a meme

I rarely do memes but since Cravey was adament, here's one now:

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I'd been working at Emory for 8 years at that point and had been "horsetraded" to a molecular biologist for just over a year to get some work done on a new project for my boss. So that meant I had two bosses and one was a real ASSHOLE. He'd burned through 6 people in one year and Personnel would no longer send applicants his way, which is why I was elected to work with the dick. I was not happy about the situation!


What were you doing 1 year ago?

Pretty much the same thing I'm doing now. At that time I had a girlfriend so that was a difference but I have the same house and same job--I do have a new car since then.


Five snacks you enjoy:

1. Froot Loops
2. Pringles
3. Hershey Nuggets
4. Capn Crunch
5. Chocolate Covered Cherries


Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:

1. I have no functional memory. I can't reliably remember my own name all the time.
2-5. See above


Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

1. Stay home
2. Hide from people
3. Kayak a lot
4. Buy home on lake or river
5. Mountain bike in desert


Five bad habits:

1. Procrastination
2. Waffle on decisions (related to above)
3. I talk too much
4. Picking at my eyes / eyelashes
5. Reading in bed until 4am or so


Five (g-rated) things you like doing:

1. Eating candy!!!
2. Reading
3. Cooking & baking
4. Kayaking
5. Playing Age of Empires


Five things you would never wear again:

1. Pants with a 28" waist
2. Those litte nylon running shorts from the 70s
3. knee high tube socks
4. tight sweaters
5. ??????


Five favorite (g-rated) toys:

1. Age of Empires
2. 2 kayaks
3. RePlay TV unit (like a Tivo)
4. Dreamweaver
5. Digital camera!!

Bonus: The stock market--best toy ever created


INSTRUCTIONS:The blog chain that got this here.........If you participate, remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so:

- One Gal's Musing-Philly Transplant

- No Accent Yet

- What Can't Be Looked For

- Utenzi

More weekend review stuff

I did watch that last DVD, Infamous, last night and I'm very glad I did. It was very well written, even better acted, and a lot of fun.

If you're not familiar with the movie, it's about Truman Capote during the period in his life in which he was researching his book In Cold Blood. In the movie, Capote (Toby Jones) develops a relationship with murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith from the time they were first arrested right through their execution. Parallel to this is Capote's struggles to put the experience down in words. The use of his childhood friend, Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock), to define his struggle is inspired. Many of the statements each Lee and Capote uses about the other are mirrored in their own work and artistic struggle.

There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek comments and witty conversation along the way but the movie's poignancy is reflected largely in this small collection of people who are at their pinnacle of achievement and notoriety, two of whom are about to die, and two others who survive in body but lose their creativity.

I've not seen the movie Capote so I don't know how it compares to Infamous. I've heard that it's quite good, one of last year's best movies.

And the Stanford book I mentioned yesterday continues to impress me. I'm halfway through the book (Invisible Prey) and I definitely think it's one of his best.

A long weekend

I didn't get much done this weekend. For some reason I've been extremely tired for nearly 3 weeks now. I've actually been sleeping for an hour or so each day when I get home from work and that's exceedingly unusual for me. Kinda freaky, actually. I just don't normally need much sleep.

As a result, I've slept a good deal of this weekend away and maybe that'll help. It's like I'm sick but I don't feel sick. Does that happen to anyone else?

As for what I am doing, tonight I watched about a third of that Borat movie. Just not my cup of tea. I didn't find it very funny and finally gave up on it. Last night I watched You, Me and Dupree and thought that one was pretty flat also. I'm having bad luck with movies from the library lately--but the last one should be better. It's one of the recent movies about Truman Capote called Infamous. I suspect it'll be a lot better than the other two movies.

I just started reading the new John Stanford book, Invisible Prey, and I'm very impressed with it. I'm only 80 pages in so far and I can't believe how well he's weaving a number of elements together. The book is oddly self-referential for Stanford and often there's a three level smoke and mirrors approach going on involving past books as well as gags involving the characters. I've never seen Sandford write this way before and I suspect I'm only getting at best half of the references.

The Scorpion's Gate

I'm a little late to the party on this novel. It was published in 2005 and is very much a testament to the times in which it was written. Unfortunately the times haven't changed much in the past two years so the insight within the pages is just as much valid now as it was then.

The author, Richard A. Clarke, has been in upper level government service since 1973 when he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. He served in the Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton and GW Bush administrations. Now he's chairman of Good Harbor Consulting and no longer in federal service, no doubt due to his well publicized differences of opinion with the neocon politics at the heart of the GW Bush Administration.

That said, it should be no surprise that in Mr Clarke's book there's a lot of politics. There's also a lot of political action and cloak and dagger spy work. In many ways this reads like a trimmed down Tom Clancy novel--the part that was trimmed is the troop level action--Clarke is mostly interested in how events play out on the national level.

Here's a plot summary from Publisher's Weekly:

It's 2010, and the newly established Republic of Islamyah;the former Saudi Arabia;is trying to destabilize Bahrain: the Diplomat Hotel has been bombed, and, as the first chapter of this intense debut thriller closes, the Crowne Plaza is "pancaking." Meanwhile, the deposed House of Saud is holed up in Houston; the Chinese are providing arms and training to Islamyah; the Iranians have the bomb. Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad thinks the time is ripe to invade Islamyah and seize its oil, for which the U.S. is locked in deadly competition with China. Cooler heads in the U.S. (and British) hierarchies are very, very alarmed. Sound familiar? Clarke's Against All Enemies delivered an apostate critique of the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts, along with a vision of the future very much like today. The writing's nothing special; what is special is Clarke's passionate and deftly detailed version of the present, albeit one told in terms of its consequences. It's a brilliant conceit, and though it's sometimes drowned out by the din of various axes being ground ("It''s 68 degrees [in Washington]on January 28 and the White House still claims that global warming isn't a problem?"), the story is crowded with terrific double crosses, defections and deceptions. They're icing, though: Clarke's dramatic micro explanations of how things "really" work;from a hand who served Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes;are the true story. This is the first novel to shift all the way from Clancy's Cold War to the present war on terror.

I enjoyed this novel and would recommend it but it does have some problems. When I picked up the book I assumed it was probably at least partially ghost written--but now I doubt that very much. While the central protagonist, Rusty MacIntyre, deputy director of the new Intelligence Analysis Center, is well fleshed out most of the other characters seem a little thin. Not real. Still, the spy action undertaken by Brian Douglas, Bahrain station chief of SIS (British Intelligence), is quite compelling and really adds background to the story.

The main difficulty is that at times the novel gets somewhat preachy as Clarke uses his characters to address critiques, well deserved as they are, at the reader. For example, on page 134:

"I served there [referring to Iraq]. So did you. I had buddies killed, and for what? Because we had a SECDEF [secretary of defense] then who didn't think it out, had no plan, put in too few troops. You think the American people are going to stand for that again? No way."

Or this quote on page287 voiced by Brad Adams, a vice admiral:

"Look, I believe in civilian control of the military. It's what has kept us from having coups and the kind of chaos other nations have had. But when the civilians' decisions aren't subject to checks and balances, when they distort information, when they cow the media into going along with their shit, I dunno"

This all is a very obvious condemnation of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, as well as his fellow neo-con Paul D. Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense, and their "fellow travelers." I would suspect Mr Clarke put this in novel form to reach a larger audience. While the novel is stiff at times, it's well worth wading through the occasional political preaching because the politics here are very real and written by one of the big players in Washington.

This is a good follow up to Clarke's 2004 nonfiction bestseller "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." In that book Clarke criticized the GW Bush administration's handling of the war on terror and its willful determination to go to war against Iraq. In this book Clarke explores what the future might bring to the Middle East if current US and Chinese trends aren't reined in. Fodder for thought...

Hell's Kitchen

Girls and boys, it's almost time for season 3 of Hell's Kitchen. Prepare your sensibilities to be shocked 'cause nasty ole chef Gordon Ramsay is going to hit the airwaves again Monday June 4 at 9pm (est) on FOX. I can hardly wait. Last season was quite good despite Ramsay's continual bad humor. No doubt Season 3 will be even better.

This time the winner (survivor?) gets the coveted title of Head Chef at a new fine Italian restaurant at the luxurious Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas. Green Valley Ranch is the sister property of the Red Rock Casino, where Season Two winner Heather West, pictured to the left, is currently working as senior chef at Terra Rossa restaurant.

Notice that Heather's not head chef--nor is she at the premier restaurant that she initially was assigned to. Apparently somewhere in the conditions of being on the show is a possibility of being demoted--even if you won the head chef spot.


Anyway, here's the list of the Season Three contestants:

• Aaron, 48, a retirement home chef from Palos Verdes, CA
• Brad, 25, a sous chef from Scottsdale, AZ
• Eddie, 28, a grill cook from Atlanta, GA
• Josh, 26, a junior sous chef from Miami Beach, FL
• Rock, 30, an executive chef from Spotsylvania, VA
• Vinnie, 29, a night club chef from Milltown, NJ
• Bonnie, 26, a nanny/personal chef from Los Angeles, CA
• Jen, 26, a pastry chef from Hazelton, PA
• Joanna, 22, a chef's assistant from Detroit, MI
• Julia, 28, a short-order cook from Atlanta, GA
• Melissa, 29, a line cook from New York, NY
• Tiffany, 27, a kitchen manager from Scottsdale, AZ

3 day weekend

Here in the US we're about to start on a 3 day weekend due to the Memorial Day holiday. This is a United States federal holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May, this holiday commemorates the men and women who have died in military service to the USA. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War and later was expanded to include veterans of all conflicts.


This is how I'll be celebrating. Me and a lot of Ben & Jerry's Creme Brulee ice cream. As I posted a few days ago, this is a recent find and I really, really like the flavor. *shiver* I also made some salsa-like filling for some tortillas I'll be eating. I also bought buns for burgers and I got a Wal-mart brownie on clearance. I hope it doesn't kill me--I don't really know why they wanted to get rid of it fast.

Other than eating, I'll be getting some reading done. Outside on my deck when it's comfortable and inside when it's too hot. I'll get some yard work done in the morning when it's cooler but since we're in a slight drought the grass isn't growing much. I picked up 3 DVDs from the library so I might be watching those as well. And I plan on watching the last 10 episodes of 24 from Season 6.

What are your weekend plans???

stomach ulcers and H pylori

Hanan Gancz, of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, presented some interesting research findings at the recent General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Toronto, Canada.

Apparently H. pylori, the bacteria that causes the majority of the ulcers in adults, is much more likely to cause gastric problems if the person has a high salt diet: High concentrations of salt in the stomach appear to induce gene activity in the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori, making it more virulent and increasing the likelihood of an infected person developing a severe gastric disease.

H pylori accounts for up to 90% of duodenal ulcers and up to 80% of gastric ulcers. Infection with H. pylori is common in the United States; about 20% of persons less than 40 years of age and about 50% of persons over 60 years of age are infected. Most infected people do not have symptoms.

Back when I was in college this relationship between H pylori and ulcers was just being discovered by a pair of Australians, pathologist Robin Warren and physician Barry Marshall. That was in the early 1980s. Unfortunately there was a lot of resistance to this discovery since peptic ulcers had long been associated with stress and spicy foods. It wasn't until 1994 that NIH finally published an opinion stating that most recurrent gastric ulcers were caused by H. pylori, and recommended that antibiotics be included in the treatment regimen.

Getting back to the work done by Hanan Gancz, the obvious assumption would be that high salt levels help the H pylori bacteria cause their nefarious work on our stomach linings. That doesn't seem to be the case though.

You see, Gancz decided to look at the direct effect a high concentration of salt had on both the growth and gene expression of the bacterium and according to Gancz, "We noted that H. pylori growth rate shows a sharp decline at high salt concentrations. Moreover, bacterial cells exposed to increased salt exhibited striking morphological changes: cells became elongated and formed long chains. We conclude that H. pylori exposed to high levels of salt in vitro exhibit a defect in cell division."

So, if I understand this right, the high salt causes extreme stress to the H pylori and it's actually a stress responce to the salinity on the part of the bacteria that causes the damage to human stomach linings. Avoid stressing the H pylori and no peptic ulcer, perhaps? Relationships are sure complicated--whether it's between two people, two nations, or two species.

Creme Brulee and Ice Cream

Can you imagine Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream combined with the flavor of Creme Brulee?

Now you don't have to strain your imagination. LOL

This is a new flavor that they've brought out. I bought a pint last week and it's the best ice cream I've had in quite a while. I just love the flavor and suspect I'll be buying a few more pints over the next few weeks. It's really delicious. BTW, you'd best like sweet tastes if you try this out!

Those Vermont cows really know what they're doing. Maybe it's something in the water...

Are biopsies a thing of the past?

There's an interesting story on Reuter's today regarding a clinical study published in the May 21 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology. Here's some tidbits from the Reuters article:

"You don't have to invade the body in any way. We can actually obtain this information in a noninvasive manner," said Dr. Howard Chang of Stanford University School of Medicine, whose work appears in Monday's issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Chang and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, compared images from radiology scans such as CT scans commonly used to track cancer with lab tools called DNA microarrays -- gene chips -- that screen thousands of genes at a time.

What they found was a way to translate the data from the images into a computer model that could predict what was going on with the genetic material within the tumors.

The researchers said the technique may help eliminate the need for a biopsy, a procedure in which a needle is injected into a tumor to determine what type of cancer a patient has.

If true, this is very exciting news. One of the important advances that microarrays have provided in the fight against cancer is that they've made it a lot easier and faster to tease out differences in tumors. At one point, and it wasn't that long ago, tumors in one type of tissue--say breast, for example--were all assumed to be homogeneous. Now we realize that there are many types and subtypes within each group of cancer tumor.

If the data in this article holds up, doctors will have a noninvasive way to ascertain which type of tumor exists in a patient--which gives a lot of information on what form of treatment is best for the patient--as well as what stage of development that tumor is in. Being able to do this without a biopsy speeds treatment and allows better long term outcome due to faster initial assessment.

I'll be very curious to see how this turns out. I really have trouble believing that the actual tumors will be all that predictable. I don't doubt that there's going to be some strong diagnostic ability here but cancer cells are unpredictable. I'll be curious to hear what SRP thinks. I work on the research side with microarrays; SRP is on the medical side and this would be more in her field.

A Little Trip to Heaven

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time in front of the tube while eating burritos made with sweet Italian sausage and drinking Sierra Mist. What a day!

What did I watch, you ask? Well, an indie movie titled A Little Trip to Heaven and the last 2 episodes of Season 5 of 24 and the first double episode of Season 6 of 24. I was very impressed with the writing of Season 5. I thought it was easily the most cohesive and well thought out of the 5 seasons I've watched so far. Season 6, on the other hand, isn't starting out very well. It's still quite interesting--don't get me wrong--but when the first episode already has huge credibility gaps you really have to wonder about the rest of the season. Of course since the last episode airs tonight --another double episode--I guess I can spend the rest of the week catching up and hoping that the writing improves during the course of the season. I've got 2 or 3 episodes missing but most were recorded.

A Little Trip to Heaven is a difficult movie to review. To start, let me say I really liked the movie but due to some problems I'm reluctant to recommend it to others.

The noir tone of this small budget indie movie, purportedly located in northern Minnesota though actually filmed in Iceland, is nearly unrelenting. The only bright notes are a few flashbacks and a commercial for an insurance company that pops up several times in the film. But this is a good thing. The gray tones that predominate this film are beautiful and the cinematography is quite excellent. And man does it ever rain a lot!

I also really enjoyed the performances in the film. Forest Whitaker and Julia Stiles really stand out though the best performance is probably by Jeremy Renner. Looking over the reviews of this movie out on the Internet, I see they're mostly negative and the most common complaint is that the plot is confusing. Well, there are a number of plot twists but they seemed pretty easy to follow for me. I would agree though that some of the characters, especially of Forest Whitaker's character, an insurance investigator, need to be fleshed out more. As is, you don't empathize enough with the characters to make the last third of the film meaningful. And the worst problem is that the end of the movie just isn't consistent with the tone of the movie and kinda sucks.

Despite that, I really liked the movie and would watch it again. Here's the precis of the movie, garnered from Amazon.com:

Moody dialogue, drab lighting, and characters who aren't quite who they say they are pepper the indie film A Little Trip To Heaven. Starring Forest Whitaker as Holt (an insurance investigator looking into a man's suspicious death), and Julia Stiles as Isolde (the frightened and sketchy sister of the deceased), A Little Trip's destination actually is closer to hell than heaven. Unevenly portrayed and not well-fleshed out, not one of the characters is sympathetic. Isolde's brute of a husband is the prime suspect, but Holt--who in a different film would be the story's hero--isn't exactly a saint either. There's a particularly creepy scene where he's little more than a peeping Tom, justifying his perversion as doing what's necessary to get his job done. As shown in films such as Half Nelson and Sherrybaby, imperfect characters can make for compelling filmmaking. The problem with A Little Trip To Heaven is that we want to root for someone--anyone--but there's just no one who's worthy of our interest. --Jae-Ha Kim

I would argue that the "creepy scene" referred to above was consistent. Holt's job involved disallowing (is that a word?) insurance claims and pursuant to that goal he would skulk around and take video or pictures of suspicious behavior. That kinda requires a little peeping, y'know?

I do think Holt plays a strong and sympathetic role here in this film but his character needed a few flashbacks to firmly establish his social isolation. As is, you just don't understand why he does what he does at the end of the movie. Oh, well... and if you want to think about the film a bit more, due to a few supposedly short term deceptions, the couple that Holt is investigating are really living in Hell. It's a film that can linger in your mind...

I also loved seeing the names of the extras and many of the behind-the-scenes folk on the film. They all have last names like mine! Folk like Felix Eyjólfsson and Margrét Ólafsdóttir illustrate names frozen in time. Christianity made names like this permanent but at one time they were descriptive. Daughter of Olaf and son of Eyjolf. Neat.

The Month of May

I bended unto me a Bough
by Thomas Edward Brown

I bended unto me a bough of May,
That I might see and smell:
It bore it in a sort of way,
It bore it very well.
But, when I let it backward sway,
Then it were hard to tell
With what a toss, with what a swing,
The dainty thing
Resumed its proper level,
And sent me to the devil.
I know it did--you doubt it?
I turned, and saw them whispering about it.


I don't know about you but I have emotional responses to months. They're generalized and somewhat effuse so like I associate February with being cold and not a good month to do anything risky. April is a so-so month which I associate with flowers starting to bloom. May, perhaps because my birthday is in it and so during my childhood was a month to look forward to, I associate with positive things and the coming of warmth (where I grew up usually still had some snow in early May).

This year is different though. April was a very good month for me. May's not doing so well. I received a birthday present of sorts the other night that just didn't work well and the stock market has been a disaster for me. Down almost 30% for the month. Down 100% in the b'day present thing, or so it seems. The percentages are killing me. I definitely think I like April more than May these days.

Yep. May sucks.

Where diseases come from

There's an interesting review article on infectious diseases in today's issue of Nature (May 17, 2007). It's titled "Origins of Major Human Infectious Diseases" and authored by 3 researchers at UCLA, Nathan Wolfe, Claire Dunavan and Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel).

There have always been opportunistic diseases of one sort or another. Even bacteria (germs) can get "sick" from viral infiltration. However humans have artificially created a situation today in which they get sick a lot more than they did in the distant past. You see, since the advent of agriculture around 10,000 years ago humans have maintained large stationary populations and also segments of the human population have stayed in direct contact with populations of other animals (chickens, goats, cows, dogs, etc). Both of these trends have culminated in a number of diseases that would not have occurred in hunter/gatherer societies.

This article explores the evolutionary stages of how pathogens affect us--delineated into 5 stages--and by evaluating those 5 stages the authors reach conclusions about the history of human society. How disease has affected population movements as well as the dangers of pathogens in our current world.

Figure 1 in the paper illustrates quite succinctly how pathogens get introduced to humans and how the pathogen can change to adapt itself to the human host--or doesn't do so. Some diseases never move past stage 1, which is characterised by being solely passed from an animal to a human, rabies being the example given. On the other end of the spectrum is stage 5 in which a disease is only passed from human to human and animals are never involved. HIV-1 is the example given here.

A topical warning is reached in that the animal reservoirs for disease are more prevalent in the tropics--so our increasing incursions into the tropical rain forests increase our chances of releasing such a pathogen into human populations. Yet, in seeming contradiction to that, most of the diseases that bedevil humans had their origin in the relatively cool temperate cities of Europe. This is attributed to 13 out of the 14 major domesticated species are native to Europe and Asia. The sole domestic species native to the New World is the llama.

Today we're staring down the barrel of an epidemiological gun with Mad Cow Disease and SARS possibly poised to rip through our population. This article is a good primer for just how serious our risk is and what the future might hold for us. The worst aspect is that the authors admit that even some of the best studied human diseases don't have known origins. It's difficult to plan for the future when the past isn't yet known.

Girls get the lime

So what's up here?

I've never liked Coca-cola and have always preferred Pepsi (and when I was a kid I liked Dr Pepper and Mr Pibb). That changed when they brought out Lime Coke. I love that stuff. Lime Pepsi, on the other hand, tastes like cat piss! Nasty!

Imagine my disappoiontment then when Coca-cola pulled Lime Coke off the market around 6 months ago. They're evil! But Diet Coke with Lime is still on the market. What gives? Only girls get the good stuff? LOL

I actually bought a 12 pack of the diet Coke with Lime this week just to see if I liked the taste of it. How can people drink this diet stuff? Not only does it taste bad, but it makes you thirstier after you drink it than you were before. What's the sense in that?!?!

I guess I'll be sticking to Pepsi.

BTW, in case you're interested, I found a few recipes for Coca-cola on Wiki. Here's the first of the three that they list there:

=== Recipe 1 ===

* Ingredients:

**1 ounce caffeine citrate
** 3 oz citric acid
** 1 fluid ounce extract vanilla
** 1 quart lime (fruit) juice
** 2½ oz flavoring
** 30 lb (14 kg) sugar
** 4 fl oz fluid extract of coca (decocainized flavor essence of the coca leaf)
** 2½ gallon water
** Caramel sufficient

* Flavoring:

** 80 Oil Orange (fruit
** 40 Oil cinnamon
** 120 Oil lemon
** 20 Oil coriander
** 40 Oil nutmeg
** 40 Oil neroli
** 1 qt ethanol

* Directions:

**"Mix caffeine acid and lime juice in 1 quart boiling water add vanilla and flavoring when cool. Let stand for 24 hours."

This recipe does not specify when sugar, coca, caramel or the rest of the water are added.

Source: Mark Pendergrast. ''For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It.'' New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0-465-05468-4.

Boomsday and STFU

Boomsday written by Christopher Buckley. 318 pages. April 2007. $24.99. Twelve.

The protagonist of this book starts out in life with the name Cassandra Cohane, but after getting screwed--in the figurative sense--by two Baby Boomer men, one being her father and the other a junior congressman from Massachusetts--Cassandra changes her last name to Devine.

The respective screwings turned Cassandra against the Baby Boomer generation and therein lies the plot, such as it is, of this book. Christopher Buckley, best known for the book Thank You for Smoking, is an amazing satirist and his pen is quite sharp in Boomsday. It's his best book since Thank You for Smoking (TYS). Like TYS, this book involves Washington insiders be they K-street spin doctors, politicians, or the wealthy hangers-on of the political set.

It's a great romp. I started reading Boomsday on Sunday and finished it this morning. It was a great accompaniment to the movie I saw Sunday night, Man of the Year, due to all the political shenanigans that are involved in both vehicles. While there's so many devious subplots the book sometimes reminds me of a Hiaasen novel, the main gist is that Cassandra Devine wants to save the nation's economic state from the coming wave of baby boomer retirees.

How does she do that? I'm so glad you asked. She blogs! Yes, blogs. And millions end up reading her blog entries. Sounds like heaven, huh?

Anyway, her Red Bull fueled 4am blog tirades against older Boomers "Wrinklies" and their gated communities and country clubs soon unleashes a backlash of violent protest among the under-30 demographic. What do they do? They turn over golf carts and trample the grass of golf courses. The "establishment" reacts by arresting Cassandra but regrets the action a few days later and sets her free. Once she’s out, she proposes a solution—one that gives tax breaks to Boomers who are willing to commit suicide (Cassandra calls it “Voluntary Transitioning”) by age seventy. And that's just the start of this beguiling novel.

This book takes place in the near future and it's not a great world to live in--but it's a funny world to read about. Sad funny, but funny. Maybe this book will help ignite debate that will keep that future from happening--but don't hold your breath! Very wryly funny book. Give it a read!

Man of the Year

I watched the movie Man of the Year tonight on DVD. I wasn't really expecting to like it very much 'cause I'd seen a number of reviews reviling it for being so uneven. But I was curious so I picked it up from the library this afternoon anyway.

The reviewers had it right. This movie is quite uneven and can't decide if it's a comedy, a drama, a spy flick, or a conspiracy movie. And y'know--I really liked it a lot. To me, even if to nobody else, this movie worked from start to finish. I can see someone like Robin Williams working the room during the beginning of a pseudo-campaign and transitioning in just the ways shown here.

Barry Levinson, who wrote and directed this movie, is pitch perfect as he moves Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams), a comedy talk show host, through his paces on political, comedic and personal fronts. It is at times low key, at other times divisive, but it targets the political flaws in our system quite well with only rare sermonizing. Not a bad job by Levinson and an apt "sequel" to his 1997 political film Wag the Dog.

I don't think this film is for everyone but I certainly am glad I watched it. We probably don't really want a Tom Dobbs in the oval office, or do we?

Happy Mother's Day

Mom taking a break, with Dad and one of her 3 kits by her side.

Casino Royale

I watched the DVD of the latest Bond flick, Casino Royale, tonight. I was hoping I'd like it but really didn't know what to expect. I saw the original version of Casino Royale when I was a kid and in general don't like the Bond franchise. I'm happy to say that I thought this was the best Bond film I've seen. I thought the middle dragged a little but I loved the opening of the movie and that first chase scene across the construction site. Hell, for the first time ever in a Bond flick I even enjoyed the background animation going on during the titles.

By the way, that initial chase scene used Parkour (similar to Free Running), an unusual physical art in which participants use buildings and other obstructions to facilitate their ability to move from one place to another. It has to be seen to be believed. I read several reviews online of this movie and I'm surprised that not one made note of this. It's the first time I've seen Parkour used so effectively in a movie.

A lot of pre-film speculation went on about Daniel Craig, the actor playing Bond in this film, and I think his performance must have more than satisfied the critics. Craig is Bond. Not even Sean Connery was this good. Since this is based on the first Bond novel by Fleming, it opens the gate to an entirely new series of movies--and it's about time. The Bond movies have been insipid and boring--all tricks and gadgets and no heart. Daniel Craig is all heart and that's what these Bond movies have needed.

I do have some complaints about the film. Like I said, I thought the middle got slow and tepid. I also wasn't very impressed with the chemistry--or lack thereof--between Craig and Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), the female lead. This hurt the film to me since their relationship was supposed to be nuanced and deep--unlike the usual wham-bam romances in Bond films--for plot reasons and without that chemistry the setup for the final stages of the film lost some traction. Still, I just loved the ending. Craig delivered the knock out line at the end perfectly.

On the positive side, Q and Miss Moneypenny are nowhere to be found and Judi Dench is so sharp and strong that she dominates every scene she's in. You can totally believe that she keeps her stable of government assassins in line simply with the strength of her personality and the sharpness of her tongue. The scenes in which she needs to bring Bond back in line are intense.

Anyway, if you've seen it let me know what you thought of it--and if you've not seen it, by all means watch it!

24 and the weekend

I'm watching the Day 5 season of 24 on TV, which is being shown on A&E Network 5 times a week, and recording the current season, Day 6, on FOX so I can watch it when I'm finished with the 5th Season. *whew* Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I just finished watching this past week's episodes and the tension is really mounting. That Jack Bauer is just something else. LOL

I'm sure it's no coincidence that both Season 5 on A&E and Season 6 on FOX are both ending on the same day, Monday May 21. Season 6, which started with two double-episodes last Fall is also ending with a double episode. So I guess I'll be spending all that week catching up on the 24 hours I've recorded of Season 6. 3 episodes a night during the week and then 9 hours on the weekend. Perfect! It really is quite a show though two people have told me that Season 6 isn't as good as Season 5. Damn.

I'm operating solo this weekend since Ren is bonding with her kids what with Mother's Day and all. I don't have any solid plans but if I can get some motivation going I'll visit Sarah Duke Garden as soon as they open on Saturday (9am) and take lots of pictures of the flowers. Since a lot of schools are graduating this weekend, and the Gardens are quite popular, I want to be out of there fairly early before it gets really crowded. It's also supposed to be raining on and off today so that might complicate things. If the rain holds off, I'll go hiking in Duke Forest afterwards. On the other hand, if it rains early--or I'm feeling too lazy--I might just sleep in.

The picture to the left is Sarah Duke back in March. I suspect there's a lot more color in the gardens now. And it'll be a lot warmer too. It's supposed to be in the mid 80s tomorrow whereas back in March we were wearing coats and were quite chilled by the wind. Brrrr.

Sunday I might go back to the NC Zoo but that's not a strong plan. The weather is supposed to be really nice and between that and it being Mother's Day I suspect the Zoo will be swarming with people. I don't like crowds so...

I also should be painting my garden shed. It really needs a refresh on its paint job and I have some red paint I bought a while back for just that purpose. Add that to the mowing I need to do and that would take care of much of Sunday--but not be as much fun as the zoo.

random thoughts regarding automobiles

I've read 3 items in the media in the past day regarding automobiles that piqued my interest. The first was in Newsweek and was a short interview with Chris Balish, author of "How to Live Well Without Owning a Car". The other two items were science articles regarding the feasibility of using corn stalks as fuel (as opposed to the ethanol processed from the corn kernals), and a new way to store hydrogen in a fuel tank to make it easier to use.

First of all, I've never liked cars. I was reluctant to learn to drive when a teen and I've never really become interested in them. To me they're just a tool that I need. According to Balish, almost anyone can use mass transit and end their dependance on cars and gasoline. He thinks that the money savings would allow for the purchase of a residence close-in to town where prices are higher.

Well, I agree that cars are expensive. I live 12 miles from town mostly due to the houses being less than half the price where I live as opposed to Chapel Hill. My house cost $144k but something similar in Chapel Hill would be around $300k, and the taxes would more than double as well. I can afford a lot of car on the $1,500 a month I'm saving by living where I do! LOL

Actually, of course, I couldn't afford a large house in CH at all. I'd have to buy a small condo, less than 900 Sq Ft, and it'd still cost around 20% more than my current house.

On the other hand, it's kinda weird where I live. Most of the houses have two people living in them and very few have just two cars. For example, the neighbor that lives behind me is an engineer. He and his wife both have their primary vehicles. Then they have this nice van-like thing they use for road trips and they have a giant truck for doing "manly" projects along with a big trailer for hauling stuff. There's a number of other houses in my small subdivision that are similar.

Now this engineer works a second job part-time 'cause he tells me that the two of them just can't afford to live on thier salaries. While I don't comment on that to him--I keep wondering if he realizes how much his extra vehicles are costing him every month? I wouldn't want to live where I do without a vehicle--but I just don't see the need to have 2 or 3. If you need a truck a few times a year--rent one! It's a lot cheaper to rent one occasionally than making payments on one you own. Anyway...

As I've commented before, I find the idea of ethanol in gas, subsidized heavily by the government, made from corn kernals, also subsisidized by the government, to be quite annoying, even ridiculous. And now the price of corn is rising quite a bit which means that in addition to the double government subsidy on this gasahol thing, we the consumers are now also subsidizing gasahol by paying higher prices for corn products. And so it goes...

Hydrogen as fuel. In a sense all our fuel is hydrogen already. We burn hydrocarbons like gasoline and diesal now. Due to impurities like sulphur and nitrogen we get pollutants like H2SO4, and NO. If we were to burn hydrogen (H2) then there'd be no pollutants due to H2 gas oxidixing into water. (2 H2 + O2 --> 2 H2O) The fly in the ointment here is that hydrogen is a gas and so you have to contain it under a lot of pressure to make it usable as a practical fuel source.

Admittedly it burns quite readily as a vapor--witness the Hindenburg explosion for evidence--but a tank of hydrogen vapor won't get you very far. And the problem of moving highly pressurized hydrogen gas around the country and into storage tanks at filling stations and then into high pressure tanks in individual cars...is considerable.

Cars are noisy and smelly but I guess we're going to have them in the current state for at least another decade or so.

Destiny arrives on a bus from UNC

I read an article in the Durham paper today about a bus that UNC supports to aid applied science education here in NC. It really sounds like a great program and I've got a portion of the article below. Go to the address listed at the end if you want to read the entire article. You'll need to sign up on their page if you do that but it is free to do so.

This is the website for the Destiny program. The site is interactive and very well coded.

This program started in the Spring of 2000 with a 5-year grant for $1.6 million from Glaxo Wellcome. This money paid for a 40-foot bus, full of state-of-the-art equipment for wet laboratory experiments, Internet exploration and carefully honed curriculum materials as well as funding to run the program for the 5 years.

Since that original funding, the program has continued and due to the popularity of the program a second bus has been added. Additional funding has come from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, IBM and New England BioLabs.


Ginny Hoyle, The Herald-Sun
May 8, 2007 10:33 pm
HILLSBOROUGH -- It was "CSI: Hillsborough" at Cedar Ridge High School Tuesday as students assumed the roles of forensic scientists to perform DNA restriction analysis with evidence from a crime scene.

The crime: a stolen iPod.

As part of UNC's DESTINY Traveling Science Learning Program, Crystal Bennett's ninth-grade honors biology class boarded a 40-foot, 33,000-pound bus called the Discovery.

Lisa Pierce, one of three DESTINY science education specialists, said the Discovery is an ideal way to bring the latest technology to students.

"My hope is always that this experience will enlighten students and hopefully get them excited about science," said Pierce, who has traveled with the DESTINY buses for the past three years.

The state-of-the-art laboratory offers students hands-on experience with forensic science -- in this case, gel electrophoresis, a process in which molecules (such as DNA fragments) can be separated by applying an electric current.

Huddled over equipment in groups of three, students participated in a step-by-step demonstration of DNA restriction analysis, as Pierce spoke into a camera that was projected on TVs at each end of the bus.

Ninth-grader Kaitlyn Stubblefield said the hardest part of the lab was keeping the micropipette, a device used to measure small amounts of liquid, steady while she practiced releasing the liquid samples.

Students prepared for Tuesday with a pre-lab in class, where they used DESTINY worksheets to solve "The Case of the Irresistible iPod." Four photos of make-believe suspects were taped on the wall of the classroom, as they worked with fibers and fingerprints to find the culprit.

Most schools aren't equipped with the latest science technology, said Pierce, so the DESTINY program brings it to them.

"Every kid needs to experience the science lab. It shouldn't just be for the wealthier schools. If you really want your kids to learn science, it costs money," she said. Just one BIO-RAD micropipette, like Stubblefield was using, costs between $180 and $200, she pointed out.

Bennett, the honors biology teacher, said funding can be a hindrance for science classrooms. Just one small box of lab equipment, enough for a few students to share, costs $450. "We'd have to write grants all year just to get enough for once class," she said.

Bennett said that in addition to being glad her students had an opportunity to do gel electrophoresis, she's very impressed with the way Pierce, who taught science for 20 years, and Brown ran the DESTINY laboratory.

URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-846224.cfm?

How connected are you?!

I saw a survey on the PEW site. It's a survey to see to what degree the Internet and other forms of connectivity affect your life. Go give it a try.

In case you're curious or don't want to blindly go to a web link, the Pew Internet & American Life Project is a non-profit research center studying the social effects of the Internet on Americans. I presume they're safe--or at least as safe as any Washington DC group ever is.


Where Do You Fit?

Do you cringe when your cell phone rings? Do you suffer from withdrawal when you can't check your Blackberry? Do you rush to post your vacation video to your Web site? The questions below allow you to place yourself in one of the categories in the Pew Internet Project's Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users.


The graphic to the left is the resulting groups. I'm in the second group, the "connectors". Click on the graphic if you want it bigger so you can read it more readily.

Here's my results from the quiz:

Based on your answers to the questionnaire, you most closely resemble survey respondents within the Connectors typology group. This does not mean that you necessarily fit every group characteristic.

Connectors make up 7% of the American public.

Basic Description
The Connectors’ collection of information technology is used for a mix of one-to-one and one-to-many communication. They very much like how ICTs keep them in touch with family and friends and they like how ICTs let them work in community groups to which they belong. They are participants in cyberspace – many blog or have their own web pages – but not at the rate of Omnivores. They are not as sure-footed in their dealings with ICTs as Omnivores. Connectors suspect their gadgets could do more for them, and some need help in getting new technology to function properly.

Defining Characteristics
Connectors combine a sense that information technology is good for social purposes with a clear recognition that online resources are a great way to learn new things. Their cell phones have a lot of features, and they also try new things with technology; more than half have watched TV programming on a device like a laptop computer or cell phone.

Who They Are
Connectors, which make up 7% of the population, have a median age of 38, with a majority (54%) in the 30-49 age range. Ethnically, it is mostly white (72%); 16% are Black and 12% are English-speaking Hispanics. The typical Connector has been online for 9 years, which suggests they were a second-wave of late 1990s adopters. Most are women (55%) and they rate above average in educational attainment and income.

soy beans and weight loss

I saw an interesting article today on ScienceDaily. The article relates how increased soy consumption seems to have the effect of decreasing weight. The dateline was yesterday (6 May 2007) and the story originated from a University of Illinois press release.

The first thought that comes to my head is that anyone who's eating a lot of soy is going to lose weight because it tastes awful and you tend to eat less. Or maybe you just lose your survival impulse. LOL

However, according to Dr. Elvira de Mejia, a University of Illinois assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, "Weight loss is a complex physiological event. It's not always as simple as 'Eat less or exercise more,' losing weight is a cascade of many steps, beginning with the production of certain hormones and continuing with their action in the brain".

Who knew?

Dr de Mejia and Vaughn, a graduate student, noticed a significant weight loss in the group of animals that had received one of the injected soy hydrolysates, even though the animals hadn't changed their eating habits. In this instance, soy protein appeared to have caused weight loss not by reducing food intake but by altering the rats' metabolism.

The experiment not only showed that soy peptides could interact with receptors in the brain, it also demonstrated that eating less isn't always the reason for weight loss, the researcher said.

According to the study some people are resistant to these hormones, just as other people are insulin-resistant. These people never receive the message from the brain that tells them they're full. That strikes me as so weird, but if the numbers are correct from this study--then it's like those late night TV ads say, you can eat more and still lose weight. The downside is that you'd be eating more soybeans--or at least injecting soy protein. So the question comes up--just how much do you want to lose weight??

Just to be upfront about this, while these results have been presented at a scientific meeting there was no mention of having been submitted to a peer reviewed journal. Furthermore the research was funded by the Illinois Soybean Association and SAI Company. Conflict of interest there? LOL

Actually from what I've witnessed in my nearly 30 years of research is that the funding authority rarely ever tries to influence research findings.

When do I die?

According to the site Find Your Fate, I'm going to die in 2049.

Despite their lovely questionnaire I think they have this wrong. I can't see my bod lasting much beyond 2022. If I do make it to 2049 it'll be a miserable existence. Too much stuff is breaking down now for me to have much left when I'm in my late 80s!

Right now I'm having some problems with an eye infection, my shoulder hurts, and both knees ache in the cold. And then there's that IBS stuff. This isn't the body of someone that'll nearly make it to 90.

According to the site:

Your Armageddon's day is 0 NaN 2049

Supposedly I have 15,335 days, 1 hour and 18 minutes left. Give or take a bit.

How long did the site give you to live--and do you want to stretch it out that far?

Cinco de Mayo

It's hard to believe but I forgot to buy sour cream and cilantro. Even so, the burritos were tasty and we watched some baseball and a few episodes of 24 as we ate our way through a number of tomatoes and peppers with some meat, cheese and spices tossed in for good measure.

Did I mention beer? A little of that too. What's Cinco de Mayo without beer? LOL I guess it's just the 5th of May.

I did avoid any contact with tequila. That stuff kills me! I hope I'm not flaunting tradition here...

what price this house?

I was reading an article in US News and World Report (May 7, 2007 issue) about Real Estate websites and decided to try them out by checking out the valuation on my house.

The article used 5 different websites: cyberhomes, House Front, Real Estate ABC, Reply and Zillow for determination of house prices. According to the article, the websites varied quite a bit as to accuracy of value and sometimes one or more of them didn't cover a geographic area at all.

For me, Real Estate ABC was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of the amount of information it gave as well as its accuracy. Unfortunately none of the websites gave me any feeling that I'm living on a goldmine. The value given for my house is approximately thesame as what I paid for it over 3 years ago. Sad, huh?

Here's my take on the 5 real estate sites:

Cyberhomes: The site generated an accurate map of my area populated with a number of other houses with generated values. There was no history of actual sales prices nor a justification for how these prices were generated.

House Front: Most of the information on this site was accurate though they thought I was the original owner of the house. I'm actually the second owner. The pricing information seemed more accurate but there wasn't any info on how it was derived.

Real Estate ABC: While I didn't like the valuation on this site very much, I'm afraid it's probably accurate ($148,000). This is the only site of the 5 here that had an accurate history of my house's previous sales. It also included the sales price for a number of homes in my immediate area and in a very easy to use format. I highly recommend this site if you're thinking of buying or selling--or just feeling like snooping on the neighborhood. LOL

Reply: This site didn't work in my area but from what I can see on here it looks like it might be a really good tool for areas which it covers.

Zillow: This looked very good also but didn't cover my area well. The map function worked well and included most of the houses on my block along with the Tax Accessor's Office valuation. Useful information but not as good as an actual sales price. I suspect this site is great in areas less rural than mine.

genes for muscles or genes for running?

I read an online article today by Maggie Fox, a health and science editor at Reuters. The article is about a mutation in one breed of dogs that seems to enable the dog to run much faster. Here's an excerpt from the article:

A gene that helps control muscle development makes all the difference between an elite racing dog and a freak that is put down at birth, scientists reported on Tuesday. Racing whippets that carried one copy of the mutated gene were among the fastest runners, but those that carried two copies became unattractively bulky and were usually destroyed by breeders, the researchers said. The next step may be to look for this gene in human athletes to see if it helps explain what makes some competitors excel, said Dr. Elaine Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute, who led the study. The gene controls a muscle protein called myostatin. "Our work is the first to link athletic performance to a mutation in the myostatin gene and could have implications for competitive sports in dogs, horses and possibly even humans," Ostrander said.

Oddly enough even though the mutation carries a huge advantage, only a third of the fastest Whippets carry that gene. The other dogs are fast for other reasons. And if the dog has a double mutation for this they develop too much muscle and are of no use to the breeder--and are usually destroyed. Further, other breeds of dogs don't have this mutation at all. At least not breeds examined so far. Research like this often raises as many questions as it answers.

Along this canine theme, the researcher that found the mutation link above commented on how research with dogs can spark advances in cancer research. Cancer in humans as well as dogs. You can find the details at this link. Dr. Elaine Ostrander, at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland is working this angle in the war against cancer. It's an interesting interview. One of the reasons they're looking into dogs is that they're a species that has been interbred in isolated small groups for a number of generations. This is an ideal circumstance for differentiating genetic links to cancer as well as resistance to cancer. Human populations by contrast interact a little too much for this sort of analysis. My own background is half Danish with the other half being spread between England, Wales, Scotland, and Germany. The lineage of a nice purebred dog can be a lot more homogeneous than that. We humans are mongrels! LOL

If you're interested in reading more about Dr. Ostrander, this is her website at NIH.

television roundup

Just some notes on what I've been watching this past week.

Last week's Heroes disappointed me so I was thinking the show might have started a decline. I'm glad to say that I really liked this week's show. The plot twist at the 45 minute mark was quite a shock to me. I didn't see it coming. While nothing huge happened in this episode it was very effective in setting up the plot line for the last 3 episodes. I expect that I'll really enjoy the way the show finishes the season. I just hope they don't leave too much on the plate for next season. That's why I stopped watching Lost 2 years ago. Too much prep and too little delivery.

I was disappointed in how Sunday's The Amazing Race ended. I was really hoping that Danny and Oswald would make it to the end. On the other hand, there's really none of the teams left that I strongly dislike. I was a little surprised by Oswald calling Charla and Mirna a "class act" and endorcing them for the win. I find them self-ritious and annoying. Maybe they're a lot nicer than they seem on the show. Since they're editing down a day or two of activity into a 40 minute show the editors can really change the impression a team makes by picking and choosing what to air.

I haven't started watching the 6th season of 24. I've been watching the back seasons first. Right now I'm around the half way point of Season 5 and it seems like the best written one so far. As soon as Season 5 ends--around mid-May--I'll start watching the shows of Season 6 that I've been recording. I can't believe that I waited until this year to finally watch 24. It's such a great show!