I have to agree with Auguste, this is perhaps the best time waster ever. I won’t say how long I spent playing with it last night after everyone went to bed. It was time I probably should have spent sleeping. But it was the most undirected, unfocused time—time that’s not dedicated to doing what someone else needs or wants me to do—that I’ve had in a couple of months.
Oh please, no. For the love of peace. Don’t do it, Ralph! This might be what it takes to force me to actually support one of the remaining Democratic candidates.
Now that the candidate I once deemed the least unsatisfactory of the remaining Democratic field has dropped out, I find I care even less who gets the Democrats nomination. The nominee will get my vote, to be sure, but not necessarily my enthusiastic support.
Everyone has heard at least one “health care nightmare” story, like the death of 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian hours after her insurance company approved coverage a liver transplant, following repeated denials. Before that, it was the death of Diamonte Driver, for want of an $80 dental procedure. These stories naturally provoke outrage. What happened to an anonymous 68-year-old man, however, is categorized as weird news, even though it’s as much about our failed health care system as the familiar “nightmare” stories.
The abstract of the article published in Journal of Emergency Medicine, in December 2007, is about as dry as you might expect a medical journal to be. Read the rest of this entry »
Ed. Note: This started out as a response to Marissa’s thoughtful comment on a previous post, related to the one before it I decided to let it stand on it’s own, as a post.
A late bloomer is a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected. In certain cases, the individual may be as old as 60, and retirement may lead to this discovery.
Maybe it’s due to my 30-plus years of untreated ADD. Maybe it’s just because I have a late blooming brain.
Indeed, until quite recently most researchers believed the human brain followed a fairly predictable developmental arc. It started out protean, gained shape and intellectual muscle as it matured, and reached its peak of power and nimbleness by age 40. After that, the brain began a slow decline, clouding up little by little until, by age 60 or 70, it had lost much of its ability to retain new information and was fumbling with what it had. But that was all right because late-life crankiness had by then made us largely resistant to new ideas anyway.
That, as it turns out, is hooey. More and more, neurologists and psychologists are coming to the conclusion that the brain at midlife–a period increasingly defined as the years from 35 to 65 and even beyond–is a much more elastic, much more supple thing than anyone ever realized.
Far from slowly powering down, the brain as it ages begins bringing new cognitive systems on line and cross-indexing existing ones in ways it never did before. You may not pack so much raw data into memory as you could when you were cramming for college finals, and your short-term memory may not be what it was, but you manage information and parse meanings that were entirely beyond you when you were younger. What’s more, your temperament changes to suit those new skills, growing more comfortable with ambiguity and less susceptible to frustration or irritation.
So goes the country? Well, probably not. But who knows how gay voters feel anyway? Not the media, which can’t make up its mind if we’re unexpectedly satisfied:
For the first time in two decades, gay voters find themselves in an unusual, if happy, predicament. The three leading Democrats have staked out similar positions on issues that resonate with gay men and lesbians. Although none of the three candidates back gay marriage, they all support same-sex civil unions and say they would fight to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And each of them says he or she would champion a federal anti-discrimination law that would protect lesbians and gay men.
“You would need a magnifying glass to see any real or substantive differences between the three candidates,” said Alan Van Capelle, the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights group in New York.
Evidently, there’s a new trend underway in some churches. But it’s one that seems, at best, to be a strange way to make church more appealing: to fill the pews by emptying them.
First, you have to imagine being arrested because you went to church. Then you have to imagine a 71-year-old woman showing up for church, one she attended for 50 years, and being arrested because she refused to leave.
On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. “And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P.”
Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff’s officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.
Since turning 18, I have never not voted. In every election in which I’ve been eligible—local, state, and national—I have cast a ballot.
Maybe it’s because I had parents who lived during the civil rights era. They made sure I knew what me right to vote had cost. They encouraged me to vote even when there are no good choices. My dad used to say to me, “If you cant find someone to vote for, find someone to vote against. But vote.
I’m going to agree with Jasmyne on this. If Obama had sex with a man, my guess is he wouldn’t pick this one. I’m sure the Senator could do much, much better.
Well, maybe the video worked. It took a National Enquirer spread to get Whitney into treatment. And now, after what will forever be known as the infamous crack-smokign video, Amy Winehouse’s record label is confirming that Amy has finally checked into rehab, “after talks with her record label, management, family and doctors”. The release of that video had the feel of a web-2.0-style intervention. Whether that’s what it was or not doesn’t matter. It sounds like Amy’s where she needs to be. Here’s hoping she’s there for the full say, and that she gets clean and stays clean.
Based on what I’ve been reading as the primaries lay out, there’s a struggle going on in the Democratic party. Actually, more than one. At least two. One is obvious to be discussed in the media; the candidates’ battle to win over core constituencies of the Democratic base. Namely, African Americans, Latinos, and women.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were pitched yesterday into a struggle for the key components of the Democratic power base - women, African-American and Latino voters - as the race for the White House fans out across a national stage.
…While Obama had overwhelming support from African-American voters, Clinton was strongly backed by women and Latinos. She was also the preferred candidate of voters who see the economy as the main issue in the coming elections - a distinct plus amid deepening concerns about recession.
I’m at home with Dylan today and working from home. (Dylan’s doing very well, by the way. He’s nearing 2 months old and has gotten so much bigger! He was just under six pounds when he was born, and he’s just over 11 now; and he’s got a few extra chins, chubbier cheeks, and chubbier legs. He likes watching Parker play, and likes to be held upright and walked around the house.)
So between taking care of him and getting some work done, there may not be much posting here today, except for this post—which I stayed up last night to complete after getting Dylan to sleep—and possibly one more that I’ve been working on for a bit. (That’s if I can finish it.)
I haven’t been able to do as much writing as I’d like to lately, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading. (It’s relatively easy to read news & blogs online while rocking Dylan in my office chair. And there’s a lot out there I’d blog about if I could manage to find the time and the energy, and get them to synch up. In lieu of that, today seems like a good day for a roundup. Read the rest of this entry »
I can't believe this story is still churning. Part of me wants to yell "Enough, already!" But part of me also wonders what else might be uncovered. Oh, wait. The "smoking gun" is another photograph. A few, actually. The suggestion is that she wore a fake baby belly and, I guess, was dumb enough to go out without it and let herself be photographed. OK. That's not a stretch. But neither is it a stretch that a 44 year old woman might have a Down's Syndrome baby. She's much more likely to do so than a 16-year-old...
Mark this day on your calendar: August 4, 2009. It may not all happen on that day, but it will mark 9 months since November 4, 2008: the day Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the presidential election. So, that would be "zero day" for the Obama baby boom.
Well, I'd hope so. Anyone stupid or careless enough to put an uzi inthe hands of an eight-year-old ought to be charged with something. The D.A. looking into "whether anyone committed a reckless or wanton act" by allowing the child to fire a weapon. Oh, I'd say that qualifies as reckless and wanton. If it doesn't, then nothing does.
I admit it. My first thought when I saw this was, "Honest, officer. I don't know what happened. I totally meant to hit the brakes. I guess my foot just slipped."
I'm not saying its the kind of thing that anyone should base their vote on, but I gotta admire a campaign when I find out about the candidate's economic plan on an LGBT social network, and then get a link to read or download the entire plan on Scribd. It tells me that a campaign is making a special effort to reach out to people like me, and that the campaign is up to date on the latest ways to disseminate information.
If you haven't yet, take the time to stop by Box Turtle Bulletin, where they have been doing a great series of day-by-day posts on the Matthew Shepard murder. Today's post is a particularly heartbreaking one, about the moment ten years ago when Dennis and Judy Shepard walked into their son's intensive care room and saw him for the first time since the attack. It also links to the earlier posts in the series.
Its sounds like a joke, but it's true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
Reading: "Top 10 Gay Friendly Places to Live: Countries Where Gays and Lesbians Have Equal Rights." We're number seven. ( http://tinyurl ... 3 days ago
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