Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: April 2008
Asshat of the day
From National Defense, via Sadly, No (hat tip to Daily Kos):
Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation.
The group has the ear of Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, head of the science and technology directorate, who has said he likes their unconventional thinking. Members of the group recently offered a rambling, sometimes strident string of ideas at a panel discussion promoting the group at the DHS science and technology conference.
Oh, those brilliant SF authors! However can we thank them for their altruism? And there’s no telling what gems they might come up with. After all, the late Arthur C. Clarke thought up geosynchronous satellites, and Jules Verne predicted “helicopters, submarines, projectors, jukeboxes, and other later devices.” Larry Niven gets credit for a variety of innovations such as the ramjet spacecraft, which propels itself between stars using intersellar hydrogen for its fuel.
Speaking of Niven . . .
Among the group’s approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as “Ringworld†and “Lucifer’s Hammer,†which he co-wrote with SIGMA member Jerry Pournelle.
Niven and Pournelle are on this group? Awesome! I can’t wait to hear —
Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.
Whaaaaa?
So Larry Niven channels Robin Cook, and he has the ear of Homeland Security. Lovely. Guess it was too much to ask that he would offer solutions to our dependence on foreign oil, global warming, or the world food shortage. No, all Niven has to give us is a healthcare crisis solution that has been with us for as long as there have been social classes: kill the poor.
Larry, I never liked your books. Ringworld, your “masterpiece,” is a bloated, boring dreckfest populated with secondrate cartoon characters. You and Jerry used Inferno to take potshots at an author whose belches were more engaging than your best work, and Mote in God’s Eye went on and on and on, with an ending that hardly seemed worth the bother. Oh, and don’t forget more characterizations straight from the back of a box of Captain Crunch. And that was you in your prime, Larry. Well, guess what, you just jumped the Puppeteer. Time to put up your feet, drink your Budweiser, and kvetch about those kids today, cuz that’s all you’re good for. STFU already and go to Hell, where you can be buried like you buried Vonnegut, beneath a gravestone reading “He went to an ER for a simple case of appendicitis, and they removed his liver and kidneys.”
Vile. Absolutely vile.
D.
Mother’s Day prezzies
A friend was bemoaning not knowing what to buy her mom for Mother’s Day. Good thing, too, since this provided me a nice reminder about Mother’s Day. I have a bad habit of forgetting these things.
Karen, fortunately, is one of these people who hates Madison Avenue holidays. I usually get her something for Mother’s Day anyway (or I might fix her a dessert she likes), but if I forgot, I doubt she would be all that upset. MY mother, on the other hand . . .
She’s impossible to buy for. Well, yes and no. In reality, she’s super-easy to buy for. She likes baggy pastel sweatshirts with sequins, the gaudier the better.
Nope. Not gaudy enough. (She would like the color, though.) Maybe,
(more…)
eCrud
In a recent South Park episode, the Internet crashes, and South Park’s residents (and all America) are left Netless. I’m not that hard up right now, but it’s close. I’m blogging on my Blackberry.
I hate blogging on my Blackberry.
Something about typing with my thumbs, I suppose. It makes me want to use a fork to eat mu shu pork, a hammer to open a quart of milk, a bobby pin to clean ear wax. Thumbs weren’t meant to do anything but hit the space bar.
There’s a rollup keyboard you can buy as an accessory for the Blackberry. It works well. I lost it first time I brought it along on vacation.
What’s wrong with my modem router thingy? Unlike the dolts in South Park, I’ve already checked to see if it’s plugged in (yes). I’ve unplugged and replugged it several times — the ultimate reboot. Figuring it needed a cooldown, I’ve left it unplugged for well over an hour, sitting in front of a fan the whole time. I’d fix it a dry martini if I thought it would help.
The most annoying thing? I can’t check my email. You’re supposed to be able to set up the Blackberry to check email, but it only wants to check its own email. And you know what else? Sometimes it doesn’t ring when it’s supposed to. Today, one of my old attendings called me back. I figured this out when my pocket started talking to me.
I want wetware. That’s right — I want it all in my head.
Gadgets are far too error-prone.
D.
She moved!
Bix (Fanatic Cook), who knows her nutrition*, has been writing about the dangers of a high protein diet (here, for example). Recently, she posted the protein breakdown of a typical vegan diet, and that sparked an interesting discussion. Here’s my question to my readers, which I posed to Bix: don’t vegans have to be careful to balance their diet in order to avoid deficiencies of essential amino acids?
The answer might surprise you.
***
When I woke up at 6:30, Karen was asleep in a peculiar position. Her breathing was so shallow and quiet, I couldn’t hear anything, and I couldn’t see her chest rise.
An hour later, her position had not changed.
(If I were the prick I sometimes claim to be, I would have taken a picture. Hmm. Does this mean I’m actually not the prick I claim to be?)
Sometimes, I touch her to make sure she’s warm, or to feel her chest rise, but often this wakes her up. Is this paranoia a hazard of my profession? A result of my discomfort at all the pain meds she has to take? An inevitable byproduct of our early years together, when her health was even more dicey?
In any case, two hours later, she’s snoring softly (purring, like some of my patients say) and her arms are in a different position. Phew.
***
Day Two of my more-or-less vegan diet. I don’t know how long this will last, but my gut does feel better. Lately, I’ve been having more and more indigestion with meat — beef, especially, which my body seems to think is Milk of Magnesia. But at some level, this is also an intellectual pursuit. I’m asking myself: what would it be like to not eat a steady diet of crap?
I’m going to miss the pork rinds and Cheeze Whiz.
D.
*From her Blogger User Profile: “MPH with concentration in Human Clinical Nutrition, Certificate in Integrative Medicine, BS in Nutrition and Biochemistry.”
Why this is difficult
It doesn’t matter if it’s true* or not; she thinks I’ve saved her life twice. When she came in for her followup visit yesterday, she gave me this watercolor, which she had painted for me.
It’s a blue poison dart frog, Dendrobates azureus, one of the species we keep in the waiting room.
Okay. So she has known me forever, remembers Karen and asks about her, has met Jake and asks about him, too. She knows about Karen’s MS and her sacroiliac problems. She could tell something was wrong by my reaction to the painting, so when she told me “out with it” (or something like that) I suspect she thought we were having more health trouble at home. I felt I owed her more than a letter, for heaven’s sake. I had to ‘fess up about our upcoming departure.
She cried. Then she regained her composure, and then she cried again.
D.
*I have a high threshold for this “you saved my life” thing. If I swing the scalpel and suddenly you’re breathing again, I’ve saved your life. Otherwise, I’m doing my job. (Not that I’m not doing my job when I swing that scalpel, but — oh, forget it.)
Walken fix
Even one bad Chris Walken impersonation beats 99% of the stuff on YouTube. And six bad Walken impersonations? Comedy gold.
If I don’t get a chance to write later . . . live blogging tonight, 7 PM PST. See ya.
D.
Thirteen moves
Ugh. I hate moving.
And it keeps getting tougher every time.
I have boxes in my garage which have remained unpacked since our move from Texas in ’98. That garage . . . man oh man I have nightmares about that garage. I can’t wait until we hold our yard sale, because maybe after that I’ll feel like I have more real stuff than junk. Right now, junk wins, no contest.
Thirteen (or more) moves, below the cut.
Realativity
This post started as a Thirteen, but I tuckered out after six. After I show you my offerings, I’ll open it up to discussion.
Here’s the question: depending upon where you look, how much real estate will one million dollars buy?
Answer below the cut . . .
I Heart ThinkGeek
One of the bitchy things about the job search: strangers call me. And I want them to call me, I really do, even at odd hours. Still, it plays hob with blogging. Not much time left for serious writing pursuits . . .
Here’s what caught my eye tonight at ThinkGeek:
From the wonderful geeks at ThinkGeek,
Don’t get it? We propose the following thought experiment:
- Give your friend enough money to purchase the “Schrödinger’s Cat” shirt (don’t forget the shipping).
- Tell your friend to take the money and lock himself in a room with a cigarette lighter.
- Let your friend know that once in the room he is to randomly choose either to burn the money, or return in five minutes with the money intact. We emphasize that this must be completely random (aka, impossible for a human to determine but bear with us).
- Your friend must then stay in this box for eternity. Hey, that’s how thought experiments work. Hopefully he/she is OK with that.
There’s more; I’ll let you have fun with it.
***
I told the OR crew today that I was leaving. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Upon hearing the news, one woman said, “I’m dealing with a lot of sadness right now.”
I said, “Do you think the hospital needs to offer grief counseling?”
I can be such a prick sometimes.
D.
Cold
Johnston Goes Cold, originally uploaded by idatewe.
COLD, like taking a bath in that. Cold as this dude.
I have a narrow comfort range: 67 to 69F. Mid-seventies are nice if there’s a breeze. What temperature is it in my bedroom? I dunno. 64F? With the heater on!
I need to get under the covers, but Jake has staked out my side of the bed. Maybe I’ll go sit under the shower until the hot water runs out.
It’s good while it lasts.
(You Canadians: stop cackling. You too, Tammy. I know y’all are used to colder weather than this, but I don’t care. This is me we’re talking about. Delicate as an orchid me.)
D.