Continuing in the vein of yesterday's post, I have a few more random thoughts to share...

Survivorman
Perhaps you've never seen this show, it's on The Science Channel (not to be confused with Discovery Channel or The Learning Channel).  I really enjoy it.  The premise is simple.  In each episode they take Les Stroud and dump him in the middle of nowhere with meagre supplies and about 50 pounds of camera equipment.  His only mission is to survive for seven days before the crew returns to pick him up.  He's not allowed to break down the camera equipment and use it for survival, and he does all the filming himself.  I can only imagine what an incredible amount of effort is involved in shooting himself walking past the camera or trudging off into the distance, only to have to return and get the camera.  This show strikes me as one James would enjoy.  I've seen this poor guy dumped in the arctic tundra, the swamps of Georgia, some desert out west somewhere, even one episode where he had to survive in a life raft at sea for seven days. You can order season 1 of the show on DVD if you are interested.  I discovered this show during my many days of bedrest over the last month or so.

North and West of the City...
I'm sick of this phrase.  I hear it all the time during weather reports, as in "2 to 5 inches of snow are expected in the Boston area, while areas North and West of the city could receive as much as a foot."  It's snowing today.  Unlike those in and south of the city, there's no rain following the storm here... it's just piling up.  Day before St. Patrick's day and the snow is just dumping down.  *sigh*

Cosmos and Carl
I miss Carl Sagan, and I loved Cosmos when I was a kid.  One of my best memories of childhood is sitting in the living room with my Dad watching Carl explain history, other dimensions, outer space, the doppler effect, and various other intriguing things.  Pat and I both talked recently of trying to find the Cosmos series on DVD to watch with Lynnea (though it might be too slow paced for her.)  Amazon has it, if you are interested.  One of my favorite segments of that series was when Carl explained what it would be like for two dimensional creatures to encounter a three dimensional one, as a way of explaining what a fourth dimension might be like, as a mechanism for explaining the concept of a curved universe as it relates to the big bang.  The two dimensional creatures were called "flatlanders" because they lived (appropriately enough) in Flatland.  I finally found that segment on YouTube, but it is included in a larger 10 minute video.  You can watch it here, the part about Flatland starts about 3 minutes in, after a discussion of Hubble's discovery that the universe was expanding.  In the next segment, Carl ties in the curved universe and questions about the existence of God.  It's slow paced but wonderfully done.  I really should pick that series up and watch it again as an adult--I've no doubt I'd learn more this time.

Destroying a Career
As you probably know, Valerie Plame testified today before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and finally had a chance to speak out on her cover being blown by an administration with hopelessly misplaced priorities.  One of the saddest things about this, as far as I can see, is that her CIA career as a covert agent is basically over at this point.  That's got to be infuriating for her.  I can't imagine what that must be like.  From her testimony today:

..."My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department. [...] I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained." [...] Under questioning, Plame recounted feeling "like I had been hit in the gut" on the July 2003 morning when she saw a newspaper story by syndicated columnist Robert Novak identifying her...

Pace and the Unbagged Cat
Smooth one General, really smooth.  For those of you who haven't heard, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, stepped in it on Tuesday by saying he supported the Pentagon's ban on gays serving openly in the military because homosexual acts are "immoral".  Way to go, dickhead.  There are thousands upon thousands of gay people serving in our great nation's military right now, many of them putting themselves in harm's way.  Thanks for telling them that they're a bunch of immoral perverts.  General Pace, for his part, has refused to apologize for the remarks, and has only gone as far as to say that he regrets making them.  I'll bet he does, but only because it is inconvenient for him now that the cat is out of the bag.  As far as offending the gay troops who've been valiantly serving over the last four years of this misguided war?  It's clear what Pace thinks of them.  I never understood the ban on gays in the military, and I understood don't-ask-don't-tell even less, except that it allows good soldiers to serve a country that needs them, regardless of their sexual orientation.  And the same people that screeched in 1993 that we couldn't let gays in are screeching today that we can't let gays serve openly, for the same stupid reasons--because it would cause a breakdown in unit cohesion on the battlefield.  What a bunch of bullshit.  I'm sorry but a guy brave enough to crawl across a battlefield under fire while trying to avoid landmines isn't going to be worrying if the guy behind him is checking out his ass.  Give me a goddamned break, PLEASE.  Here's a thought, I won't ask then next time something as stupid as that enters your mind, and you don't tell, okay? (As a sad but not unexpected sidenote, conservatives are leaping to the General's defense.)

I'm sorry I haven't been able to blog in awhile... there's just been so much going on my life.  I've got a lot of things I'd like to talk about, but any one of them would be a full blog article I don't have time to write.  So here's the "Cliff Notes"...

My Health
I visited the doctor about 2 weeks ago.  My TB test came back negative, as expected.  I woke up with the area around the injection on my arm completely flat and showing no reaction other than a slight redness.  I could tell it was a negative result, but still I had to get to the doctor and have a nurse stare at my arm for two seconds and say "yep, negative."  Did I mention it was snowing?  A lot?  The doc informed me that the plan at that point was to let the antibiotics run out, and then monitor myself very carefully, watching for fevers.  I was to take it easy and not exert myself once off the antibiotics.  I took my last pill the day my Dad had his aneurism.  So I was getting almost no sleep, no regular intake of food, a high amount of exertion and stress, exactly at the time we were hoping my body would be able to cope with the remaining infection.  By March 7th I was having fevers and my doctor extended the antibiotic.  By March 8th the fevers had reached 102, and I was having painful chills in the night.  On March 9th the fevers subsided and I haven't had any since.  I had another visit with the doc today and she began to speak very frankly about having a surgeon go in and "break up" the scar tissue, or using a needle to drain out the infected area so it could heal.  I spoke very frankly about how disturbing those prospects were to me, and if sixty days of antibiotics would solve the problem, I'd rather go that route.  For now, we are on a middle ground.  The doc has given me a script for 10 more days of the antibiotic, but I am to repeat the "wait and see" experiment when the current batch runs out (Sunday).  If the fevers return I can start the next script.  Next week I will have another CAT Scan, and then based on the results we will make a decision.  The doctor said I could come in and speak with the pulmonologist at that time if I liked.  At this point I'm beginning to feel resigned that a surgical solution is going to be necessary.

Mr. Deity
If you haven't seen the "Mr. Deity" videos yet, check them out, they are hilarious.  A warning to my theist readers, these movies are created by humanists, and are therefore pretty irreverent.  Don't check them out if that is going to bug you.

RSS & YouTube
Why doesn't YouTube support RSS in any obvious fashion that I can detect?  Why do I have to go to my subscription page on YouTube to see what is new.  If they are tracking what is new, then they have the information necessary to provide an RSS feed.  Bloglines tries to "fake it" for you, building an RSS feed out of a YouTube search, but that doesn't work well.  Partly because old videos keep popping up on it, and because jerks post movies on YouTube with the usernames of popular YouTubers in their keywords simply to bring in viewers.  The only YouTubers I subscribe to are ImpyTheRap (i.e. Nobody's Watching) and SuttSteve.  Yet my Bloglines is constantly telling me they have new videos when they don't, simply because the RSS feed is built from a keyword search, and some people are not capable of getting viewers on their own talent.  Does anyone have a good way to get a YouTube subscription as an RSS feed?  It's really bugging me.  I had to discontinue my YouTube "feeds" in Bloglines because it was a waste of time.

Texas and the HPV Vaccine
The Republican Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has mandated that all girls entering the sixth grade in Texas schools must receive the HPV vaccine Gardasil, produced by Merck.  HPV, or Human papillomavirus, is a virus that can be carried by both men and women, but some strains of which are shown to cause cervical cancer in some women.  It is primarily transmitted sexually, but can be contracted in other ways (skin on skin contact, or being born from an infected mother).  Under Perry's plan, parents could choose to refuse the vaccine for their child, but it is not clear if the child would then be allowed to enter the public school system (any more than they would be allowed to refuse, say, Mumps and Rubella vaccines and still put their kids in school.)  The Texas legislature voted 118-23 to basically overturn this order.  The primary complaints were that (a) there are questionable connections between Perry and Merck, (b) parents should have the right to choose whether their daughters will be vaccinated, (c) the drug is new and needs to be further tested, and (d) Perry circumvented the legislative process.  On (a) and (d) I can't really comment, on (c)... well the FDA has approved it, so it has to have undergone some testing at this point, and on (b) I'm just mystified.  The mandate clearly has an opt-out clause... so what's the diff?  The thing I can't shake is that the early complaints about the possibility of making this drug mandatory that came out of Fundie USA was that it would encourage young women to have sex.  Which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  But I can't help feeling that because those who said it are realizing how stupid that sounds, we are now getting other excuses like a through d above.  I find myself wondering if HPV was transmitted in a nonsexual manner, would there be any outcry at all?

These are the Same People Who Said...
Tell me you haven't heard this one before: confronted with the latest news from climate scientists about global warming, a politically motivated skeptic will claim "These are the same people who said the world was headed for another ice age back in the 1970's... why should we believe them now?"  Like so much politically motivated rhetoric, there's little merit in it.  Between the 40's and the 70's a cooling trend was noted in the data available at that time.  Scientific journals noted that although such a trend could be the precursor of the cyclic ice ages that our planet goes through, there was not enough data or understanding of the climate to accurately predict when the next ice age would come.  The popular press on the other hand (i.e. those journals which are not peer reviewed) took the story and made a sensation out of it.  The scientific community never said another ice age was imminent, period.  Needless to say I hate hearing this stupid argument, especially when it is delivered by people who unfortunately are accorded undue credibility... like Michael Crichton for instance.  But if you want details refuting this particular bit of rhetoric, check "The Global Cooling Myth" on Real Climate.

Guess that's all I have for now.  Hope everyone else is well and happy...