Launch
Oy, where did the weekend go?
Today, I launched a new blog: The Eustachian Project. I want to shunt articles from my medical website over into a blog format. Two good reasons for that: interactivity (people can leave comments at the blog, where they couldn’t at the medical site) and flexible searchability with categories. And a third reason: if I follow through with this, it will give me a chance to fact-check things I wrote 7 to 10 years ago. My post on ear candling, for example, is a major re-write.
Back to work tomorrow. This work thing could get tiring, you know? And in February, I start taking call . . .
D.
Job worries
In my dreams last night, I kept going back to University of Texas. The chairman offered me a job some time ago, and (assuming he’s serious) that’s the only solid job offer I have for the moment. Maybe that’s why I kept dreaming about UT.
We’ve vowed never to go back to Texas, of course, and I’ve given up my license there, too, so it ain’t gonna happen. But tell that to my subconscious.
There be Klingons
From Wednesday’s post on Portland death metal band Stovokor, pInluH responds:
My mother has a smooth forehead? My mother would pick her teeth with your bones and then tell me what a handsome and good warrior I am, as a good mother is known to do!
Also; “Hab SoSli’ Quch!†is the proper way to insult my mother! P’tak!
Do you appreciate the significance of this comment? Klingons read my blog. Now, if only I can get that green chick to visit, I will have truly arrived.
D.
New theme
It’s called Thematic, from Themeshaper. I’d really like to customize it, but I have a kindergartner’s understanding of CSS.
I’m going to see if this old dog can learn new tricks. First, though, I need to locate the stylesheets.
D.
All I got tonight
These guys are New York City’s answer to Kids in the Hall:
There’s more at YouTube, of course.
D.
Heroes
By now, you’ve heard of the dramatic emergency landing of an Airbus A320 on the Hudson Rivers by US Airways pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger III, and you’ve also probably heard this pilot called a hero more than a few times, either. So I’m wondering: what makes this guy a hero?
What caught my attention (on Countdown) was the implication that the pilot’s successful ditching (that’s what you call a forced water landing) was heroism. That’s not heroism. That’s called skill. Phenomenal skill, but skill and little more. Why is it heroism — the fact that he didn’t panic, piss his trousers, and crash the plain? Heroism is not the absence of cowardice. Heroism isn’t even keeping a cool head in a dire situation. It’s not just getting the job done.
It seems to me that heroism requires both getting the job done despite considerable personal risk and having some choice in the matter.
Okay, maybe I’m being a hard ass about this, and it’s not like I’ve done anything to make me an expert. But I do think it’s worthwhile to think about these concepts critically. People throw that “hero” term around far too lightly.
Captain Sullenberger used his considerable skills to do what had to be done. He did it exceptionally well and deserves praise for it. He ditched the plane and no one died.
The passengers evacuated the cabin in ninety seconds. And then, with the plane sinking, the captain and the copilot went down through the cabin, checking to make sure all of the passengers had, in fact, left the plane.
And then they did it a second time. In a sinking plane, they double-checked to make sure there were no injured passengers left behind.
That’s heroism.
D.
Is that a batliff in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?
It doesn’t get much higher concept. Portland death metal band Stovokor insists they are Klingons, will only appear in public in full makeup, and — oh yeah — they sing in Klingon, too.
The fun starts at 0:31.
From their Wikipedia entry:
Occasionally the band take their personas too far. At a concert held at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, lead singer pInluH HoD attacked a crowd member after a short exchange of insults.
Someone must have told pInluH HoD that his mother had a smooth forehead.
Um, I’m not kidding. That really is a Klingon insult. And pInluH HoD’s mother really does have a smooth forehead.
D.
I still can’t figure out
where all my links went. Word Press 2.7 ate my links!
Hope it got a whopping case of indigestion.
D.
A job for the young and immortal
Back when I was in grad school, my program sent me to a one-week workshop on all aspects of cancer. Not surprisingly, we all called it Cancer Camp. It was a hoot. We flew to a convention center in Keystone, Colorado, where it’s cool even in summer, and we got to do all kinds of fun stuff while we were there — a whitewater rafting trip, a hike, some serious hot-tubbing, even a dance.
They housed us six to a condo. One of my roommates was a big Floridian who seemed ancient to our crowd of twenty-somethings. Guy must have been 40. First night we were all hanging out in our living room swapping stories, and he told us how he and his buddies used to make some spare cash back in high school: hunting alligator eggs.
I don’t recall how much they were paid per egg, but this 2007 story in the Times Picayune says that nowadays, the city makes $12 to $13 per egg. Perhaps back in the 50s, kids were making a buck or two per egg. Good money*.
One guy, the high school track team’s captain, had the job of drawing off the mother gator. He was fast and nimble enough that he had to limit himself, in fact — if he lost her too quickly, she would only return to the nest in time to nail his friends as they raided her nest. The kid found this to be great sport. How far could he lure the female? Or, phrased differently: how slow could he run and not get caught?
One day, his friends (of which my storyteller was one) heard a high-pitched shriek, and they feared the worst. When they got back to the car, they found him in a state of near-catatonia, unwounded, but missing most of the denim from the left calf of his Levis.
Sometimes I wonder if the runner ever went out again. I’ll bet he did. I’m thinking of all the times I body-surfed as a kid (a kid who swam about as well as he played basketball), got pummeled by a wave, yet always had faith that I would be carried into shallow water, not deep. This, despite some nasty instances of undertow and riptide. Even one near-drowning didn’t slow me down; I went right back in.
I’m not sure when I lost my own sense of immortality . . . but I think fatherhood had a lot to do with it.
D.
*Alligator populations go up and down. I’m guessing that at the time, the People of the State of Florida felt there were too many gators for their own good.
That’s a lot of porn
Here’s the gory graphic:
Akismet kindly kept stats on my royal ass reaming.
Hmm. “Ass reaming” may in large part explain why porn spammers chose my site.
D.