive services and was technically not a Catholic hospital.
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